by Meg Donohue
Dedication
With love for my summer girls—
Anna, Carla, Erin, Jeannine, Leah, and Nancy
Epigraph
What you love will always be with you.
—Alison McGhee, Making a Friend
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
1 - Kate
2 - Vanessa
3 - Dani
4 - Kate
5 - Vanessa
6 - Dani
7 - Kate
8 - Vanessa
9 - Dani
10 - Kate
11 - Vanessa
12 - Dani
13 - Kate
14 - Vanessa
15 - Dani
16 - Kate
17 - Vanessa
18 - Dani
19 - Kate
20 - Vanessa
21 - Dani
Acknowledgments
P.S.: Insights, Interviews & More . . .
About the author
Meet Meg Donohue
A Conversation with Meg Donohue
About the book
The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent
Read on
Meg Donohue’s Favorite Summer Reads
Have You Read? More by Meg Donohue
Advance Praise for All the Summer Girls
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Kate
In Philadelphia, Katherine Harrington stands in front of the bathroom mirror, waiting to see if her life is about to change. It has been a while since she stopped and really looked at herself—not to smooth the frazzled antennae of fine brown hair along her part or to brush away the taste of her morning coffee or to apply the mascara she swipes on each and every day before work, but to just stand completely still and look. The parenthetical creases on either side of her mouth have deepened, and she worries they make everything she says seem inconsequential, unnecessary. (Not ideal for a litigator), she mouths to herself. (Must buy wrinkle cream.) She is studying her own wry smile when the sound of the door buzzer cuts into the apartment.
“It’s me,” Peter says through the intercom.
Kate feels a rattling sensation in her chest. Her fiancé has had a key to her apartment for years, so why the door buzzer? And he’s showing up unannounced, something he has never done in the four years they’ve been together—his politeness, his sense of formality even after all the time they’ve spent together, is something Kate still can’t decide if she likes or dislikes about him. Dislike, she decides now. It’s a wall between them. She suddenly fears they’re too similar, but with only three months to go until their wedding, these are problems that will have to be sorted out once they’re married.
“Hey,” he says when she opens the door. It’s the beginning of June, and already Philadelphia is experiencing a heat wave. A cloud of humid air seeps into the air-conditioned apartment from the stairwell.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, hugging him. Peter is only a few inches taller than she, and they fit together well when they hug. Still, she pulls away quickly to shut the door against the heat. “What about your basketball game?”
Peter plays hoops with his law school buddies every Sunday morning. Actually, his law school buddies are really their law school buddies, but they’ve never asked Kate to join the game. Which, frankly, is fine with her. Sunday mornings are meant for early jogs by the Schuylkill River with Grace Kelly (Gracie, for short), her sausage-shaped yellow Labrador retriever, followed by the New York Times, a tinfoil-wrapped egg sandwich from the Italian market on the corner (an eggie, for short), an obscene amount of coffee sipped from her favorite Tiffany blue mug, and a cheery, if brief phone call to her parents who live fifteen blocks away in Society Hill. Separate Sunday mornings are just fine for Kate, who finds that being alone is not bad at all, entirely pleasant, really, when you know your fiancé is out there somewhere in the city, a phone call or cab ride away. Still, she can’t think of her Sunday routine without thinking of the phrase “creature of habit,” which in turn makes her picture the Loch Ness Monster squeezed into yoga capris, sipping coffee with Gracie stretched out at his big-knuckled, muck-encrusted webbed feet. Why “creature?” she wonders. Why not “person of habit?” Even “animal” would be better.
“I’m skipping this week,” Peter says, nodding toward her walnut-colored couch. “Let’s sit.”
Kate’s living room looks like a scene from a Pottery Barn catalog. Which, more or less, it is. She’d spent years admiring how tidy the homes in that catalog looked, as if the adults who lived in those rooms were off leading healthy, productive lives and would be back at any moment to spin the weathered-looking globe on the side console, or to pull a prized first edition from an espresso-stained bookcase. Kate had intended only to buy the Hamilton sectional on page twenty-three when she went online, but she ended up ordering one of everything else on the page too—the pair of bulbous glass Josephine lamps, the Milton steamer trunk coffee table, the large mossy green balls that were piled artfully in the reclaimed teak Luisa tray. Why not? she thought, clicking the mouse again and again and again. I can afford it. The room has always felt warm and layered and peaceful to her, but looking around now as she settles into the couch, she wonders if buying a room for the life you want rather than the life you lead is a bit like tempting fate.
She sits next to Peter, knees turned inward, nearly, but not quite, touching him. “Are you sick?” she asks. “Where’s your key? Do you want coffee? What’s going on?”
Peter frowns. He’s never liked her tendency to dovetail one question into another, preferring to wade rather than cannonball into conversation. Kate knows this, they’ve discussed it for hours on end, but there are some fundamental things you can’t change about a person, and this, she feels, is one of them. Peter, for example, is never going to throw her a birthday party, or stand up for her to his perpetually undermining sister, Lacey, and that is just the way it is. Some things you accept and then move on.
“I’m fine,” Peter says. He looks at her, his eyes blinking behind rimless glasses, and when he glances away, Kate realizes that he is nervous. Her heart begins the annoying rattling thing again. She loves how his lips part a little when his face is at rest, revealing a hint of orderly white teeth, how his dark eyebrows are set too low, overhanging his deep-set eyes, how his brow is always slightly furrowed, hinting at his analytical nature, the workings of his ever-churning brain. She reaches out to him, trying to break whatever spell has fallen over them. When she touches his cheek, she realizes he has not shaved. This is not good. His skin has the same pallid sheen it had after he used tap water to brush his teeth on the second night of their vacation in Belize the previous year. A fresh torrent of questions threatens to burst from her, but Peter speaks first.
“I take that back, Kate. I’m not fine. I’m sure you know that. You know things haven’t been great.”
Kate drops her hand to her lap and stares at him. She thinks of them last week, making love—yes, this is what she calls it—in his apartment, watching the Phillies game on DVR afterward. There was the fight they’d had weeks ago during (and after) their Pre-Cana meeting with Father Jerry, but she thought they’d moved past that. She was going to work on her issues, and he was going to work on his. “Um, no, Peter. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Peter flushes, the red creeping up his neck like a vine. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Kate,” he says. “I’ve been thinking a lot, trying to put my finger on what is going on with us. I know you’re unhappy too.”
Something is twisting inside of her. “Are you breaking up with me? Or, wait, are you trying
to convince me that I want to break up with you? Peter, we’re getting married in three months!” She waits for him to laugh, to tease her for jumping to such a dramatic conclusion, but his eyes are pegged to the floor.
“I know,” he says. His shoulders slump forward. He has always had incredibly bad posture—it was the first thing Kate noticed about him when he sat next to her during their final semester at Penn Law. “I can’t believe this is happening either. I wish things could be different.”
“Okay, so we’ll make them different. We’ll work on things. That’s what people do.” Kate can tell Peter wants to speak so she barrels on. “We’ve both been working so hard. We need to take more time for our relationship.” Yikes, she thinks. Am I quoting from Cosmo? “We’ll have more date nights. Split a bottle of wine. There’s a BYO on Chestnut Street that Lisa says is amazing. Let’s look at our calendars; we’ll schedule some dates right now. I’ve been wanting to see that new Woody Allen movie—it’s one that we’ll actually agree on and . . .” Kate trails off, her face burning. What is she talking about? “Come on, Peter,” she pleads. “Let’s look at our calendars.”
“I don’t want to look at my calendar!” He sounds so exasperated that Kate leans away from him, shocked. After a long pause, he says, “I’m trying to be honest.” He’s switched now to the plodding, thoughtful tone he uses with clients. “We’re really good friends and, actually, that’s fine with me, but I know you—”
“That’s what marriage is!” she interrupts. “Really good friends who want to sleep together.” Again with the Cosmo.
Peter sets his hands on his thighs.
“Oh,” Kate says. “Oh, I see. You’re not attracted to me anymore. We’re really good friends who don’t want to sleep together.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Kate. You’re completely out of my league. You know that’s never been our problem.”
Even in the middle of this fight, Peter’s words strike a chord. Kate tucks them away, filing them in her Self-Esteem Boost mental folder for later use. He thinks I’m out of his league! This will come in handy, she knows.
“Well, I’m grasping at straws here, Peter,” she says. “Tell me how I’m supposed to process the news that three months before our wedding, you’re breaking up with me.”
Peter huffs, and suddenly Kate is seething. He’s not allowed to be irritated with her!
“I’m trying to explain,” he says in a tight voice. “If you’ll give me a minute.”
“Please. The floor is yours.”
“The only thing I’m unhappy with in our relationship is the fact that you’re unhappy. You won’t admit it, but I can tell. That’s what all of this crazy control-freak stuff is about—why you have to plan every second of every day. Maybe if you talked to somebody about what happened. Maybe if you found a way to let go a little.” He hesitates, and her mind charges forward, chomping at the bit as she struggles to let him finish. “I can’t replace him, Kate, and I don’t want to. We both deserve something more than—”
“Don’t!” she says sharply. He’s using the things she’s told him in the darkest, quietest parts of night against her. “Colin has nothing to do with this.”
“I’m trying to explain how I feel. Maybe we should talk about this later, after the dust settles.”
Kate stares at him. She understands now that this is a done deal. He is done. She won’t tell him anything more now, out of spite. “Just say it, Peter. Put me out of my misery.”
“What?”
“You’re not in love with me anymore. Or maybe you never were. Just say it.”
Peter is silent, thinking. In this moment, everything changes. He is not hers anymore, and she is not his. Even the air in the room feels different, cold and dry against her suddenly goose-bumped arms. She’s tempted to jump up from the couch and throw open the door and let the thick, soupy air flood in from the hallway. Maybe the heat would breathe them back to life. Maybe it would form a cocoon around them and keep them here, together, forever.
“I can’t say that, Kate,” Peter says finally. “I’m sorry.”
But in that pause before he spoke, she heard everything. She stands up, twists the ring from her finger. Peter looks away, a coward in the end.
“We can take some time,” he says. “There’s still a lot to talk about. You don’t have to do that now.”
“I do,” Kate says and presses the large, nearly perfect solitaire into his palm.
His spare tennis sneakers are under the hall table. Spotting them, Kate strides across the room and pulls a green biodegradable bag from the drawer where she keeps Gracie’s leash. She stuffs the sneakers into it. Peter takes the bag from her and pauses awkwardly. He now has a fifteen-thousand-dollar ring in one hand and what looks like a bag of shit in the other.
“Let’s talk in a couple of days,” he says, using his lawyer voice again. When she doesn’t answer, he says something softly, maybe her name, and kisses her cheek. “Good-bye.”
And then he is gone.
The tears—which had not pricked her eyes even once during the entire conversation with Peter—brim and spill as soon as the door clicks shut. How did this happen? Kate drops onto the couch and hangs her head in her hands, feeling the cushions shift as Gracie lumbers up and nestles beside her.
“Oh, Gracie.”
Gracie shoots her a quintessentially Gracie look—brown eyes bright, sprocketed brows lifted expectantly, tail thumping slowly against the couch. A look that is equal parts “Honey, I told you” and “When’s breakfast?” and “I will love you forever.”
As her despair begins to morph from acute pain to the fog of self-pity, the first person Kate wants to talk to is Colin. But her twin brother has been dead nearly eight years. She wonders if this fact will ever truly sink in or if she is going to live the rest of her life with the knee-jerk reaction to call her dead brother whenever things go awry. Thinking of Colin, even for an instant, which is all she ever allows herself, brings a wave of unwelcome memories from the day he died—burnt skin, too-hot sand beneath her feet, the silky feel of the ocean enveloping her as she waded in to escape her brother’s flat, unyielding gaze. She stands from the couch so abruptly that Gracie’s head snaps up, cocked and ready for anything.
“Let’s call someone,” Kate says.
Gracie thumps her tail in wholehearted agreement.
Kate fishes her cell phone from her purse, trying not to dwell on her newly bare finger. She should call Vanessa or Dani, her best friends from forever, now living in New York City and San Francisco, respectively. Kate is the only one of their little gang who stayed in Philly, not wanting her parents to feel completely abandoned. She stares at her phone, stymied. Who to call first? It’s a dilemma she faces at every major life change, one of the downsides of having two best friends. Vanessa—who is married to the son of a famous news anchor and has a toddler daughter—tends to make Kate feel out of breath, as if she is perpetually a step or two behind, struggling to keep up; this feeling, she realizes, will be worse now. And then there’s Dani, who leads an unconventional, nomadic life and hardly ever picks up her phone; if by some miracle she did, she would suggest Kate draw a bath and pour herself a stiff drink. This is Dani’s remedy for everything from hangovers to heartache.
Kate sets the phone on the table, her head throbbing. The loneliness swoops back in so easily—its familiar weight on her shoulders makes her wonder if it was ever really gone. She could walk over to her parents’ house. Or head down to the café, just to be around people. If she weren’t so wiped out, she might consider slipping on her sneakers and compelling their law school friends to let her join their basketball game for the first time ever. Her law school friends, she corrects herself. Not their friends. Her friends. Her mood is skittering ever closer to panic.
“Waiting isn’t going to change anything,” she says to Gracie. She pats her thigh and Gracie hops off the couch and clicks down the hall tight on her heels. Kate reenters the bathroom and, heart loosening into full-
blown rattle again, looks down at the pregnancy test she’d left on the sink’s edge when the buzzer interrupted her.
Positive.
So it turns out she’s not nearly as alone as she feels.
2
Vanessa
In New York City, Vanessa Dale Warren is dragging out the process of putting her two-year-old daughter to bed. Usually it’s Lucy who does the dragging, asking for one more book, one more sip of milk, one more hug, until Vanessa has to shut the door on her sobbing daughter and hope she doesn’t catapult herself out of her crib. Today, though, Lucy is sound asleep and Vanessa is the one stalling, anticipating what she will do once the blanket of sleeping-toddler quiet settles on their West Village condo.
She sings another round of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Lucy’s eyes flick back and forth under her shut eyelids, her perfect rosy bow lips moving along with the words even in sleep. Just looking at her daughter makes Vanessa’s heart swell until it feels as if it might burst. When Vanessa was pregnant, she’d envisioned herself singing Ella Fitzgerald or Sam Cooke songs to her baby. Something with meaning and soul. But when she held her tiny daughter in her arms for the first time, she couldn’t think of the words to a single one of those songs. She’s been singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” like every other mother in America—her own included—ever since.
When the weight of Lucy in her arms is finally too much, Vanessa sets her down in her crib and slips out the door. Drew is exactly where she left him: leaning against the kitchen counter, checking e-mail on his phone.
“Trouble?” he asks, handing her a glass of pinot noir.
She takes a long drink before answering. “No. Just too cute to put down.”
He gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze and she melts into the pressure of his fingers before she can stop herself. Lucy is becoming more little girl than baby; Vanessa’s muscles have begun aching in new ways.
