Summer at Willow Lake

Her father fed another tidbit to the dog. Olivia noticed he wasn’t eating or drinking, and felt guilty for upsetting him. “Take it away, maestro,” he said to Earl.

“There’s really not that much to say,” Earl told her, “except that you didn’t love Rand. Or the others. You only think Rand was special because he seemed so perfect for you.”

“He’s moving to L.A.,” she confessed. “He never even checked to see if that would be all right with me. He just expected me to go along.” She felt her chest expand, and knew she was inches from tears—because it was true that she didn’t love Rand enough … but she had loved him a little.

“You’re … what, twenty-seven years old?” Earl continued. “You’re a baby. An emotional newborn. You haven’t even scratched the surface of what love is.”

Her father nodded. “You never got past the early-crush phase. You were strolling in Central Park and fixing candlelit meals for each other, and he was parading you in front of his friends. That’s not love, not the kind you deserve. That’s like … a warm-up exercise.”

“How do you know that, Dad?” she demanded, crushed that he had managed to sum up her entire relationship with Rand so handily. Then she caught the look on her father’s face, and backed off. Even though her love life was always under the microscope, her parents’ marriage and divorce were protected by a conspiracy of silence.

“There’s a kind of love that has the power to save you, to get you through life,” her father said. “It’s like breathing. You have to do it or you’ll die. And when it’s over, your soul starts to bleed, Livvy. There’s no pain in the world like it, I swear. If you were feeling that now, you wouldn’t be able to sit up straight or have a coherent conversation.”

She met her father’s gaze. He so rarely spoke to Olivia about matters of the heart, so she was inclined to listen. His words grabbed at something deep inside her. To love like that … it was impossible. It was frightening. “Why would anyone want that?”

“It’s what living is about. It’s the reason you go through life. Not because you’re compatible or you look good together or your mothers attended Mary-mount at the same time.”

Clearly, these two had studied and discussed Rand Whitney’s résumé.

“I still feel like crap,” she said, knowing somehow that they were right.

“Of course you do,” her father said. “And you’re entitled to feel that way for a day or two. But don’t mistake that feeling for grief over lost love. You can’t lose what you never had in the first place.” He swirled his glass, the ice clinking against the crystal.

Olivia rested her chin in her hand. “Thanks for being so great, Dad.”

“He’s the mother you never had.” Earl made no secret of his dislike for Pamela Lightsey Bellamy, who still used her married name, years after the divorce.

“Hey,” Philip warned.

“Well, it’s true,” Earl said.

Olivia drank the rest of her Campari and gave the ice to a thirsty-looking African violet. “So now what?”

“Now we have coq au vin for dinner, and you’ll probably have more vin than coq, but that’s okay,” Earl said.

“Mom is going to hate this,” she said. “She had high hopes for Rand. I can just hear her now—’What did you do to run him off?’”

“Pamela has always been such a lovely woman,” said Earl. “Are you sure you’re an only child? Maybe she ate the others when they were young.”

Olivia grinned over the rim of the highball glass. “She would never do that. Mom has too much fun messing with people’s heads. I bet she’d like to have ten of me if she could.”

It had taken Olivia’s entire adolescence to finally lose the weight that had made her such a target for bullies, and gain the approval of her mother. Ironically but not surprisingly, all it had taken was the loss of forty or sixty pounds, depending on how much she was lying to herself. Once the slender, chic Olivia emerged from her cocoon of obesity, Pamela had a whole new set of ambitions for her only daughter. It never occurred to Pamela to wonder why Olivia had only found success in losing weight when she left home for college.

“I wish there were ten of you,” Earl said loyally, clinking his glass to hers. “You’re adorable, and it never would have worked out with Rand Whitney anyway.”

“Still, it would have been fun if she was married to a Whitney,” her father mused.

“Bullshit. She’d be so busy with charity fund-raisers and gallery openings, we’d never see her. Plus, she’d be an alcoholic in a few years, and where’s the fun in that?”

“I don’t believe you guys,” said Olivia. “If you were so convinced I’d be miserable with Rand, why didn’t you tell me months ago?”

“Would you have listened?” Her father cocked an eyebrow.

“Are you kidding? He’s Rand Whitney. He looks like Brad Pitt.”

“Which should have been your first warning sign,” Earl pointed out. “Never trust a man who gets collagen injections.”

“He doesn’t—” Olivia cut herself off. “It was just the one time, for that Vanity Fair feature.” The magazine had made her even more crazy about him, emphasizing his blond good looks, his effortless charm, his insistence that being a Whitney didn’t define him, his assurance that he worked for a living just like everyone else. Well, like everyone else, except for that handy trust fund.

In the article, Olivia had been reduced to a single line: “Rand Whitney is protective of his privacy. When asked about romance, he says only, ‘I’ve met someone special. She’s wonderful, and that’s all I can tell you.’”

There was only one problem. A dozen other women also thought the statement was about them. When the article came out, Olivia and Rand had laughed about it, and she had been touched by the pride that lit his face. He had his insecurities like everyone else.

And now he had his freedom.

She resigned herself to spending the evening with her father and Earl. It was one of the first warm spring nights of the season, so Earl insisted on bringing over the coq au vin to the patio for dining alfresco. She, her dad and Earl even played the toasting game. They went around the table, taking turns finding one thing to drink to, the goal being to prove to themselves that no matter what else happened in the world, they had something to be grateful for.

“Voice dictation software,” Earl said, raising a glass. “I despise typing.”

“I’m toasting guys who can cook,” Philip said. “Thanks for dinner.” He turned to Olivia. “Your turn.”

“Once-a-month heartworm pills,” she said with a fond glance at Barkis.

Her father regarded her with kindly eyes. “Too bad they don’t make them for humans.”

He and Earl had seen her through this two times before. They knew the drill. And the depressing thing about that was, so did she. She felt … stuck. There was a point in her past that still held her captive. She knew what that moment was. She’d been seventeen, spending her last summer before college at camp, working as a counselor. That had been the only time she’d truly given her heart—fully, fearlessly, without reservation. It had ended badly and she didn’t know it at the time, but she had gotten stuck there, mired in emotional quicksand. She still hadn’t figured out how to move on.

Maybe her grandmother was offering her an opportunity to do that. “You know what?” she said, jumping up from the table. “I don’t have time to sit around and wallow.”

“So we’re practicing speed breakups now?”

“Sorry, but you guys will have to excuse me. I need to pack my bags,” she said, taking Nana’s photo album out of her briefcase. “I’m starting a new project first thing in the morning.” She took a deep breath, surprised to feel a beat of hopeful excitement. “I’m going away for the summer.”

Three

“This is a bad idea,” said Pamela Bellamy as she opened the door to let Olivia in. The opulent apartment on Fifth Avenue had a museum-like quality, with its polished parquet floors and beautifully displayed art. To Olivia, however, it was simply the place she had grown up. To her, the Renoir in the foyer was no more remarkable than the Tupperware in the kitchen.

Yet even as a child, she’d felt like a visiting alien, out of place amid the Gilded Age elegance of her own home. She preferred cozy things—African violets and overstuffed chairs, Fiestaware and afghans. There was a long history of disconnect between mother and daughter. Olivia had been a lonely child, her parents’ one and only and as such, she’d always felt a certain pressure to be all things to them. She’d applied herself diligently to her studies and her music, hoping that a perfect report card or a music prize would warm the chill that seemed to surround her family for as long as she could remember.

“Hello to you, too, Mom.” Olivia set her bag on the hall table and gave her a hug. Her mother smelled of Chanel No. 5 and of the cigarette she sneaked on the east balcony after breakfast each morning.

“Why on earth would you take on such a project?” her mother demanded.

So far, all Pamela knew was what Olivia had told her on the phone the previous night—that it was over between her and Rand, and that she was going to spend the summer renovating Camp Kioga. “Because Nana asked me to,” she said softly. It was the simplest explanation she could come up with.

“It’s absurd,” Pamela said, straightening the shawl collar of Olivia’s sweater. “You’ll wind up spending the entire summer in the wilderness.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”