Chapter One
Leslie Headrick looked out her kitchen window at the old
summerhouse in the back. Now, in early fall, the vines and
twisted stems of the old roses nearly covered the
building, but in the winter you could see the glassed-in
porch well. You could see the peeling paint and the
cracked glass in the little round window above the front
door. One of the side doors was hanging on one hinge, and
Alan said it was a danger to anyone who walked past the
place. In fact, Alan said that the whole structure was a
danger and should be torn down.
At that thought, Leslie turned away from the window and
looked back at her beautiful, perfect kitchen. Just last
year Alan had gutted her old kitchen and put in this
one. "It's the best that money can buy," he'd said about
the maple cabinets and the solid- surface countertops. And
Leslie was sure that it was the best, but she missed her
ratty old Welsh dresser and the little breakfast nook in
the corner. "That table and those chairs look like
something kids made in a shop class," Alan had said, and
Leslie had agreed -- but their perspective of what was
beautiful differed.
As always, Leslie had given in to her husband and let him
put in this showplace of a kitchen, and now she felt that
she was ruining a piece of art when she baked cookies and
messed up the perfect surfaces that scratched so easily.
She poured herself another cup of tea from the pot,
strong, black English tea, loose tea, no wimpy tea bags
for her, then turned back to again look out at the
summerhouse. This was a day for reflecting because in
three more days she was going to be forty years old -- and
she was going to celebrate her birthday with two women she
hadn't seen or heard from in nineteen years.
Behind her, in the hallway, her two suitcases were packed
and waiting. She was taking a lot of clothing because she
didn't know what the other two women were going to be
wearing, and Ellie's letter had been vague. "For a famous
writer, she doesn't say much," Alan had said in an
unpleasant tone of voice. He had been quite annoyed to
find out that his wife was friends with a best-selling
author.
"But I didn't know that Ellie was Alexandria Farrell,"
Leslie had said, looking at the letter in wonder. "The
last time I saw Ellie she wanted to be an artist. She was -
- "
But Alan wasn't listening. "You could have asked her to
speak at the Masons," he was saying. "Just last year, one
of my clients said that his wife was a devotee of Jordan
Neale." Everyone in America knew that Jordan Neale was the
lead character that Ellie, under the pen name of
Alexandria Farrell, had created. Jordan Neale was someone
women wanted to imitate and men wanted to...Well, the
series of romantic mysteries had done very well. Leslie
had read all of them, having no idea that the writer was
the cute young woman she'd met so long ago.
So now, in the quiet of the early morning, before Alan and
the kids came downstairs, Leslie was thinking about what
had happened to her in the last nineteen years. Not much,
she thought. She'd married the boy next door, literally,
and they'd had two children, Joe and Rebecca, now fourteen
and fifteen years old. They weren't babies any longer, she
thought, sipping her tea and still staring out the window
at the summerhouse.
Maybe it was the letter and the invitation from Ellie, a
woman she hadn't seen in so very many years, that was
making Leslie think about the past so hard. But, as Ellie
had written, their one and only meeting had had an impact
on Ellie's life and she wanted to see both Leslie and
Madison again.
Yes, Leslie thought, that meeting had had an impact on her
life too. Since that afternoon nineteen years ago, she'd
often thought of Ellie and Madison. And now she was going
to fly all the way from Columbus, Ohio, to a tiny town in
Maine to spend a long weekend with the other two women.
But what was it about the summerhouse that was holding her
attention this morning? She'd been so restless that she
hadn't been able to sleep much last night, so, at four
A.M., she'd got out of bed, dressed, then tiptoed
downstairs to put together the ingredients for apple
pancakes. Not that anyone would eat any of them, she
thought with a sigh. Rebecca would be horrified at the
calories, Joe would come down with only seconds to spare
before he made the school bus, and Alan would only want
cereal, something high- fiber, low-calorie, low-
cholesterol, low...Well, low-flavor, Leslie thought.
Attempts at gourmet cooking were wasted on her family.
With another sigh, Leslie picked up a warm pancake, folded
it, and ate it with pleasure. Last week when she'd
received Ellie's letter, she wished she'd received it six
months earlier so she would have had time to get rid of
the extra fifteen pounds she was carrying. Everyone at the
Garden Club said they envied Leslie her figure and how
she'd been able to keep it all these years, but Leslie
knew better. Nineteen years ago she'd been a dancer and
she'd had a body that was supple, muscular, and hard. Now,
she thought, she was soft, not fat really, but her muscles
were soft. She hadn't thrown her leg up on a ballet bar in
years.
Overhead she could hear Rebecca's quick step. She'd be the
first one down, the first one to ask why her mother had
made something that was guaranteed to clog all their
arteries with one bite. Leslie sighed. Rebecca was so very
much like her father.
Joe was more like his mother, and if Leslie could get him
away from his friends long enough, they could sit and talk
and "smell the roses," as she used to tell him. "Like your
wallpaper," he'd said when he was just nine years old. It
had taken Leslie a moment to figure out what he was
talking about, then she'd smiled warmly. In the
summerhouse. She'd put up wallpaper with roses on it in
the summerhouse.
Now she remembered looking at her son on that long ago day
and seeing his freckled face as they sat across from each
other in the old inglenook at one side of the sunny
kitchen. Joe had been such an easygoing child, sleeping
through the night when he was just weeks old, so unlike
Rebecca, who seemed to cause chaos and confusion wherever
she was. Leslie wasn't sure if Rebecca had yet slept
through a night of her life. Even now, when she was
fifteen, she thought nothing of barging into her parents'
bedroom at three A.M. to announce that she'd heard
a "funny noise" on the roof. Leslie would tell her to go
back to bed and get some sleep, but Alan took "funny
noises" seriously. The neighbors were used to seeing Alan
and his daughter outside with flashlights.
Leslie looked back at the summerhouse. She could still see
some of the pink paint on it. Fifteen years later and
remnants of the paint were still there.
Smiling, she remembered Alan's expression when she'd
bought the paint. "I can understand if you want to paint
the place pink, but, sweetheart, you've bought five
different shades of pink. Didn't those men at the store
help you?"
Alan was a great believer in men taking care of women,
whether it was at home or in a paint store.
At that time Leslie had been five months pregnant with
Rebecca and she was already showing. She didn't know it
then, but Rebecca was going to be early in everything,
from letting her mother know she was there to...well,
letting the world know she was there.
Laughing, Leslie had told Alan that she planned to paint
the summerhouse using all five shades of pink. Now,
fifteen and a half years later, she could still remember
the look on his face. Leslie's mother had said that Alan
didn't have a creative bone in his body, and, over the
years, Leslie had found out that that was true. But, back
then, when they were both so young and so happy to be on
their own, the colors she wanted to paint the falling down
old summerhouse had been cause for laughter.
It had been Leslie who'd persuaded Alan to buy the big
Victorian house that was in an old, unfashionable
neighborhood. Alan had wanted something new, something
that was white on the outside and white on the inside. But
Leslie couldn't stand any of the houses that Alan had
liked: perfectly square boxes set inside a bigger
perfectly square box. "But that's what I like about them,"
Alan had said, not understanding her complaint.
It was Leslie's mother who had given her the strength to
stand up to her new husband. "The house belongs to the
woman," her mother had said. "It's where you spend most of
your time and it's where you raise your children. It's
worth a fight." In her family, her mother had been the
fighter. Leslie was like her father and liked to let
things find their own solutions.
Later Leslie said that it was having Rebecca's fierce
spirit inside her that had given her the courage. She
played her trump card: "Alan, dear, we are buying the
house with money my father left to me." Alan didn't say
anything, but the look on his face made her never, ever
again say anything like that.
But then she'd never before or since wanted anything as
much as she'd wanted that big, rambling old house that
needed so very much work. Since her father had been a
building contractor, she knew what needed to be done and
how to go about getting it done.
"That has to go," Alan had said when he'd seen the old
summerhouse, hidden under fifty-year-old trees, nearly
obscured by wisteria vines.
"But that's the most beautiful part of the house," Leslie
had said.
Alan had opened his mouth to say something, but Rebecca
had chosen that moment to give her first kick, and the
argument about the fate of the summerhouse was never
completed. Later, whenever Alan had said anything about
the house, Leslie had said, "Trust me," so he'd left it to
her. After all, Alan had just started selling insurance
and he was ambitious, very, very ambitious. He worked from
early to late. He joined clubs and attended meetings. He
was quite happy when he found out that the most
fashionable church in town was within walking distance of
the horrible old house that Leslie had persuaded him to
purchase.
And it was at church that he found out that people were
pleased with him for having the foresight to buy "the old
Belville place" and restore it. "Sound invest, that," some
old man said as he clapped Alan on the shoulder. "It's
unusual that a man as young as you would have that much
wisdom." Later the man bought a big policy from Alan.
After that, Alan took as much interest in the house as
Leslie did. And when Leslie had her hands full with two
babies under the age of three, Alan took over supervising
the restoration of the house.
At first there had been fights. "It isn't a museum!"
Leslie had said in exasperation. "It's a home and it
should look like one. Joe's going to ruin that expensive
table with his trucks. And Rebecca will draw on that silk
wallpaper."
"Then you'll just have to keep them under control," Alan
had snapped.
And Leslie had backed down, as she always did at a
confrontation. Like her father, she'd rather retreat than
fight. Which is why her mother had ruled her childhood
home and Alan ruled their home. So Alan had filled the
wonderful old house with too many antiques that no one
could sit on or even touch. There were three rooms in the
house that were kept tightly closed all year, only being
opened for cleaning and for Alan's huge Christmas party
for all his clients.
The kitchen had been the final holdout, but last year Alan
had had his way on that room too.
Leslie finished her tea, rinsed out her cup, then looked
back at the summerhouse. That was to have been hers. It
was to have been her retreat from the world, a place where
she could keep up with her dancing, or curl up and read on
rainy afternoons.
Now, looking at the building, she smiled. Before she had
children, a woman thought of what she wanted to do on
rainy afternoons, but afterward, her hours filled
with "must" instead of "want." She must do the laundry,
must get the groceries, must pull Rebecca back from the
heater.
Somehow, Leslie had lost the summerhouse. Somehow, it had
gone from being hers to being "theirs." She knew exactly
when it had started. She had been eight months pregnant
and so big she'd had to walk with her hand under her belly
to support Rebecca's constant kicks and punches.
They'd just torn out the living room in the house and
there was a leak in the roof. Alan had invited his brother
and three college friends over for beer and football but
it was raining that day, so there was nowhere for them to
sit and watch the game on TV. When Alan had suggested that
he set the TV up in the summerhouse for "this one
afternoon," she'd been too grateful for the peace and
quiet to protest. She'd been dreading a house full of men
and smoke and the smell of beer, so she was glad when he
said he'd take the men elsewhere.
On the next weekend, Alan had taken two clients into the
summerhouse to discuss new life policies. It made sense,
as the living room was still torn up. "We need a place to
sit and talk," he'd said, looking at Leslie as though it
were her fault that the roofing materials still hadn't
arrived.
Two weeks after that, Rebecca was born, and for the next
year, Leslie hadn't been able to take a breath. Rebecca
was insatiable in her demands for attention from her tired
mother. It was three months before Leslie could get
herself together enough to get her squalling baby out of
her pajamas. By the time Rebecca started walking at ten
months, Leslie was pregnant again.
When she was three months pregnant with Joe, Leslie made
the trek out to the summerhouse. In the months since Alan
had first set up a TV in the place, Leslie had almost
forgotten that her retreat still existed. But from the
first day, Joe was an easier pregnancy than Rebecca, and
Leslie's mother had started taking her granddaughter on
short jaunts about town. "There's nothing more
uninteresting than a nursing baby," her mother had said in
her usual forthright style. "When she starts walking and
looking at something besides her mother's bosom, then I'll
take an interest in her."
So, on her first afternoon of freedom, for that's the way
it felt, Leslie had made her way out to the summerhouse.
Maybe this time, she'd be able to stretch out on the
wicker chaise lounge she'd found in an antique shop and
read a book.
But when Leslie pushed open the door, her breath stopped.
Vaguely, she'd wondered why Alan had used the summerhouse
only a few times, then never said anything about it again.
Someone had left the doors open and it had rained in on
her furniture. Before she was first pregnant, she'd made
the slipcovers for the little couch and the two chairs.
She'd made the matching curtains and hung them herself.
But now mice were nesting in the stuffing of the couch,
and it looked as if a neighboring cat had clawed the arms
of the chairs.
Turning away, she felt tears come to her eyes. She didn't
even bother to close the door as she ran back to the
house.
Later, she'd tried to have a confrontation with Alan, but
he'd expressed such concern that her anger was going to
harm the baby, that Leslie had calmed down. "We'll fix it
up after you've had the baby," he said. "I promise.
Scout's honor." He'd kissed her then and helped her with
Rebecca and later, he'd made sweet love to her. But he
didn't fix the summerhouse.
After that, Leslie had been so busy with children and
helping Alan establish himself within the community that
she wouldn't have had time to get away even if she'd had a
place to go. And as the years followed each other, the
summerhouse became a storage shed.
"So how's my old girl this morning?" Alan asked from
behind her. He was two months younger than Leslie and he'd
always found jokes about their age difference to be
amusing. Needless to say, Leslie didn't see the humor.
"I made pancakes," she said, keeping her face turned away
to hide her frown. She hadn't yet come to terms with the
idea of turning forty. Hadn't it been only last week when
she'd boarded a bus and headed to big, bad New York City,
where she was going to turn the town on its ear with her
dancing?
"Mmm," Alan said. "Wish I had time, but I have a full
schedule today.
When she turned around, he was looking down at the
newspaper, absorbed with the financial section. In the
seventeen years that they'd been married, Alan hadn't
changed much. Not physically anyway. His hair was now
gray, but on him it looked good. He said that an insurance
agent was considered more trustworthy if he looked older.
And he kept in shape by going to the gym regularly.
What had changed about him was that he no longer seemed to
actually see any of them, not his wife, not his two
children. Oh, Rebecca could throw one of her look-at-me
fits and she could get his attention, but Joe and Leslie,
with their easygoing ways, were mostly ignored by him.
"You ought to leave him," Leslie's mother said, even more
outspoken now than she had been when her husband was
alive. Widowhood agreed with her. "If you left him, he'd
find out how much he needs you. You need to shake up his
perfect little world. Show him what matters."
But Leslie had seen what happened to women her age who
left their handsome, successful husbands, and Leslie had
no desire to live in some dreary little apartment and work
at the local discount store. "Mother," Leslie often said
in exasperation, "I have no skills to make my own way in
the world. What would I do? Go back to dancing?" That she
had failed at her one and only attempt at success in the
world still haunted her.
"Where did I go wrong with you?" her mother would
moan. "If you left him, he'd fall apart. You're the man's
entire life. You do everything for him. If you left, he'd -
- "
"Run off with Bambi," Leslie said quickly.
"You were a fool to let him hire that little tart," her
mother had snapped.
Leslie looked away. She didn't want her mother to know how
she'd fought her husband's hiring the beautiful, young
girl. "You hired a girl named Bambi?" Leslie had said,
laughing in disbelief, at the dinner table the first night
he'd told her. "Is she over twelve?"
To Leslie, it had been a joke, but when she looked at
Alan's face, she could see that he didn't think his new
secretary was a joke. "She is very competent at her job,"
he'd snapped, his eyes drilling into his wife's.
As always, Joe had been sensitive to any disagreement and
he'd pushed his plate away. "I got some homework to do,"
he'd mumbled, then left the table.
Rebecca never seemed to see anything outside her own
realm. "Did I tell you what that dreadful Margaret said to
me today? We were in chemistry class, and -- "
Leslie had at last looked away from her husband's eyes,
and she'd never again made a snide remark about Bambi. But
Leslie had been curious, so she'd called a woman she'd
gone to high school with who worked in Alan's office and
invited her to lunch. After lunch, Leslie had gone home
and made herself a strong gin and tonic and taken it to
the bathtub with her. She'd been told that Alan had hired
Bambi six months earlier and that she was more than just
his secretary, she was his "personal assistant." Paula,
who'd been on the cheerleading squad with Leslie in high
school, warmed to her story and seemed to enjoy "warning"
Leslie. "If he were my husband, I'd put an end to it, I
can tell you that," Paula had said with emphasis. "That
girl goes everywhere with Alan. All I can say is that it's
a good thing we don't have one of those unisex bathrooms
or she'd -- "
"Would you like to have some dessert?" Leslie had said
rather loudly.
Now Bambi had worked for, with, "under," if the gossip
were to be believed, Alan for over a year. And, quite
frankly, Leslie didn't know what to do about it. Every
friend she had had an opinion and freely gave it to
Leslie.
One day Rebecca had overheard some women giving Leslie
advice about this young woman who worked so closely with
Alan, and later, Rebecca had said, "Mother, you ought to
tell them to go to hell."
"Rebecca!" Leslie had said sternly, "I don't like that
kind of language."
"It's possible that your husband is having an affair with
his over endowed secretary and you're worried about bad
language?"
Leslie could only stand there and blink at her daughter.
Who was the adult? How did her daughter know -- ?
"It's all over the church and at the club," Rebecca said,
sounding as though she were thirty-five instead of just
fifteen. "Look, Mom, men stray. They get itchy pants. It's
normal. What you ought to do is tie a knot in his -- "
Leslie gasped.
"All right, go ahead and live in the nineteenth century.
But that Bambi is a bitch and she's after Dad and I think
you should fight!"
At that Rebecca had left the room, and all Leslie could do
was stare after her. Leslie hadn't the least idea of how
to deal with a child who had just said what her daughter
had, so Leslie pretended that it hadn't been said.
In fact, that's what Leslie seemed to be doing a lot of
lately: pretending that nothing was wrong, that nothing
bad had happened. She couldn't go so far as to, say, call
Alan's office and tell his assistant to remind him of so
and so party. No, instead, Leslie just worked around the
whole idea of Bambi by pretending that the young woman
didn't exist. And when the women at church or the club
tried to warn her, Leslie perfected a little smile that
let them know that she was above such low suspicions.
But now, looking at Alan as he bent over the newspaper,
she wondered if he wasn't eating her pancakes for fear
that he'd put on weight and Bambi wouldn't like that.
"So, Mom!" Rebecca said as she came into the room, "what
are you old ladies going to get up to this weekend? Think
you'll have an orgy with lots of bronzed young men?"
Part of Leslie wanted to reprimand her smart-mouthed
daughter, but another part, the woman part that was
separate from being someone's mother, wanted to joke with
her daughter. "Ellie is bringing Mel Gibson and Harrison
Ford," Leslie said as she glanced at her husband.
But Alan didn't seem to hear. Instead, he looked at his
watch. Even though it was only seven A.M., he said, "Gotta
go."
"Are you sure you wouldn't like a pancake or two?" Leslie
asked, knowing that she sounded whiny. What she wanted to
say was, "You can damned well spend an hour with your
family before rushing off to your bimbo."
But Leslie didn't say that. Instead, she tried to smile
invitingly.
"Sounds good, but I'm meeting some clients this afternoon
and we have lots of paperwork to go over before the big
meeting."
Even though the name was hardly ever said, all of them
knew that "we" was Alan and Bambi.
Alan walked over to Leslie and gave her a kiss on the
cheek. "I hope you have a good time," he said. "And, about
your birthday..." He gave her a little-boy look that years
ago she'd found irresistible.
"I know," she said with a forced smile. "You'll get me
something later. It's all right. My birthday isn't for
three days anyway."
"Thanks, hon," he said, kissing her cheek again. "You're a
brick." Grabbing his jacket off the back of a chair, he
left the house.
"'You're a brick,'" Rebecca mimicked as she ate a spoonful
of some cereal that looked like extruded sawdust. "You're
a chump."
"I won't have you talk about your father like that,"
Leslie said, glaring down at her daughter. "Or me."
"Nice!" Rebecca said, coming out of her chair. She was as
tall as her mother, so they were eye to eye across the
breakfast table. "All you care about is nice! Nice words,
nice manners, nice thoughts. But the world isn't nice, and
what Dad is doing with that leech isn't nice."
Suddenly, there were tears in Rebecca's eyes. "Don't you
know what's going to happen? That woman is going to break
us up. She wants what we have, not the family, but the
money. She wants the silver tea set and the...and the
fifty-thousand-dollar kitchen that you hate but were too
cowardly to tell Dad that you didn't want. We're going to
lose everything because you're so damned nice." With that,
Rebecca ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
And in the next moment, a car horn blew outside and Leslie
knew that the shuttle bus that would take her to the
airport was there. For a moment, she hesitated. She should
go to her daughter. Her daughter was upset and needed her,
and a mother always gave, didn't she? A good mother was
always there for her children, wasn't she? A good mother --
And a good wife, Leslie thought. That's what she was: a
mother and a wife.
Suddenly, Leslie didn't want to be anyone's wife or
anyone's mother. She wanted to get on a plane and go see
two women she hadn't seen since she was very young, since
before she was anyone's wife or mother.
Leslie practically ran out of the kitchen, grabbed her
handbag off the hall table and her two suitcases from the
floor, then opened the front door. She yelled, "Good-bye.
See you on Tuesday," up the stairs to her two children,
but she didn't wait for an answer. A minute later and she
was in the van, the driver was pulling away, and it was
then that Leslie realized that she hadn't brushed her
teeth. She doubted if she'd missed an after-meal brushing
of her teeth since she was three years old, and she almost
told the driver to stop and go back.
But then Leslie leaned back against the seat and smiled.
Not brushing her teeth seemed to be a sign that she was
about to start on an adventure. In front of her were three
whole days that were hers and no one else's. Freedom. She
hadn't been on a trip by herself since she'd gone to New
York nineteen years ago. What was it going to be like to
not have people asking, "Where's my tie?" "Where's my
other shoe?" "Hon, could you call down and order me
something to eat?" "Mom! What do you mean that you didn't
bring my red shorts? How can I have any fun without those
shorts."
For a moment Leslie closed her eyes and thought of three
days of freedom; then a laugh escaped her. Startled, she
opened her eyes to see the driver looking at her in the
mirror, and he was smiling.
"Glad to get away?" he asked. They were the only people in
the van.
"You can't imagine," Leslie said with feeling.
"Whoever takes care of you better not leave you alone too
long," the man said, still looking at her, his eyes
flirting.
Leslie knew that she should give him her best "Mrs. Church-
Lady look," as Rebecca called it, after the comedian on
TV. But right now Leslie didn't feel like giving that
look. The driver was a good-looking young man and he'd
just paid her a compliment. She smiled at him, then leaned
her head back against the seat and closed her eyes,
feeling the best she'd felt in a long, long time.