The Light of Summer by Mary McNear

Author:Mary McNear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

At eleven o’clock that night, it was still hot—hot enough for Billy to put ice cubes in the glass of chardonnay she’d poured for herself. This was a crime, she knew. The bottle Cal had brought earlier was so much better than anything she typically bought herself; it deserved to be served properly. Chilled and aerated and whatever else it was you were supposed to do to a good wine before you drank it. But this was no time to stand on ceremony, she’d decided. Damn it, she needed a drink. What’s more, she needed Jane Austen, needed her like never before. But when she’d finished the scene she’d been reading in Emma—for obvious reasons, she’d chosen the one in which Emma hosts the disastrous dinner party for Mr. and Mrs. Elton—she was disappointed. Usually Austen offered her some escapist relief from her life. Tonight it hadn’t done the trick. Instead she’d ended up staying out on the porch, staring off into the backyard and, as she’d so often done recently, trying to fathom the unfathomable person Luke had become.

Why, she wondered, had he wanted to come home early tonight? Was it because he knew she’d invited a man over? Had he wanted to interrupt their time together or, at the very least, cut it short? It was possible, she supposed. Especially since he’d never met Cal before. He was an unknown entity to Luke. But when she’d told Luke about him earlier in the day, about how she was having Allie Ford’s brother over for dinner, he’d seemed totally uninterested. Cal, on the other hand, had seemed completely captivated by Luke, or at least by his model town. In the past, the town had been something of a litmus test for Billy. If a newcomer to their house didn’t show some kind of admiration for it, or interest in it, she figured it was because they lacked imagination. Cal had not disappointed her here. She smiled now, remembering his enthusiasm for it. He’d acted like a big kid, and she wondered how long he would have stayed there, exploring it, if he hadn’t noticed that their dinner was burning.

Maybe . . . maybe Cal wasn’t the reason Luke had come home early, she thought. Maybe it was because it was hard for Luke to see Toby and his dad together. Of course, Luke loved Toby’s dad. Or had loved him. He was a nice guy, Billy thought, and the kind of father who slipped so easily into playing with his kids and their friends that Billy used to wonder who Luke had more fun with, Toby or Toby’s dad. And that’s why when Luke had made a disparaging comment when he got home tonight, something about how Toby and his dad were “acting like little kids,” it had surprised her. Was Luke jealous of this father-and-son dynamic? And was that why his new “friends” Van and J.P. either didn’t have fathers in their lives or had fathers who

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