That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

She brings worn copies of A Wrinkle in Time, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a collection of Stephen King short stories, and The Mists of Avalon, thinking that the familiar books will be a comfort, wondering if it will feel different to read them in a new place.

She hums to herself as she unpacks the groceries, smiling, looking younger, and happier, than she did when they left Boston that morning.

“I’m going to do something with my friends.” She hadn’t been rude, or dismissive, or sarcastic. In fact, she’d spoken so gently that Daisy suspected that Beatrice was worried about hurting her feelings. Which, of course, had injured her more than sarcasm would have.

She had half a dozen paperbacks with old Amtrak tickets as bookmarks, relics of the trips she’d made to the city with her husband and her daughter. That made her feel even worse, realizing that she was now one of those annoying women, prattling on about how much better things used to be.

Are you sure? You don’t think this is all really fast? You’re sure that you know him? Not love him, but know him. Marisol had asked her that, Daisy remembered, and she’d said, Yes, of course I know him, even as she’d thought, How much does anyone know anyone else? And how can anyone be sure about anything?

How long since she’d felt like she was with someone who could see her, and could see how hard she was trying?

Hannah had told her once, long ago, about how, for old married ladies like them, making a new friend was the closest they could get to falling in love.

Or had they been the kind of parents for whom anything less than perfection was a disappointment?

Diana wondered what she was thinking, if she was coming to the conclusion that adulthood was just one long process of settling for what you’d gotten, whether or not it was what you’d wanted.

Then Michael said, “What if he did it to other women? Did you ever think about that?” Diana buried her face in her hands, because, as Michael undoubtedly suspected, the answer was all the time. It was her biggest fear—that her rapist hadn’t stopped with her, that, to the contrary, she’d been the first, in a line, maybe a long one. She’d spent many of her recent sleepless nights wondering what her obligation was to that possibility, what she owed those girls and women.

Things are changing if there are people brave enough to come forward, to stand up and say enough is enough.

And if I sit here and do nothing, I’m just as bad, just as complicit, as he is.