Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

Just as they had dreaded, one moment they were in the eighteenth century and the next they were in Madame Zoya’s sunroom. Instantly, Zoë started crying.

“I was afraid of that,” the woman said. “It often happens when people want to go far back in time.”

“I’ll never see him again,” Zoë said. “He’s dead. Dead hundreds of years ago.”

Madame Zoya looked at Faith and Amy. “Was it a success for you two?”

Faith’s hands went to her hair and her face lit up. “Oh yes!” she said. “A great, overwhelming success. Nothing in my life has happened to equal what I learned and saw in these last weeks.”

“You didn’t have to leave anyone behind,” Zoë said. She pulled two tissues out of the box on Madame Zoya’s desk and blew her nose.

“Have you two decided when you want to go back to?”

“I have a question,” Faith said. “When we went back in time we arrived there wearing clothes of that time. I want to know if we can go back in our own time and keep these clothes on.”

“What does that matter?” Zoë asked, tears on her cheeks.

“Pockets,” Amy said dully. “She wants to return with her pockets full.” She wasn’t crying, but the thought of never again seeing Tristan and Beth and the whole estate was weighing her down.

“You want to take money back with you?” Madame Zoya asked, her tone letting them know what she thought about that. “I don’t think that—”

“I want to take seeds,” Faith said as she ran her fingers through her hair and pulled out long, thin tubes of cloth. Her precious seeds were inside. “I want to take some very special seeds back with me.”

“Ah,” Madame Zoya said. “Seeds. And how special are these seeds?”

“They are from a plant that is extinct today.”

“It’s a plant that’s in the Bible,” Amy said, pulling tubes from her hair. Faith had intertwined them in her and Zoë’s hair on their twenty-first day in the eighteenth century.

“Interesting,” Madame Zoya said. “Would you two like to go back now or would you like twenty-four hours to recover?” She glanced at Zoë who was still crying.

“I’d like some time to think,” Faith said as she put her hand over Zoë’s.

“All right,” Madame Zoya said. “I will see you two tomorrow at two o’clock.”

They left Madame Zoya’s house, went outside and walked to the main street. For several long minutes they stood there looking about them at the paved road, at the cars whizzing by, at the women wearing trousers and makeup, and the buildings with their big glass windows.

“It’s another world,” Faith said. “I—” She didn’t know how to tell the others that she wanted to be alone. She needed some time to think about where she’d been and what she’d done. And she wanted to think about where she was going tomorrow. Did she really want to do her life over? She had some decisions to make, and she wanted to make them without hearing the opinions of others.

“I’ll see you two back at the house at about seven,” Amy said, then she turned down the street, away from them.

“She wants to see what the books say her lover boy did after she left,” Zoë said, as she blew her nose.

“And wouldn’t you like to know what Russell did?” Faith asked. “Maybe you can’t have him in the flesh, but you can read about him.”

Zoë looked at her suspiciously. “What I want to know is where you disappeared to for those last two days.”

“Zoë, darling, I’ve heard that every generation thinks it created sex, but it’s not true. Now dry your eyes, dear, and go find out about your boyfriend.”

With that, Faith turned and went down the street in the opposite direction of Amy.

Faith didn’t get back to Jeanne’s summerhouse until nearly nine. She’d spent a lot of time walking and thinking about what her life had been and what she’d been through in the last three weeks. She kept thinking about what Amy had told them that Primrose had said abou

t destiny. If destiny was like a train and it could be derailed, then Faith’s train had been pushed into the mud a long time ago.

She tried to boil it down, but it seemed that what she’d learned in the eighteenth century was how important it was to be useful. In a mere three weeks she’d become a person who was needed by others and it had fulfilled some need in her that she hadn’t even known was empty.

Zoë had teased Faith about having come out of her depression because she found out that Ty hadn’t jilted her, but Faith knew there was more to it than that. All her adult life she’d felt that she’d had a choice between two men and that she’d chosen the wrong one.