Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

“So you married in a tiny wedding that was paid for by your mother, and afterward, what did Eddie’s mother do to you?” Zoë asked.

Faith put her head back and made a groan that came from inside her soul. “She made my life a living hell. While Eddie was sick—”

“When did he get sick?” Amy asked.

Faith looked down at her hands.

When she took so long to answer, Zoë looked at her. “He was always sick, wasn’t he?”

Faith didn’t look up, but nodded her head.

“Oh!” Amy said. “That’s why he never participated in sports with you and Ty. It’s why he always held back.” She paused for a moment. “But you didn’t know that when you married him, did you?”

“No,” Faith said. “His mother was the consummate snob and she couldn’t bear for anyone to know that she’d been able to produce only one child and he had a defective heart. She took him to doctors far away from our small town so that no one knew he had anything wrong with him. And she lectured Eddie daily about keeping his bad heart a secret.”

“She probably didn’t want him to marry a lusty redhead for fear that you’d kill him in bed,” Zoë said.

Faith smiled. “That may have had something to do with it, but I think her real objection was that, in her mind, I was of a lower class than her precious son was.”

“Was his illness why he didn’t go to bed with you before you were married?” Amy asked.

“Yes,” Faith answered, and there was a quick flash in her eyes. “I was pretty angry about that. Eddie knew that I’d been to bed with Ty and he assumed that Ty was a good lover, so Eddie didn’t want any comparisons with him. Eddie wanted me tied to him legally before I found out that he…”

“He what?” Zoë asked.

“Before I found out that he was…What is the kindest thing I can say? Premature in bed.”

“You were lied to and tricked into marriage,” Zoë said, “so why didn’t you divorce him?”

“I thought about it. Three times I tried to leave him. One time I even had an affair with another man, but in the end, I always went back to Eddie. He needed me so very much and I…” Her head came up. “The truth was that I loved him. I’d loved him since I was a child and we had a lot of history between us. On the days when Eddie felt good, we laughed and enjoyed ourselves. There was very little sex, true, but there were other things.”

When Zoë and Amy looked at each other, Faith continued, her voice urgent as she defended herself. “I know I’ve made my life seem horrible, but it wasn’t. At least the first years weren’t. You can put it down all you want, but Eddie was rich. The first five years of our marriage, we traveled. I mean traveled in the old-fashioned sense, not one of those things where you go to six countries in six days. Eddie and I went on ocean liners and stayed in first-class hotels. We stayed a month in Venice, six weeks in Paris.”

“It also got you out of town and away from his mother,” Zoë said.

“And, besides,” Amy said, “what was there for you at home? Your true love wasn’t there.”

“True love,” Faith said. “Is that what you think Ty was?”

“Yes,” Amy answered, but Faith said nothing.

“What happened about the road across Ty’s property?” Zoë asked.

Faith shrugged. “The road was built and the money for the land was paid to Ty’s mother. She also left town and I never heard from her again. I don’t know what happened to her, but the gossip was that she went to live with Ty.”

“What about the house he was going to remodel for you?” Amy asked.

“It was torn down. Eddie offered to buy it for me and move it anywhere I wanted, but I couldn’t bear to look at it, much less live in it.”

“So where did you and Eddie end up living?” Zoë asked, her eyes on her drawing pad.

When Faith didn’t answer, both women looked at her.

“Don’t tell me you lived with Eddie’s mother,” Amy said. “You couldn’t have done that. Tell me you didn’t.”

“We did. Eddie said it was just temporary until we got our own house, but once we were in there, he said that his mother was alone and that he’d be torn in half thinking about her in that big house by herself.” She shrugged. “By that time I was already so beaten down by the two of them that I didn’t make much of a protest.”

“What happened to her?” Amy asked.