Summer Breeze Read Free

saying I won’t do it.” Morgan adjusted a dove pillow on their smoke sofa. “I’m just saying I’m not sure I can do it. It’s not my field. Not my passion. Not even my interest. Plus, Petey is pretty much a full-time job.”
    “You could put him in day care.”
    “Josh, no. We talked about this. We agreed.” Morgan snorted with contempt. “How ridiculous would that be, to put a baby in day care so I can spend time making a statement with the house!”
    “You don’t seem to take my job seriously,” Josh muttered.
    “What? How did we get to—” They were back on muddy ground, the swampland of their marriage. She didn’t want an argument this evening. They were going to a cookout. They were going to meet people. Calming down, she said pacifically, “I know you’re working hard, Josh. I appreciate it. I do.”
    She put her arms around Josh, her husband, her beloved. With his thick, naturally frenzied red hair, sparkling green eyes, and freckled skin, it was difficult for him to appear as brilliant as she knew he was. Thirty-five, yet he looked like a kid. A good-natured, athletic, dreamy boy who fantasized about playing for the Red Sox. “Maybe we’ll make some contacts at the cookout,” she told him.
    Josh kissed the top of her head and swept his son up into his arms. “Come on, champ, we’re going to a party.”
    Outside, they chose the smaller, easier stroller and strapped Petey in. They went down the driveway, past Morgan’s SUV and Josh’s black Cadillac Escalade, which looked, Morgan thought, like something the CIA would use.
    Be good , Morgan warned herself. Look around! It was June, perhaps her favorite month, warm and fresh and full of the promise of summer.
    Bella and Aaron strolled along the lake road until they came to the Hortons’ house. Ben was parked in front, unloading the Jeep. Bella’s father was on the lawn, setting up the croquet wickets. Her mother was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair. Beside her sat the new woman from next door, Natalie, very thin and sophisticated, all in black.
    Aaron called, “Hang on, Ben, I’ll help you.” He handed his bottles of wine to Bella and joined Ben at the Jeep. Together the men hefted the folding beach chairs out of the back of the Jeep and carriedthem around the Hortons’ house to the lawn sloping down to the beach.
    Bella cuddled the three bottles against her. She noticed the new woman studying Ben. Good luck to you , Bella thought.
    Ben was good-looking, with the Barnabys’ blond hair and blue eyes. Half of her high school friends had had crushes on him, even while he’d been a totally clueless geek, his nose always in a book, staying late to work on projects for the science fair.
    In college, he’d had a serious long-term girlfriend, another science nerd. Vickie could have been pretty if she’d cared to, but she was almost aggressively fashion-unconscious. Her nice figure had been hidden beneath baggy jeans and loose tee shirts. Usually, they had arcane quotes on them, like “Resistance is not futile. It’s voltage divided by current.” In the winter, she wore hoodie sweatshirts instead of sweaters and often forgot to wear a coat. Ben and Vickie broke up after graduation. He went on to Stanford. She went to Harvard. Now she was doing postdoctoral work in London. They remained science buddies who emailed now and then.
    When Ben was working on his doctorate in California, he dated other women; Bella knew because she flew out a couple of times to visit him. These women were a new breed—ambitious, intensely intellectual, and not interested in long-term affairs. They were Bella’s introduction to the less starry-eyed side of sexuality, and while she placed no value judgment on what Ben had with them, it made her vaguely sad. But then Bella was a hopeless romantic.
    When Ben returned three years ago as an assistant professor at U. Mass.–Amherst, he was a grown-up, a serious adult. He rented an apartment in Amherst but came