Last Summer Read Free

through certain parts of York County or the town of Ogunquit and you would find massive mansions overlooking the ocean and estates that went on for miles. But Jane loved her house on Pond View Road and enjoyed making it a home. Some women might balk at the term “homemaker,” seeing it as old-fashioned and somehow demeaning. But Jane thought otherwise.
    And her husband took pride in their home, too, and in the life they had made together. Mike was an accountant with his own small firm. He rented an office on the first floor of a large house on Riverton Road; a family practitioner worked from an office across the hall. On slow days Mike was able to come home for lunch, and when the roads were impassable due to severe weather, which happened several times each winter, he worked from his office in the basement. During tax season, when he regularly worked late into the night, the basement office became something of a bedroom as well. An acquaintance back in Boston had called Mike a workaholic. Jane thought he was just a very conscientious man.
    Counter cleaned, lunch dishes long ago put away, laundry folded ... What next? What could she do to distract herself from the nagging sense of failure that loomed over her like a thundercloud?
    Jane went over to the fridge and straightened one of the photographs attached to the door by a magnet. Over the years the fridge had become the family portrait gallery. Jane ran her eye over the current display. Rosie’s latest school picture, taken last September; a picture of the three of them at a Sea Dogs game up in Portland; Rosie at the age of four on Santa’s lap. That was one of Mike’s favorites. And then there was a photo that had been taken just about a year ago. It was—or at least it had been—one of Jane’s favorites. The three of them had gone to Kennebunkport one afternoon to visit the galleries and shops. Totally by chance she and Rosie had come down to breakfast that morning wearing almost identical outfits: pink blouses, tan chinos, and white sneakers. The only thing that set them apart was Jane’s wedding band and earrings and her shorter hair. In the picture, they were sitting side by side at a restaurant where they had stopped for a late lunch. Mike had called them his “beautiful twin girls.” Now the smiling faces of their former, innocent selves mocked Jane.
    She turned away from the photograph. Since Rosie was a toddler, people (Jane’s mother Rosemary, for one, for whom Rosie was named) had been describing Rosie as her mother’s Mini-Me. In Jane’s opinion, her daughter was much prettier than she had ever been. Of course, she was prejudiced in Rosie’s favor, but she really believed her daughter had a quality she had never had, what Jane liked to call a “specialness.”
    Rosemary Alice, her special little girl. Rosie was in the living room now, at the piano. Jane had coaxed her to practice. She had hoped that playing would bring her daughter some pleasure. But from the lackluster sounds reaching Jane’s ear, it was clear that her heart was not at all into the music. In fact, Jane had noticed that for the past several months Rosie’s interest in the piano had been waning. How much that had to do with what had happened to her daughter at the hands of those bullying girls, Jane didn’t know.
    A car horn sounded from the street out front and Jane flinched. I should go back to work, she thought, at least for an hour. She had accomplished her goals for the day but there was always something else that could be done, even if it was just re-ordering her collection of antique buttons or reviewing her schedule for the coming weeks.
    And it would be a busy few weeks, what with it being wedding season. Jane had started her small tailoring business when Rosie was about four and finally in preschool. (The preschool had been at Mike’s insistence. He was afraid Rosie wasn’t learning to socialize with other kids her own age. Except for Meg, of course.) Her sewing room