Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

“And I wouldn’t want to,” Zoë said.

Amy looked at her in astonishment. “You wouldn’t want to go back to three weeks before your accident and stop it from happening?”

“No,” Zoë said. “That accident was the best thing that ever happened to me. I found out who really loved me and I started drawing. The doctors said they thought parts of my brain were hit in a way that made me forget some things while others were enhanced. I’d rather draw than deal with a lot of people who never really cared about me in the first place.”

Amy didn’t know how to deal with logic like that.

“Besides,” Faith said, “we don’t have the cards so we’re not invited. Why don’t you go by yourself?”

“I got the idea that if the three of us don’t go together, nothing can be done. It’s all of us together or no one gets to change her destiny.” This was the lie she’d come up with on her walk back from Primrose’s house. If she could go back in time—which was, of course, impossible—and she could take Zoë, then why not Faith too?

But nothing Amy said changed their minds. They had no interest in going to a “charlatan” as they called the woman Amy had met. They didn’t want to talk to her and certainly didn’t want to pay money for her ridiculous claims.

After dinner Faith and Zoë practically ran into the living room, leaving Amy to do the cleaning up.

“If this keeps up, we’ll achieve nothing,” Amy muttered as she filled the dishwasher. She had a feeling that by tomorrow the other women would start talking about going home. And Amy knew that if her family were at home and waiting for her and not on a camping trip, she’d want to go home too.

But she also knew that she was the only one who’d had dreams so real that they haunted her even when she was awake. She was the one who sat in sunshine when it was raining. She was the one who’d talked to a little old lady and come away feeling that changing a destiny that had gone in the wrong direction was a perfectly feasible idea. And most of all, she was the one who had a place and time so fully in her head that she sometimes got confused as to where she was. But no matter what she said, she couldn’t get Faith or Zoë to agree with her.

On the other hand, everything had been shown to Amy, not to Faith or Zoë. So how could she expect them to want to participate?

When she finished in the kitchen, Amy went into the living room, but Faith didn’t look up from the TV show she was watching, and Zoë’s eyes never left her sketch pad. Amy could see that Zoë was drawing Faith. She wasn’t making sketches of the man on the horse.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” Amy said. The others didn’t look up as they said good night.

She went to her bedroom, took a

long shower, then got into her nightgown and slipped under the covers. It was still early, but she was tired from what she’d been through that day. It took a lot out of a person to be beaten up during the night, then to wrestle with destiny questions during the day. The worst had been trying to talk to Faith and Zoë.

Friends, she thought as she turned out the light. She’d really begun to think that Faith and Zoë were her friends, but they had looked at her just like Amy thought a person off the street would look at her at the mention of time travel and destinies—as though she were demented.

As she fell into sleep, Amy thought that maybe she was losing, if not her mind, certainly her touch with reality. She had everything a person could want in life, so why was she considering fooling around with it? Why was she trying to change things? Not that she could change anything, but…

She drifted off to sleep.

The dream came almost instantly. The man was dead and everyone was crying. Amy, wearing a long dress of blue and white print, was too stunned to know what she was doing. She had a set of keys in her hand but she didn’t know what they opened. There seemed to be people asking her what they were to do, but she couldn’t focus enough to understand them. He was dead. Killed during the night with a big knife stabbed through his heart.

She could hear crying all through the house. A woman was crying loudly, and as she went up the wooden staircase, she heard a man sobbing. She opened a door and looked inside to see a gray-haired man in bed. He was thin, as though he were wasting away from some disease, and his face was red with his weeping. “Go! Leave me!” he ordered.

She saw two young women who looked to be maids and their eyes were red. Behind them a door was open and Amy went to it. She felt unreal, as though she were in her body but not in it.

Inside the room were three men, all dressed formally in black coats, white shirts, and tight black trousers. Two of them wore wigs. They were talking quietly among themselves while taking frequent glances at the man on the bed.

Amy went to him. He looked like he was sleeping, his face calm, peaceful, as handsome as always. He was wearing his clothes and looked as though he’d lain down for a nap. If it weren’t for the dark stain where his heart was, she wouldn’t have known he was dead.

“Who did this?” she asked the men.

“We do not know,” one man said. “He was found that way this morning. By the coldness of his body, it must have happened yesterday. Did you see anyone?”

Amy could only shake her head. The truth was that she didn’t remember anything that had happened since she climbed on the cart. How long had it been? By the way she was dressed and by the keys at her waist, she’d been given the job of housekeeper. For all she knew, it could have been years ago that she got on the cart.

Reaching out her hand, she smoothed his hair back from his brow, then kissed his cold cheek. The men were watching her, but she didn’t care. Her tears began and they dropped onto his face. She’d never again see him laugh. Never again argue with him. She’d never tell him that he was wrong and had no idea what he was talking about.

As she looked down at him, she realized that memories were coming back to her. She had never been subservient to him. She’d always stood up to him and told him what she thought. Many times he’d told her that he understood why her father had sold her. “And I paid too much!” he’d shouted at her.

But through all the arguing, through the constant clash of wills, he’d elevated her to a high status—and he hadn’t sent her away.

As she stood there a pretty young woman came into the room. From her dress she was of the same class as the man. It took her a moment, but then Amy remembered that the young woman was his sister, and that the man had loved her very much.