The Summer Place

by Jennifer Weiner

You think you know someone, then you’re locked in a house together for over a year, and it turns out, you never knew him at all.

Staying married, she’d decided, was a choice; one that had less to do with love and more with forbearance.

The pandemic had stolen those precious days and hours. Even when everyone was tucked away in their bedrooms, Sarah could feel them, as if their presence had a physical weight, or a sound. It was the constancy of it, the unending-ness. She felt crowded and edgy and half-crazy; every time she turned around there was someone standing too close to her, speaking too loudly, needing something.

They were all trying to do too much, for too many people, in too little space, trying to manage their jobs and their kids’ schooling, the meals and the housework and their working-from-home partners or spouses while they clung to sanity with their fingernails.

Karma might not always be fast, but that bitch is always on time. And now she’d sprung her trap.

A little selfishness could be healthy. It could even save your life. That, she thought, was a message more girls and women could stand to hear, a thing that few were ever taught.

Maybe you couldn’t get the life you wanted, but you could have a life you wanted.