Free Summer House by Nancy Thayer Page B

daughter gave birth to Christian, the Wheelwrights’ first grandchild. She remembered visiting Mandy in the hospital, and being given the infant to hold, and gazing down at that perfect baby boy with his pearly skin and pursed mouth. He is the future, she had thought with a surprising surge of optimism. Look at the generosity of the universe, giving us this perfection, this potential, this reason for joy and hope.
    Would she ever have grandchildren?
    Lying on the sloping daybed, Helen thought that if she had a grandchild she wouldn’t mind so much about Worth and his affair. She had shared an extravagance of love with Worth during their lives together. When she first met Worth, her heart had warmed, as if a well-fed cat had jumped up on a windowsill, turned around, and settled down, purring, in a square of sunlight. Worth had been a lovely lover. His present affair could not erase the memories of all those past embraces.
    And it did not make those memories false, did it? Worth was a splendid father, and he would be a doting, involved, attentive grandfather. If only Charlotte would fall in love! If only she would get married—never mind marriage, if only she would fall in love and have a child! Then, perhaps, Worth would lose interest in this other woman and, sharing the new adventure of grandparenting with Helen, return his attention to his family. To his wife.
    But perhaps not.
    And would she want him back on those terms, or was everything broken between them?

Six
    C harlotte saw the cars arriving: a Yukon with Mandy, her husband and children, and a desolate-looking Mee crammed in the backseat; a Volvo with Mellie and her husband, Douglas; and then Aunt Grace and Uncle Kellogg in a cab.
    Charlotte waved from her row of strawberries, feeling torn. She loved the drama of arrivals, everyone hugging and talking at once, and she didn’t want anyone to feel that she didn’t care that they were here, but she really did need to take advantage of every daylight minute on warm days. Also, she wanted to impress upon her relatives that she was out here working.
    She continued picking strawberries, delicately tugging the sweet crimson fruit off the plants and dropping them in a wicker basket lined with a blue-and-white-checked napkin. She’d found a trunk of these old hand linens in the storage room in the attic, and Nona gave them to her readily. Charlotte used them to line baskets when she took the lettuces and vegetables to the restaurants that bought herproduce, and everyone seemed to appreciate the attractive presentation. Even the lettuces seemed to frill a little more briskly, lying there against the crisp cotton cloth.
    A squawk from a car horn made her look up. Aunt Grace waved from Granddad’s beloved Chrysler convertible, which had slumbered in the garage patiently all winter, then tore off down the road toward town and the airport. Charlotte waved back, grinning. Aunt Grace loved to drive that car.
    She reached the last plant, chose the ripest berries, and then she was done. She stood up, put her hands on her back, and leaned far back, looking up at the sky, feeling the welcome stretch in her spine. It was after seven. Everyone would be more or less settled now, having cocktails, waiting for the others to arrive before sitting down to dinner.
    Carrying her basket, Charlotte walked between her long rows of plants and along the edge of the garden until she came to the far end gate. She went out, double-checked that the gate was fastened with its loop of wire, and continued walking down the dirt path to the main road and her little farm stand.
    Bill Cooper was there, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a Red Sox cap, holding a bunch of radishes in his hand. “Hey, Charlotte.”
    “Hi, Coop. What’s up?” Remembering the conversation she’d overheard earlier in the day, she felt herself flushing.
    “Do you have any more of that arugula?”
    Charlotte scanned the table. Only a bag of mesclun remained of all the lettuces