Secrets in Summer

“No one can see you, babe. Here, I’ll put my shirt under you so your back won’t itch. I’ll take off my shirt, you take off yours. Nice trade, don’t you think?”


They stopped talking. Darcy heard moaning. She was hot with embarrassment and angry and frustrated. Willow was fourteen! She wanted to stand on top of the picnic table and yell at Logan to leave the girl alone. If Logan got Willow to have sex, wouldn’t that be considered statutory rape?

Anxiety gripped Darcy. Her mind worked overtime. She had to believe that Autumn and Boyz had discussed sex with their daughter. Still, should Darcy phone the Szwedas’ house and tell them what was going on in their backyard? Would she be helping or interfering? Was she overreacting because Willow was Boyz’s stepdaughter? No, she knew she would worry about anyone’s adolescent girl.

“Logan, no! Stop! Something’s jabbing my back.”

“Here, baby, let me—”

“No. Not here. Not with my parents nearby.”

More rustling noises. Their voices had changed. They sounded as if they were standing up.

“Let’s go to my truck,” Logan urged. “You can’t leave me like this. You make me want you too much.”

More kissing sounds, and then Willow said, “I’ve got to go in, Logan.”

Darcy heard two doors slam—Willow going into the house, Logan getting into his truck. She relaxed and went into her own house. It took her a long time to fall asleep.





8


Monday morning, Darcy stocked up for the week ahead. At this time of year, her meals were mostly salads or slow cooker, though she tried to get fresh fish from Sayle’s two or three times a week. She also needed the normal household items—toilet paper, laundry soap, milk, and of course kitty litter and canned food for Muffler.

Last year Stop & Shop had renovated their building, making it larger and more confusing. She found herself retracing her steps, trying to find olives, lemons, and a block of Parmesan cheese.

She was in the meat section—rump roast was on sale, and if she made a stew in her slow cooker, she’d have dinner prepared for most of the week—when she felt a presence, and heard Boyz say “Darcy?”

She turned to face him. “Boyz.”

Her first reaction was that he had never changed, this man she had loved and married and divorced. He was still drop-dead handsome—tall, lean, with platinum hair. After a moment of gazing at him, as he was at her, she noticed changes. His hair was shorter than when she was married to him, sheared into some sort of edgy, bristly brush cut, and he was much thinner. He was pushing a grocery cart, so he looked casual and domestic, but he wore a peach polo shirt with the collar turned up and madras shorts—madras shorts, what a peacock he was.

He was bowlegged. Why had she never noticed that before? His legs were thin, like a crane’s; his knees were knobby. In shorts, this usually elegant man looked ridiculous.

She had known that sometime this summer they were bound to meet, and she regretted that it was now, when she was wearing sandals and a not-too-racy high-necked sleeveless sundress. She never knew when she’d run into one of the library’s benefactors and she always wanted to make an appropriate impression. That did not mean, however, a sexy impression, and for a moment, she was sorry about that. She would have liked Boyz to be stabbed with desire and regret.

Maybe he was. “You look great,” Boyz said, after doing a rapid up and down eye scan of her body. “But what are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Darcy told him. “My grandmother died and left me her house.”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I’m the assistant children’s librarian at the Atheneum.”

“Well, hey, you always wanted to work in a library. I’m glad for you.”

They stared at each other in silence then, simply looking, caught in a bubble of time. Darcy assumed Boyz was assessing her as she was assessing him. Wondering if that person was truly the person she’d embraced and cried and laughed and argued with.

Boyz seemed like a stranger. Felt like a stranger to Darcy. They had married too quickly, swept along by a tide of infatuation with themselves, with being young, passionate, impetuous. Their divorce had been oddly tranquil. Darcy had signed a prenup, and she hadn’t wanted anything material. She had wished she could have kept Lena’s friendship, but the moment Boyz told his family about their plans to divorce, the Szwedas, even Lena, had dropped her as if she’d never mattered to them at all.

Behind Darcy, a woman snapped impatiently, “Excuse me, but I need to get to the sirloin.”

“Oh, sorry.” Darcy moved her cart so that it was next to Boyz’s. He might feel like a stranger to her, and he had been an unfaithful shit, but she knew she should tell him where she lived and what she could hear. “Actually, Boyz, it’s very strange, but my grandmother’s house is on Pine Street. Right behind the house you’re in for the summer.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Not kidding,” Darcy said. “I’ve lived here for three years.”

“Really.” Boyz broke into his great sparkling smile. “I wish I had known that. We’re considering opening a branch of our office here, so I rented a house for two months. I want to check the place out, see if it’s a good fit. You always talked about your grandmother’s house. Maybe I can come over for a drink sometime. You can, um, give me the scoop on the housing market.”

Darcy couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. “Same old Boyz. Sorry, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t know much about real estate here, except that it’s expensive. But, Boyz, I want to tell you about something totally off the subject of real estate.”

“Oh, yeah?” Boyz leaned in closer to Darcy, fixing his blue gaze on her face.

Darcy took a step back. “I often sit on my patio next to the hedge between my yard and yours, and I can overhear what goes on in your yard.”

Boyz shrugged. “So?”

An older gentleman coughed. “You gonna be there all day? You’re blocking the aisle.”

“Sorry.” Once again, Darcy moved her cart. “Boyz, over in that corner, there’s a kind of small café. Let’s go there and talk a moment, okay?”

Boyz grinned. “I’ll go ‘talk’ with you anywhere.”

“Oh, get over yourself,” Darcy chided. “It’s not about you and me. It concerns Willow.”

Without waiting to see if he would follow, Darcy aimed her cart down a long aisle toward the café. Once there, she turned.

Boyz shoved his cart to one side and approached Darcy, his face wary.

“What about Willow?”

“Boyz, I think you should know what I heard through the hedge this week. Willow has a boyfriend, a boy named Logan Smith, an island boy. He’s eighteen years old and a troublemaker. He’s handsome and he’s charismatic, and I overheard him trying to get Willow to have sex with him the other night. In your backyard.”

Boyz frowned. He pulled out a chair at one of the small white café tables. “Sit down with me a moment, Darcy.”

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