Return to Summerhouse

  “Actually, I didn’t choose. Ty dumped me.”

  “Okay,” Amy said, “now I for sure want to hear every word.”

  Faith took a moment to consider. It had been a matter of pride to her that she hadn’t told Jeanne about her first love affair with her hometown’s best-looking dropout. But, like Zoë, Faith hadn’t wanted to go to a therapist. She’d been blackmailed into going because of what she’d done at Eddie’s funeral. Her mother-in-law had pressed charges and Faith was facing time in the local jail and having a criminal record for the rest of her life. It had taken a lot of effort, but she’d finally worked out a deal with Eddie’s mother that if she, Faith, would leave town and get some “help” the charges would be dropped. So Faith rented an apartment in New York, and went to the therapist her mother-in-law told her was the only one she’d accept.

  But it hadn’t really worked. From the beginning, Faith had connected Jeanne with Eddie’s mother—and that meant she had to protect herself at all costs.

  “All right,” Faith said, “I’ll tell you. I think the relevant part of my life started…” She counted the years. “It’s hard to believe but it was only sixteen years ago. It feels like a hundred. I’d just come home from college and my mother was angry at me because I didn’t have a ring on my finger. I was dying to tell her that Eddie and I were as good as engaged, but I knew she’d tell her first client and five minutes after that, it’d be all over town. Eddie needed time to tell his mother, then keep her from dying of a heart attack.

  “I was in my bedroom, unpacking my clothes, when Ty shoved the window up and stuck his head inside. For a moment I couldn’t get my breath because he was even better looking than I remembered.”

  Five

  SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

  “Hey!” Ty said as he shoved the window of Faith’s bedroom up and started to climb inside.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Faith ran toward him, meaning to push him back out, but he was already inside. She looked out the window to see how many people had seen him enter her bedroom. But the big wisteria vine was still there and still covered the view.

  “Not bad,” Ty said as he gave her an appraising look when she bent over.

  “Stop it!” she said as she straightened up and slammed the window shut. “We’re not in the third grade anymore.”

  “I didn’t look at you in that way when we were in the third grade,” he said as he turned away and looked at the posters on her bedroom wall. “If I had, I would have been locked up.”

  “Just cut it out,” Faith said, her hands on her hips as she glared at his back.

  “Cut what out?” he said in that lazy way he had. It was a way that attracted lots of girls to him, Faith included. For all that she didn’t want to, she couldn’t help noticing how he’d changed in the three years since they’d last been together. It seemed that every time she’d returned from college, something had kept her from seeing him. During those years, his father had died and she’d heard that most of his siblings had left town. Last summer she’d been told that now only Ty and his mother lived in the old house back in the woods. Faith had meant to visit him, but she hadn’t. She knew that he’d stopped by her house and called her a few times, but she’d never called him back. Maybe she hadn’t visited him because she knew he’d ask her about her and Eddie and she didn’t want to tell him. She could lie to her mother and the town, but Ty would see through her.

  “We’re not kids anymore and you can’t just jump into my bedroom anytime you want,” she said sternly.

  “Is that so?” He stretched out on her bed. It was covered in the pink, ruffled spread she’d chosen when she was nine years old, and he looked even more masculine on it. He was taller than she remembered and his feet passed the end of the bed. She didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help comparing him to Eddie. Whereas Eddie was blond and blue-eyed, with a look of innocence and sweetness about him, Ty was dark and lean and…And sexy, she thought. It was as though her childhood bedroom had been invaded by something that children should know nothing about.

  What Faith wanted to do was lie down on the bed beside him and snuggle against him. Could he still kiss as well as he used to? He had been her first lover and their last two years of high school had been passionate. She could still feel the leather of his car seats on the back of her bare thighs.

  “So?” he asked. “What do you think? You’re looking at me awfully hard.”

  “I was wondering how you could presume so much after all this time.”

  “Right,” he said. “And that’s what I think when I see you too. You look good. You look like you have some muscle on you.”

  “Sports,” she said. “At college.”

  She’d meant the word as a put-down, but Ty just smiled. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt that showed off his muscles, but she wasn’t going to comment on it.

  “I think you should leave,” she said as primly as she could manage.

  “And I think you should take off that fancy dress, put on some Levi’s, and go with me.”

  “Where to?”

  He shrugged, a gesture that was very familiar to her. “Just for a drive. I spent the weekend tuning up the old convertible and it’s outside. Wouldn’t you like to ride in it with me, with your hair streaming out the back? What did you do to your hair anyway? Is it still there?”

  “It’s here,” she said, putting her hand up. “It’s just that it’s better to pull it back. It’s more tidy that way.”

  “And who told you that? Edward?” As he sat up, he picked up the photo on the bedside table. It was of the three of them as children, their arms around each other, happy. They were all three filthy and laughing as they held up strings of fish they’d caught that day.

  Back then, Faith had seen only the joy of that day, but now she remembered the grown-up part of it. They’d given the fish to Ty because they knew his big family always needed food. Eddie’s mother had punished her son for getting dirty and smelly; he’d not been allowed out of the house for two weeks. Faith’s mother had cried at the sight of her dirty daughter and lectured her for two hours about being “a lady.”

  Faith stepped toward Ty and took the photo out of his hand. “I think you should leave.”

  Before she could step back, his arms went around her waist and he put his head against her belly. “I’ve missed you,” he said softly. “Every minute of these years, I’ve missed you. I thought I’d die when you came back and wouldn’t see me. I didn’t think I’d make it until you left that damned school and came home to me.”

  She knew she should push him away, but she couldn’t. Her hand came up and touched his hair. It was thick and full and soft and it reminded her of the warm summer days they’d spent together. She remembered every night that she’d buried her face in his hair and smelled of it, inhaling deeply, letting the scent soak into her.

  He looked up at her. “Go with me to the lake. Just for the afternoon. I’ve got a cooler full of food in the car.”

  “I…” she began. She knew that she had a lot to do. Eddie had things he wanted her to do with him, and her mother had scheduled her for half a dozen events around town, but at the moment she couldn’t seem to remember what any of them were. “All right,” she heard herself saying.

  Ty stood up, his body moving up the front of her. “Good. Get dressed. I’ll see you outside in five minutes. You take six and I’ll come in after you.” With that, he planted a quick, sweet kiss on her lips, then opened the window and climbed out.

  For a full minute, Faith stood there looking at the window in confusion. She’d just finished four years at a Northern college where she’d been Edward Wellman’s girlfriend and she’d worked hard to be worthy of his attention, his friends, and his name.

  Her freshman year had been difficult. She’d attended her first classes wearing a skirt so short it was almost cheeky. Her hair was in fat curls down about her shoulders, and she had on a tank top that fit like skin. As she’d strode across campus, young m
en had patted their hearts and dramatically fallen to the ground near her feet. She’d laughed at them and enjoyed every second of it.

  It was when the girls saw her that she encountered the sneers. When one girl with her straight brown hair pulled back with a headband made a remark about “Southern hicks,” Faith realized how they were seeing her. She understood that in her rebellion against her mother and Eddie’s, she’d gone too far the other way.

  The next day she’d had her hair cut, and she went to class wearing what the other girls wore: jeans and a modest top. It had taken the rest of the year to redo her image, but she did it by studying harder than anyone else. Her high grades made her sought after as study help in the classes. When she graduated with an honors degree in English lit, she was well respected by both her teachers and her peers.

  Best of all, she was sure she’d changed herself so much that Eddie’s mother would accept her. And to achieve this approval, she knew it was imperative to stay away from Ty when she was home. She could not be seen riding around town in a convertible with one of the Parks kids. What Faith wanted most in life was to be seen as a demure young woman who had a right to be Eddie Wellman’s wife.

  But right now her girlish bedroom was filled with the scent and raw sexuality of Ty, and it was as though the four years of college and behaving herself had never happened. Without conscious thought, she pulled the pins from her hair, then the tight band, and let it loose. Her hair was thick and a natural dark auburn and she knew that if she let it hang loose it made men think of sex—or that’s what Ty used to tell her when she’d lie in his arms and look at the stars.

  What was it about bad boys? she asked herself as she nearly ripped off her dress and pulled on a pair of jeans that she hadn’t worn in two years. She and Eddie had agreed that they’d wait until they were married before they went to bed together. There was a small group of kids on campus who had signed pledges to do the same thing. They hadn’t done that—“No one’s business but our own,” Eddie said—and they’d done a lot of heavy petting, but they hadn’t gone “all the way.”

  Faith was sure Eddie knew that she and Ty had been lovers, but he never mentioned it and she certainly didn’t either.

  When Faith was dressed, she started to open the door to her bedroom, but when she heard her mother in the kitchen, before she knew what she was doing, she was climbing out her bedroom window. As she did so she felt young again—which was absurd as she was hardly over twenty. But sneaking out to be with Ty—as she’d done so many times before—made her feel sixteen.

  She heard the deep rumble of Ty’s car before she saw it and she knew he’d parked around the corner where Faith’s mother couldn’t see him. Her mother had always disliked Ty. Not because he wasn’t polite and respectful and had mowed their lawn for free since he was eleven, but because of his family. “Born from nothing, will always be nothing,” was her pronouncement.

  Faith felt her long hair bouncing around her shoulders as she ran, and she knew that the neighbors were watching. She also knew that they’d hurry to tell her mother, but she didn’t care. As she ran she felt the four years of being in a straitjacket falling away from her.

  “Baby, you look great!” Ty said as she got into the car beside him. Then, as he always had done, he put his hand to the back of her head and kissed her on the lips. They both laughed together and Ty revved the engine, put it in gear, and laid a strip of rubber as he peeled away from the curb.

  Faith threw back her head and laughed, exhilarated at the feeling of freedom. She was free to laugh, to shout, to go and do and see—all the things she’d kept bottled inside her at school.

  “Did you learn anything in college?” Ty asked as he turned onto the highway and shifted into third.

  “Everything. Ask me about Shakespeare or Wordsworth. Ask me about Hawthorne.”

  “No, thanks,” Ty said, turning to look at her. “You look better than when you left. Is that possible?”

  “If my looks hadn’t got me in such trouble at school I’d call you a liar.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It was a very conservative college,” Faith said, her eyes closed, feeling the wind on her face. “Big-busted redheads aren’t what they want to see.”

  “I do,” Ty said as he leered at her.

  They laughed together.

  She opened her eyes in time to see him turn off the highway. “This isn’t the way to the lake. Unless they’ve moved it while I was away.”

  “They had enough time,” Ty said, letting her know how very long she’d been gone. “I want to show you something.”

  He drove down an old road that had grass growing through the pavement, and he had to slow down to a crawl to keep from tearing out the underside of his car.

  “So what do you want to show me?” she asked. “Some isolated place that no one else has ever seen?” She wiggled her eyebrows at him.

  “Can’t wait for me, can you, baby?”

  Some part of Faith was sane and knew that now was the moment when she should tell him about her and Eddie, but she didn’t say anything. She felt better than she had in years and she couldn’t bear to ruin it. She knew Ty well and if she told him she was going to marry Eddie, he’d take her back to her house and leave her—and she’d probably never see him again. One time she’d said that he was ninety percent pride. He’d replied that that was because he didn’t have much else in life.

  The road they were on cut through a field that had once had dairy cows but was now full of weeds. The man who used to own the land died when Faith was just a girl and his heirs lived in the East so no one had done anything with it in years.

  Ty pulled off the road into the graveled area in front of an old brick building that had three open bays. At one end was a falling-down old office. It had once been an automobile repair shop, but now weeds had broken the concrete in front of the buildings. There was nothing around them and the wind whistled through the buildings and the trees. It was a lonely, desolate place.

  She watched Ty get out of the car and look about with an expression on his face that she’d never seen before. She wanted to leave, but she got out and went to stand beside him.

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  “You remember this place?”

  “Sure,” she said, rubbing her arms. It was a hot day but getting out of the wind was giving her goose bumps. “I don’t like it here.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him, but he didn’t take his eyes off the derelict old building. “That’s because you don’t know what it is.”

  “Something that’s waiting to collapse?”

  Smiling, he tightened his grip on her for a moment, then let her go and walked to the building. He ran his hand down the side of it in a caressing, loving way. “It’s mine.”

  She blinked at him. “Yours? Don’t tell me you bought this awful old spot?” She wanted to ask him where he got the money, but she didn’t.

  “You remember old man Nelson I used to work for?”

  “How could I forget? You missed a hundred weekends with Eddie and me because you were his slave.”

  “Yeah, well, it paid off.”

  “He gave you this?” She looked at him as though to say, What was second prize?

  “Gave me?” Ty said. “You have to be kidding. That man never gave anything to anyone. His whole family despised him, and when he died he left them nothing. He gave everything he had to the church. He said they deserved the money more than his lazy kids did.”

  “Nice man.”

  “No, not a nice man, but what no one knew is that on his deathbed he gave me something.”

  “In gratitude for all the years you gave to him? I remember seeing you on Sunday morning so tired you couldn’t stand up because you’d been digging or doing something for him until ten at night—and this was when you were just twelve years old.”

  Ty shrugged. “He paid me for every hour and I always needed the money.” He was silent for a mome
nt, still looking at the old buildings with love.

  “So?” she said. “What did he give you?”

  “Information.”

  She saw that he was teasing her, drawing out what he wanted to say to make her beg him to tell her. It was a game they’d played all their lives. Ty used to make her and Eddie ask him about something until they were ready to pummel him.

  “I give up!” she said. “What did that awful old man tell you?”

  “That the state is planning to put a road through here.”

  “Here?” Faith asked, looking about the place.

  “They’re going to put in a major highway that will link the two Interstates.”

  As she thought about it, she knew it made sense. All her life she’d heard adults complain about having to drive around the lake and across side roads to get to the big highway. There had always been a rumor that the state was going to put in a new road but…“I’ve always heard that,” Faith said. “What he told you wasn’t news.”

  “Yeah, but old man Nelson had a date and a map. It’ll start next year, and I own a lot of the land where they’re going to put the road. The contracts have been signed.”

  She could no longer contain her surprise. “You bought land?” she blurted. “How?”

  “With you and Ed gone, I had nothing to do but work. And with Dad and my leaching brothers gone, it didn’t cost much to support Mom and me, so I saved what I could and put it in land.”

  She watched him shrug as though to say that it was nothing, but she could almost see all that he’d done these last four years. He must have worked without stop on weekends, holidays, and into the night.

  She thought about what he’d done and wondered why he’d given up so much of his life in the pursuit of money—but she knew why. He’d done it for her. She couldn’t help glancing at his jeans. If she knew anything about him, she was sure that in his pocket was a diamond ring. An engagement ring. It wouldn’t matter to Ty that they hadn’t seen each other for years. Nor would it matter that she’d been dating other men, and she was sure that he’d been out with lots of women in that time. Ty had made up his mind about the two of them long ago and he was sticking with it.