Free Return Trips by Alice Adams

he brings out “I’m really sorry I said that, about Hattie and Hugh.”
    Sarah gives him an opaque, level look, and her voice is judicious as she says, “Well, I’m sure you were right.”
    One of the qualities that Jonathan has always found exciting in Sarah is her ability to surprise him; she rarely behaves in ways that he would have predicted. Nevertheless, having worried intermittently during the day over her sadness, her low spirits and his own recent part in further lowering them, he is delighted (ah, his old astonishing Sarah) to find her all brushed and bright-eyed, happy, when he comes in the door that night.
    “Well, I decided that all this moping around like an abandoned person was really silly,” she tells him, over cold before-dinner glasses of wine, in the bright hot flower-scented dusk. “And so I just called Hattie, not being accusatory or anything. I just said that I’d really missed seeing her—them.”
    “Well,
great
.” Jonathan is thinking how he admires her; she is fundamentally honest, and brave. And so pretty tonight, her delicately pointed face, her lively brown hair.
    “Hattie couldn’t have been nicer. She said they’d missed us, of course, but they just got so caught up in this wedding business. It’s next Saturday—I’d lost track. They truly haven’t had one minute, she told me, and I can believe her. Anyway, they’re coming for supper on Sunday night. She said a post-wedding collapse would be just the best thing they could possibly think of.”
    “Well, great,” Jonathan repeats, although some dim, indefinable misgiving has edged into his mind. How can one evening of friends at dinner be as terrific as this one will have to be? That question, after moments, emerges, and with it a darker, more sinister one: suppose it isn’t terrific at all, as the last one was not?
    By mid-August, in Hilton, it has been hot for so long that almost all the flowers have wilted, despite an occasionalthundershower. Many people are away at that time, and in neglected gardens overblown roses shed fat satin petals onto drying, yellowing grass; in forgotten orchards sweet un-picked fruit falls and spatters, fermenting, slowly rotting, among tall summer weeds, in the simmering heat.
    The Saturday of the McElroy son’s wedding, however, is surprisingly cool, with an almost New England briskness in the air. That familiar-feeling air gives Jonathan an irrational flutter of hope: maybe the next night, Sunday, will be a reasonable evening. With the sort of substantive conversation that he and Sarah are used to, instead of some nutty Southern doubletalk. With this hope, the thought comes to Jonathan that Hattie imitating Popsie Hooker is really Hattie speaking her own true language. Dare he voice this to Sarah, this interesting perception about the nature of mimicry? Probably not.
    Sarah spends a lot of Saturday cooking, so that it can all be served cold on Sunday night; she makes several pretty vegetable aspics, and a cold marinated beef salad. Frozen lemon soufflé. By Saturday night she is tired, but she and Jonathan have a pleasant, quiet dinner together. He has helped her on and off during the day, cutting up various things, and it is he who makes their dinner: his one specialty, grilled chicken.
    Their mood is more peaceful, more affectionate with each other than it has been for months, Jonathan observes (since before they came down here? quite possibly).
    Outside, in the gathering, lowering dusk, the just perceptibly earlier twilight, fireflies glimmer dimly from the pinewoods. The breeze is just barely cooler than most of their evening breezes, reminding Jonathan of the approach of fall—in his view, always a season of hope, of bright leaves on college campuses, and new courses offered.
    • • •
    Having worked so much the day before, Sarah and Jonathan have a richly indolent morning; they laze about. Around noon the phone rings, and Sarah goes to answer it. Jonathan, nearby, hears her say,