Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

His hand wandered down the back of her. “Did Davy tell you about his dream?”

She nodded, her face buried in his shoulder. She’d nearly forgotten the smell of him. No one smelled like him.

“We were in the tent and he woke up screaming. He said that you were telling him to get up, to get out of the house. Even after he woke up, he kept saying that Mommy was lost. He hasn’t been the same until now when he saw you here with us.”

He pulled back to look at her. “Did something happen up there in Maine?”

“Yes and no,” she said. “Nothing bad. I heard the life stories of some other women, and I realized that I like my life as it is.”

“I hope so,” he said. “I’d hate to change it just because of something that happened at some summerhouse in Maine. Why are you laughing?”

“Because I’m glad to be home. Now let me go so I can get those boys in the tub. I’m going to have to use lye soap on them.”

“Lye soap?” he said. “Where did that come from?”

“It’s great against fleas and bedbugs,” she said as she grabbed one boy and ran after the other one.

Amy was searching for Stephen. It had taken over two hours to get the family fed (Chinese takeout) and the boys scrubbed, then she’d had to wrestle them into pajamas. It took forty-five minutes of reading to get them settled. But after they’d at last fallen asleep, she’d spent thirty minutes just snuggling with them, holding their sleeping bodies. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed them.

When she went downstairs, Stephen was nowhere to be found.

“Stephen?” she called.

“In here.”

She heard his voice but didn’t know where it was coming from. It seemed to be coming from outside the dining room, but she didn’t think he’d gone out.

It wasn’t until she called him again and heard his voice a second time that she saw a door in the dining room that wasn’t there before she went to Maine.

Tentatively, and a little bit concerned about what century waited behind the door, she opened it. She saw a large room, a study, that was done all in dark green and maroon. On the walls were photos she’d never seen before, of Stephen with people she didn’t know.

Her husband was standing behind a huge, carved desk that looked as though it would fit in the White House, and he was going through a pile of mail.

“Sorry, babe,” he said. “I promised myself I’d wait until tomorrow to do this, but it piled up while we were away.”

Amy walked across a thick-piled Oriental carpet and looked at what he was throwing away. Every envelope was addressed to Dr. Stephen Hanford.

She picked up an envelope, sat down on the leather chesterfield, and looked at it. “Stephen?” she said softly.

“Yeah?”

She looked about the room more carefully. There were plaques on the wall, the kind that are given as awards. “What do you do for a living?”

“That’s a funny question.”

“Humor me,” she said.

He looked up at her. “You know what I do as well as I do, since we married right after I finished my internship.”

“Internship?”

“Amy, what’s wrong with you? Okay,” he said, but shaking his head at her. “I’m a cardiologist and you know that as well as I do. You’ve been with me every step of the way.”

“A cardiologist,” she said. “What about your father’s trucking company?”

“Trucks? Amy, what were you girls smoking up there?” He put the mail down and went to sit beside her. “Okay, I’m game. What is it that you don’t remember? My father is retired, but he was once the best cardiologist in the state. And no, being a great doctor didn’t mellow him. He’s still a pain in the neck. However, whenever I run into a problem I can’t figure out, I still call Dad.”

“Your father is a doctor?”