Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

Amy jumped up, got her little photo album from her handbag, and handed it to Zoë. “Can you draw from photos?”

“Sure,” Zoë said, then her eyes widened as she looked at the pictures. “Is this your family?”

Amy smiled.

“They make Hollywood families look ugly. I’m not sure I can capture such perfection on paper.”

“Zoë, I might be able to find some things to like about you after all.”

Zoë groaned. “Oh no! Don’t say that. My reputation will be ruined. And don’t tell Jeanne that. She’ll raise her prices and take the credit for making me into a better person.”

Amy settled down on the chintz sofa and looked at Faith. “I think you should tell us your story.”

“Really,” Faith said, “there isn’t a story. The love of my life was my husband. Now if you’d like to hear about him I’ll tell you, but—”

“I want to hear about the gorgeous hunk that got away,” Amy said. “What about you, Zoë?”

“I want to hear about your sex life with this man,” she said as she looked at Stephen’s photo.

“Hold your breath,” Amy said, making the women smile. “Faith?”

“Okay, where do I begin?” she said as she looked down at her wineglass. “Maybe I should start when I got home from college. Ty and I had been buddies all our lives, all through grade school.”

“That’s like Stephen and me,” Amy said. “Even when we were kids we knew that someday we’d get married.” She looked at Faith. “Sorry. Go on.”

“I bet you had family problems,” Zoë said, not looking up from her sketch pad.

“No, not really,” Amy began. “Oh, sorry again. Faith, did you have family problems?”

“Did we! I lived alone with my mother who did everything she could to give me the best life possible. She worked long hours at her job, which meant I was unsupervised a lot. I was supposed to stay at home and study, which I did most of the time. I made mostly As in school. I was always well dressed and I never got into trouble. Until high school, that is.”

“What about Tyler?” Amy asked.

“Redneck heaven,” Faith said. “I never knew how many kids were in his family, and Ty would never tell me. When we were little, I only saw his house once. It was set back in what I thought was a forest. I lived where the houses were close together and we had sidewalks, but Ty’s run-down old house was surrounded by trees, old cars, and dogs that were chained to steel stakes.”

“What did your mother think of you and Ty being friends?” Amy asked.

“About like you can imagine.” Faith gave a sigh. “My mother was a social climber. She used to tell me that she took a step down when she married my father. Then he did a low-class thing like die and leave us with no insurance money. She never forgave him.”

“What did she do to support you?” Zoë asked.

“Beauty treatments. She went to the house of any rich woman within fifty miles of our little town and did hair, nails, faces. She plucked eyebrows, gave permanents, did body wraps. I think that half of our problems were caused by my mother spending all her time surrounded by luxury. She’d go to the house of some woman who had a maid to open the door, a cook to make lunch, and my mother felt that that was where she belonged. I don’t think there was a day when she didn’t tell me that her big mistake was in marrying for love.”

“Ah,” Zoë said.

“What does that mean?” Faith asked.

“That’s why you married the richest man in town.”

“I married for love,” Faith said stiffly. “My husband, Eddie, was the love of my life. The trauma I experienced came from losing him. He was my world.”

Amy gave Zoë a hard look, but she didn’t look up to see it. “Let’s keep this light, shall we?”

“In that case, we should hear your story,” Zoë said to Amy. “From what I can see, you’ve never had so much as a hangnail in your life. Married to Mr. Beautiful, two gorgeous kids. I bet you live in a brand-new house with granite countertops in the kitchen. And one of those six-burner stoves. I bet every bedroom has its own bathroom.”

Amy didn’t answer because Zoë was a hundred percent right. “And I’ll wager that you didn’t do just one horrible thing to the people in your hometown but hundreds. I bet they just used your accident as a time to break away from you forever.”

Zoë laughed. “You’re probably right.”