An Invincible Summer (Wyndham Beach), Mariah Stewart [best classic novels TXT] 📗

to her in ways no one in her real life ever did, and her blog gave her total control over that one small corner of her life. She wasn’t interested in meeting anyone, had no desire for romance—she thought of her heart as having shrunk to the size of a walnut—and the friends she’d had hadn’t proved themselves to be as understanding as she expected good friends to be.

“Gracie, he doesn’t love you. You can’t spend your life pining for someone who doesn’t love you,” her supposed best friend Michelle had told her every time Grace had confided a possible new how-to-win-Zach-back scheme. “Why would you even want to be with someone who doesn’t want you?”

After showing her childhood friend Rosemary the sexy card she’d bought for Zach’s birthday, she’d invited Grace to lunch, during which time she’d leaned across the table, taken Grace’s hand, and said, “Grace, you’re better than this.”

Even her own sister had tried—in typical blunt Natalie fashion—to get Grace to give up her dream of getting Zach back. “Girl, you’re making a fool out of yourself. Let him go. You deserve so much more than a guy who would walk out on you two months after you buried your father.”

“Oh, this from my sister whose baby daddy walked out on her the minute he found out she was pregnant?” Grace had snapped.

Nat’s eyes had flashed with indignation, and she’d snapped back, “Oh, yes, I most certainly deserve more than a drug-addicted man who would make me choose between him and my child. I will never regret choosing Daisy. I was happy about the baby, so I expected Jonathan to be as well. But I’d never for a second even think about crawling back to him. He’s not worth it. Neither is Zach. Stop crawling.”

Grace had walked out of Natalie’s apartment, and it had been weeks before she’d spoken to her again.

She sighed. She knew her sister loved her, knew she meant well. Grace loved Natalie, too, and she adored her niece. She missed her friends, but she couldn’t be in their company. No one understood how she felt. She’d been in love with Zach since she’d walked into her first-year law school class and he’d turned and smiled at her. With her whole heart and soul she believed that he was her one true love, her meant-to-be, her happy-ever-after. Her parents had had that sort of love, so for Grace nothing else would be acceptable. And once you found that person, you were supposed to stay together, till death do you part. That was what soul mates did: they stayed together forever. That was what she’d expected from her marriage.

What she hadn’t expected was that things between her and Zach would end the way they had. It was inconceivable that he’d go behind her back and have an affair right under her nose and show absolutely no remorse. She’d waited for him to come to his senses and come back home to the house they shared in Haverford, but with every passing week, it became more obvious that that was not going to happen.

Grace hadn’t tossed in the towel until she realized he hadn’t cared who knew—and apparently everyone at Flynn Law had, except her. He hadn’t tried to hide his new relationship, hadn’t cared how humiliating it was for her. Grace had accepted the end of her marriage—the end of her happy-ever-after—with a sense of overwhelming sadness and bitter disappointment, because she had no choice. TheLast2No gave her a sense of control she had nowhere else in her life, and for now that was going to have to be enough.

Chapter Five

NATALIE

Natalie thought of Friday nights as a portal that opened onto two days she could make into whatever she wanted. Tonight she’d shared dinner with Daisy at six thirty and by eight had smoothly nailed playtime, bath time, and bedtime—including the reading of one of their favorite books, On the Night You Were Born, which was so wonderful she silently thanked the author, Nancy Tillman, every time she read it. After closing the bedroom door on the sleeping three-year-old, Natalie poured herself a glass of wine and decided she’d like company. Specifically, she’d like the company of her sister. She picked up her phone and sent Grace a text.

Wanna come over and hang out?

Five minutes later, Grace replied, Sorry. Plans for tonight.

Whatcha doing?

Drinks with friends.

Anyone I know?

Nope.

Dinner on Sunday at Mom’s?

See you there.

While Natalie would have enjoyed Grace’s company, she was happy to hear her sister was beginning to socialize again. While Grace appeared to have accepted the fact that Zach would not be coming back, she’d kept to herself so much that their mother confessed to Nat she’d discussed Grace’s situation with Isabelle Finley, a friend from college who was a psychologist. Isabelle had offered to refer Grace to a therapist who specialized in dealing with the aftermath of failed marriages, but Grace had declined. So Natalie was gratified to see her sister making new friends and getting out of the house she and Zach had shared (which both Maggie and Nat agreed Grace should sell and find a new place, one with no ties to the life she’d been forced to leave behind). The hope was that Grace soon would move on and make a new life for herself.

Natalie turned on the TV as she scrolled through her emails and half watched the last half hour of a crime show. She responded to emails from several students. As a teacher of freshman English at a community college, she tried to be accessible. Having gone through those in a timely manner, she exited her email and opened the genealogy website where, several months ago, she’d submitted her saliva for a DNA test. She hadn’t had high expectations from the results, though she did discover several second cousins she hadn’t known about, one who lived near State College, a Nittany Lion like Natalie, whose enrollment at Penn State had overlapped Nat’s