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

card you’d send to your insurance agent. He signed his name, and that was it. After all the years we were married—all we’d gone through—and I get a Hope you have a sunny day! card with a picture of a sunflower on the front.”

“That is cold,” Maggie agreed, grateful that Art’s image had suffered no such tarnishing since his passing. She still honored the man he’d been, and their daughters still believed he’d walked on water.

Liddy continued to bat Jim around for a while longer before talk turned to who all had declined to come to the reunion and who all they’d see over the weekend. They shared gossip—LeeAnn divorced her third husband and is looking for number four; Caroline had a mastectomy, but she’s in remission and is doing really well; Kelly Sanger’s daughter ran off with Kelly’s pool boy and left Kelly to care for her two grandbabies. And there’d been much laughter and remembrances—Remember the time Polly Landers brought her cat to school in her book bag because her brother threatened to take it to the beach? Remember the Memorial Day parade when Sue Merritt flipped her baton into the air, and it came down on Amy Thomas’s head and knocked her out cold and they had to stop the parade?

When at last the snacks had been consumed and the pitcher had been emptied for the last time, the leftovers had been packed away, and the dishwasher had been filled, Emma headed off to her own home and Maggie and Liddy retired to their respective rooms. Tired from her travels, once she’d tucked herself under the quilt Liddy’d left at the foot of the bed, Maggie closed her eyes. Her face still hurt from laughing, and for a while sleep seemed out of the question. So many images—faces and places and events—had been conjured up over the past hours. Voices and snippets of songs played inside her head, memories resurfaced, old feelings she’d thought long dead stirred. She pushed aside what she could and told herself she’d deal with the rest of it tomorrow. She drifted off to sleep still enveloped in the warmth and comfort of the love of her friends, effectively ignoring the certainty that before she left Wyndham Beach to return home on Monday, other emotions would be stirred up, other old feelings would surface—and those she would have to face alone.

Chapter Two

“I’d forgotten how nice it could be to have a day to just do whatever I feel like doing.” Maggie finished strapping herself into the passenger seat of Liddy’s car.

“You’re still volunteering at fifty different places and substitute teaching?”

Maggie nodded. “It feels like fifty sometimes. I know I should cut back, but it’s so difficult once you get entrenched and people start depending on you.”

She’d quit teaching following Art’s diagnosis, but after his death, she’d needed something to dig into, something to focus on other than herself and her lonely house, her empty bed. Someplace to go where she could meet people who’d never known Art, people who could talk about something besides her loss. Who could see her as someone other than half a broken circle.

“Well, you might think about what you’d miss the least, then slowly reduce your hours until you feel comfortable backing out gracefully.”

“That’s good advice. Maybe I’ll cut back at . . . oh, hell. I don’t know which one I like the least. I like all of the agencies and places and the people I’ve met.”

“You’ll figure it out. You can always use the excuse that you want to spend more time substitute teaching.”

“Well, that is true. There have been times when I’ve had to turn down teaching opportunities because I’ve committed to one thing or another.”

“Are you still the CEO of Art’s law firm?”

“I am, though I don’t know why. I mean, I know he wanted to keep the business in the family, but still. I don’t do anything except pop in once a month, water the snake plant in Art’s old office, and take his old assistant out to lunch.”

“I’d have thought he’d have left the firm to Grace.”

“Eventually, he would have. But at the time decisions had to be made, Art didn’t feel comfortable putting Grace in such a position of power when her husband was working there, too.” Maggie grimaced. “Of course, in retrospect, it was the right thing to do. Imagine if Gracie had the controlling interest in the firm, given the situation with Zach. If they’d stayed married even for a time, would he be entitled to half of the firm when they divorced? I don’t know. I’m just glad that was one conversation we didn’t have to have.”

“And you’re not tempted to exercise a little control yourself where Zach is concerned?”

“Of course I am. Zach was a huge part of our lives from the time he and Grace were in law school. He said he’d waited until after Art died to tell her he wanted a divorce because he didn’t want to add to everyone’s distress, but frankly, I think he waited because he couldn’t look Art in the eye.” Maggie shook her head, remembering how happy Art had been with his daughter’s choice of husband, how he and Zach had gone to baseball and football games together. Just weeks before Art got sick, he and his son-in-law had gone deep-sea fishing, a first time for both of them, and they’d made plans to go again at the end of the summer. “He wasn’t man enough to face Art with the truth. I also think he was hoping that, on his deathbed, Art would give him half the firm. Thank God he didn’t.”

“He isn’t worthy of Grace,” Liddy pronounced as if closing the door on that topic, then backed out of the driveway carefully, pausing at the curb to make sure nothing was coming either way. “So where to first? The beach? The harbor? Or we could check out a few of the new shops in town.”

“I’m