Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

“I think snooping Jeanne might disagree with you,” Zoë said in a sneering tone.

“If you don’t like her, why do you go to her?” Amy asked.

“Court ordered.” When the others said nothing, Zoë ran her hand through her hair. “Half of this isn’t mine. It’s extensions. I was in a car wreck and the top of my head was sliced open. The doctors sewed me back together but…” She shrugged. “Something happened inside my head. I can’t remember part of my life.”

“At least you kept your talent.”

“I don’t think I had it before the accident.”

“You don’t think? What did your family tell you?” Amy asked.

“My parents are dead. I only have a sister and she hates me.”

Faith gave a little grunt. “From my observation, I think all sisters hate each other. Pure jealousy. I think that if one sister is homeless and the other lives in a McMansion on Long Island, if the homeless one has curly hair, the other sister will be jealous and hate her.”

Both Amy and Zoë were looking at her in astonishment.

“Just my personal opinion,” Faith said, putting her drink up to cover her mouth.

“When I first saw you,” Zoë said, “I thought you were the most boring person I’d ever met, but I’m beginning to change my mind.”

“Is there a compliment in there?” Faith asked.

“If there was one, I didn’t hear it,” Amy said, but she was smiling.

“I suggest that we spread dinner out here on the table,” Zoë said, “and that Faith entertain us with her life story. I want to hear the part where you were born on the wrong side of the tracks.”

Amy looked at Faith with interest. “Is that true?”

“More or less, but I married the son of the richest man in town.”

“Is that why you wear a twenty-thousand-dollar watch?” Zoë asked.

Faith put her hand over the watch, then made herself remove it. “Eddie bought this for me five years ago. I told him not to and I wanted to take it back to the store but he’d had it engraved so I couldn’t.”

“Why are you frowning?” Zoë asked. “Not good memories?”

“From Eddie yes, but his mother threw a fit about the watch. You see, no matter that I went to college and got a degree, no matter that I dedicated fifteen years of my life to caring for her son, to Ruth Wellman I was never anything but poor white trash. The lowest of the low. Scum.”

“So tell us,” Amy said. “We have nothing else to do except listen.”

“There isn’t anything to tell. I grew up in a small town, fell in love with the son of the richest family in town, and we got married.”

“Big wedding?” Zoë asked.

“Tiny, but nice.”

“Was that because of the mothers?” Amy asked quietly.

“Yes and no. Actually, mostly yes. Mrs. Wellman, who was, is, an extremely rich widow, insisted that the bride’s family pay for the wedding. My mother was also a widow but her husband, my father, died in debt. My mother worked sixty hours a week just to feed, shelter, and clothe us.”

“Yet your mother-in-law made her pay for the wedding,” Amy said.

“And I assume this was to keep you from marrying her son,” Zoë said.

Faith nodded.

Amy got up and went into the kitchen to get the carryout food she and Faith had bought that afternoon. She hadn’t planned to spend any time with these other women who had been labeled as “trauma victims,” but the day spent with Faith had been fun. Faith said she had no people to buy gifts for and that had made Amy give a shiver of horror, but then Faith had asked so many questions about Amy’s family that the tension disappeared.