Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

Part Three

Twenty-four

“Okay,” Amy said after she’d poured the wine. “I want to hear every word of it.” She’d spent the morning in the library and the afternoon making a dinner for the two returning women.

It had taken all she had to overcome what she feared could become a deep depression. She had saved Tristan, yes, but she’d also lost him. That emotion was understandable, but the one she didn’t like in herself was a feeling of disappointment in the fact that, as far as she could tell, nothing had changed in her life. But hadn’t she said that her life was perfect? So she should be glad that she’d not changed any of it.

She’d called home, talked to her father-in-law, and he was the same gruff man she’d always known. What had she expected? That if she kept his ancestor alive, Lewis Hanford would turn into a gentleman? It hadn’t happened.

Stephen and the boys were still camping, but they’d be back in time to meet Amy’s plane tomorrow. She was looking forward to seeing them again, although she knew she’d never tell Stephen or anyone else what had happened to her. Stephen would tell her she’d been reading too many romance novels, then he’d laugh at her.

As Amy had been cooking today, she realized that the only people she could talk to about what had happened were Zoë and Faith. It was ironic that these two women whom she’d feared for being strangers might be her friends for life.

Amy left the women at the table and went into the kitchen to get the bread she’d baked. No jealousy! she told herself. Whatever had happened to Zoë and Faith in their three weeks in the past—but just minutes in this time—had certainly changed them a great deal.

Amy remembered the Faith she’d first met, a stooped-over old woman who looked as though she expected people to be mean to her. The woman who was in the summerhouse now stood up straight and looked like she owned the earth. What in the world had happened to her?

As for Zoë, she looked great. She was wearing some New York–type outfit that could have come off a runway. Her eyes were alight and she laughed at everything.

Both women were wearing wedding bands.

Amy took a deep breath and went back into the dining room. “Tell me!” Amy said as she sliced the bread. “I want to hear it all.” The only thing they’d told her so far was that they had both wanted to remember everything in both lives, the new one as well as the old one.

“It all seems so long ago,” Zoë said, turning to Faith. “Doesn’t it?”

“A lifetime. Whereas we were only gone three weeks to the eighteenth century, and when we returned, our lives were the same, this time my life has been totally different,” Faith said. “What about you?”

“Completely different,” Zoë said.

They looked at Amy.

“The same,” she said. “Not one change that I can tell.”

Faith and Zoë looked at her in sympathy.

“What happened to Tristan?” Faith asked.

“He lived. Remember that I told you I had him go to London and hire a genealogist? Well, it seems that he did find relatives of mine, and he married a young woman who was an ancestor of mine and they had four children.

And guess what?”

“What?” Faith asked politely.

“His two sons became doctors, and his two daughters married doctors.”

“Goodness,” Faith said. “A whole family of them. That’s wonderful.”

“But the bad news is that the title was dissolved right after World War I, and the estate was sold. We didn’t save his family forever, but it lasted longer thanks to us.”

They were silent for a moment.

“This looks great,” Zoë said, staring at the food. “I’m starving.”

“So?” Amy said. “Are you two married? Kids?”

Faith and Zoë nodded, their heads bent down in silence.

Amy slammed the wooden cutting board down on the table. “That’s it! I’m not going to have you two feeling sorry for me. Do you remember what my husband looks like? And my kids? Just a day ago, that’s right, just one day ago in real time, you two were feeling sorry for yourselves because I had it all. Now here you are feeling sorry for me because you two have it all. You cannot have it both ways!”