One Season of Sunshine

by Julia London

  “But you are what I need.”

  “You’ve already been through so much. I can’t put you through more.”

  Asher’s arms hung limply at his side. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t feel. He was suddenly numb. He thought of the day they’d buried Susanna. He’d held Levi in his arms, the boy’s head on his shoulder, asleep, exhausted from the long day’s events. Riley had stood beside him like a little statue. He remembered thinking how odd it was that the sun had been shining and people around the world had been going on about their business when something so profound and jarring had interrupted their lives.

  He felt that same way now. He could hear Levi splashing in the water, and all he could think was that the world was spinning on as he was silently imploding. “Do what you have to do,” he said shortly, separated from Jane, and walked out of the guesthouse.

  He fished Levi out of the pool and suggested that he, Levi, and Riley go to town for a burger. He had to get out of Summer’s End.

  They ended up at Whataburger, where Riley sat with her head down, texting, and Levi talked and talked about something he’d seen on television. Asher smiled. He nodded. He said things like, “Really?” and “Wow,” but he never heard a word his son said. All he could think was that Jane was leaving them. Not just him, but Riley and Levi. Levi had been a self-destructive, bedwetting little mess when Jane had come. Now he was a happy boy and the proud owner of a very large vegetable garden. Riley had blossomed right before his eyes since Jane had stepped into their lives. She was turning into a young woman, was growing up and out and had an infectious laugh and a beautiful smile that Asher had once feared he’d never see again.

  Jane was leaving. The earth was tilting too far on its axis.

  At home, Riley went to her room and locked the door. Asher set Levi up with a SpongeBob SquarePants marathon and walked out to the guesthouse.

  Jane’s hair was wet and pulled back into a knot. Behind her he could see an open suitcase stuffed full and a couple of boxes. “You’re running away. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I’m being smart,” she said quietly. “I don’t see how I can be with you when I can’t really be with you. I want us to be the best, Asher, and I would hope you want that, too. But until things settle for us both, this is the only thing I can do in good conscience.”

  “And then what? You’ll come dancing back here? I’m not sure we’ll be up for that,” he said angrily.

  Her face fell. “I hope that’s not true.”

  “You’re not the only person to ever have been adopted, Jane.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t lecture me about being adopted. I have thirty years of living with it. You’ve had, what, a few weeks of knowing about it? You have no idea what it feels like.”

  “Maybe I don’t,” he said. “But I do know what it’s like to twist in the wind, and that’s no life.”

  She sighed, ran her hand over her hair. “Did you come out here to fight?”

  “No. I came to see that you are really leaving. I don’t understand why you can’t stay and work this out. I don’t understand what you are going back to.”

  “Oh, Asher,” Jane said, tears filling her eyes. She pressed her hand to his heart. “I am so sorry.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry,” he said angrily and pulled her hand from his chest.

  “I don’t know what else there is to say,” she said tearfully. “I’ve tried to explain it, but I am obviously doing a poor job.”

  “You’ve said enough, Jane, trust me. Let me say something now. Don’t pass up this chance at true happiness, because God knows you will regret it. I know what it’s like to be held back by the unknown. I know what it’s like to be chained by the expectations of others, and to give up everything you are to meet them. It makes for a very long life, Jane. No one gets many chances for happiness in this world, and you are a fool to squander yours.”

  He didn’t know what he thought she would say to that, but as she said nothing, and looked at him with tears in her eyes, he walked out. He couldn’t look at her another moment without crumbling.

  The Price family assembled on the drive Saturday morning to see Jane off. Riley said a stiff good-bye, only because Asher made her, and promptly returned to the house. Jane had expected that, but she hadn’t expected it to hurt quite like it did.

  Levi, on the other hand, had taken Jane’s leaving very hard. He’d cried when Jane had told him she had to go back to Houston. She’d tried to soothe him, but poor Levi hadn’t understood why and had fled outside, where he’d proceeded to destroy his garden, save one tomato plant. Yet Saturday morning, he presented her with a painted rock as a gift. “I made it in camp.”

  It was painted orange, Levi’s favorite color. There were white spots on it, which Levi explained was snow. Tears blinded her, and Jane could feel her heart breaking. She hugged Levi, kissed his cheek, and told him she loved him.

  But the worst was Asher. He stood in the drive, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, his jaw clenched. “Safe trip,” he said woodenly.

  “Thank you. I guess this is it,” she said solemnly. For someone who hadn’t dated that much in her life, Jane had done a lot of breaking up this summer, and it sucked. “Thanks for everything, Asher.”

  He snorted and looked away.

  “You can’t know how sorry I am things have turned out like they have, but I . . . I’m sorry.”

  “So you’ve said. On several occasions.”

  She debated telling him how much she loved him, but thought that would add salt to the very open wound between them.

  She meant to get in her car, but she leaned down to kiss Levi once more, and when she straightened, she impulsively grabbed Asher and hugged him tight. He looked so forlorn, like he needed someone to hug him, and she couldn’t bear to see him like that. When she put her arms around him, he stood like a wooden soldier.

  For a moment.

  But then he sagged against her, one arm going around her back. He pressed his face to her hair and whispered, “Don’t go.”

  Oh yeah, she’d done a number on the whole family in her search for herself. She should have driven off the edge of the earth and ended all their agony, including her own. It was beyond her ability to understand how she could love someone like she loved Asher and walk away from him.

  Maybe because she did love him so much.

  34

  The summer heat was oppressive. Most days were overcast in the mornings and hazy and humid in the afternoons. Asher quit running the lake trail and used the treadmill at work instead. Everyone assumed it was the heat. No one knew it was that he couldn’t bear to set foot on that trail after Jane had left. Every step, every breath, reminded him of her.

  She’d been gone two weeks, two miserable weeks, and Asher had spent every single day missing her in a way he could never have missed Susanna. He was angry with himself for missing Jane. He was angry with her for leaving.

  Levi moped about in her absence, too. He’d wet the bed the night she’d left and complained that Mommy was stomping around in the attic. If summer camp hadn’t ended when it had, Levi would have been kicked out. His behavior there went from good to horrible in the course of a week. There was nothing Asher could say to Levi to help ease the loss of Jane.

  Fortunately for Asher, as kids have a way of doing, Levi bounced back after a few days and seemed, at least on the surface, to be okay.

  As for Riley, if she missed Jane, Asher would be the last to know it. She’d suddenly developed friendships and managed to stay gone from the house. Asher didn’t like it—she’d been such a loner the last two years that it seemed unnatural to him that Riley would suddenly be the social butterfly. But his temporary nanny, Tiffany—a glorified high school babysitter—knew nothing about thirteen-year-olds and allowed Riley to do whatever she liked.

  “I’m working on it,” Tara assured him when he asked about the search for a new nanny. “They are hard to come by out there in the hinterland.”
<
br />   And then there was him. Asher had been dealt an invisible blow, although no one could see the bruises. He existed in his own little world. He knew every stripe, every curve, every tree on the road between Cedar Springs and Austin. He knew how many steps there were from his room to his office. He knew all the bumps in the ceiling, all the places the carpet needed to be tacked down or replaced. He knew the exact figures on the BMW account, that Levi hated peas and Riley liked yogurt and how much detergent to put in the washing machine. But he didn’t know how he was going to get over Jane Aaron.

  The days slid one into the other, and with them, Asher felt himself sliding back into his black hole. When work took him to New York, he was glad to go, to get away from Summer’s End, where he missed Jane the most.

  The kids stayed with Helen. When he came back, he drove out to Helen and Bill’s lakefront home to pick them up. He found Helen outside, sitting beneath a fan on her covered deck. Levi and Bill were down at the water’s edge, fishing.

  “Where’s Riley?” he asked when he’d greeted them all and settled in for iced tea with Helen.

  “She’s at the movies with her friend Tracy.”

  “Again?” Asher said wearily.

  “Linda Gail said she’d bring them home.”

  “Daddy, look!” Levi said, running up to the deck. He held out a colorful fishing lure. Tiny beads of perspiration formed on Levi’s brow, but the kid didn’t notice; he was having too much fun.

  “Very cool,” Asher said.

  “We’re fishing!” Levi shouted happily, pointing at the lake.

  “Nice to see you, Ash,” Bill said, walking up behind Levi. “You don’t get out here much anymore.”

  “No,” Asher said. “I’ve been swamped.” Honestly, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out here, other than to pick the kids up or drop them off.

  “Ever take that boat out on the lake?” Bill asked, referring to the boat Susanna had insisted Asher purchase a few years ago.

  “No,” he said. “I ought to sell it.” He ought to sell Summer’s End and move to Austin.

  “Well I guess that was always Susie’s fun anyway, wasn’t it?” Bill said, and took Levi’s lure to attach it to a fishing pole.

  When Susanna had been alive, they’d gone out every weekend, usually with friends. Her friends. Friends who had drifted in and out of their lives, friends who’d never seemed to make it past one manic episode. Susanna would just find more.

  “What time will Linda Gail have Riley home?”

  “By seven,” Helen said. “Ash, we need to talk. I’m worried about Riley. She doesn’t seem to feel well lately.”

  “That’s because Daddy and Riley fight,” Levi said, then punched the air. “Pow!”

  Asher smiled ruefully. “We don’t fight, buddy. We have disagreements.”

  “Come on, Levi, let’s catch some fish,” Bill said.

  “Well, she’s thirteen, Ash,” Helen said as Bill and Levi walked down to the water. “You have to allow for the fact that thirteen-year-old girls will not agree with you on most things. Oh, how I wish Susanna were here, don’t you? She had such a way with Riley, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Asher said, looking at Helen curiously. “She certainly did.” Susanna and Riley had been close, but Helen also knew that no one could antagonize Riley quite like Susanna had been able to.

  “She was an angel,” Helen said with a sigh. “My beautiful angel girl.”

  “Watch!” Levi shouted to Asher, and cast his line with Bill’s help.

  “Do you know what I was thinking about the other day?” Helen asked pleasantly. “I was thinking about the winter we all met in Rio for Carnival.”

  Asher could not begin to guess where Helen was going with this.

  “Do you remember how beautiful Susanna looked that night we attended the Golden Ball?”

  He remembered all too clearly. “You’re making yourself sad, Helen,” he said shortly and leaned forward in his seat.

  “It doesn’t make me sad. My memories give me some peace. Remember, she wore that deep red dress that fit her like a glove. And that elaborate black mask, as black as her hair,” she said, wiggling her fingers at her face. “Remember how the heads turned as she walked through that crowd?” Helen laughed. “You must have been so jealous that night.”

  Asher peered at her. “What are you doing, Helen?”

  She looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. This little trip down memory lane. What’s it all about?”

  Helen’s gaze was shrewd. “Well, I guess I thought perhaps you might need a gentle reminder of how beautiful and lovely your wife was.”

  “I don’t know why you think so, but perhaps you need a gentle reminder that she’s dead,” he said curtly.

  Helen gasped.

  “She’s dead, Helen. She was beautiful and lovely, but she was also very sick. Do you know what I remember when I think about that ball? I remember how much she drank.”

  “All right, Ash, you don’t need to—”

  “I think about how she danced provocatively with men she didn’t know until I had to pull her away. And how subdued she was the next day, so vulnerable and lost in herself, because she was beginning to cycle, and there we were, away from her doctors in a goddamn foreign country. I remember how beautiful she was, Helen, but I remember everything else, too.”

  Helen glared at him. “Susanna was my only child! I want to remember her how she was in the best of times, just like any mother would. I don’t want you to ruin that memory for my grandchildren by getting involved with the help.”

  Riley. Asher’s pulse began to pound in his neck. He sucked down a breath to keep himself from erupting. “Jane was not the help. And you have no right, no say in who I see or don’t see.”

  “Grandpa, I have a bite!” Levi shouted gleefully.

  Asher stood up and glared down at Helen. “I will move on with my life, and so will my kids. We are not going to spend our lives idealizing a woman who was as brutal as she was loving—and neither should you, Helen.”

  He walked away, down to the water, ignoring Helen’s gasp of indignation.

  35

  Jane had been back in Houston a couple of weeks when she ran into Jonathan. “Yes, I’m back home,” she confirmed when he asked. “Still teaching, still working part-time at The Garden.”

  “That’s great, Jane,” he said. “What about your thesis?”

  “I have three weeks left, but I am making progress. I’ve written the intro and edited what I had. Things are really coming together!” She probably said that a little too enthusiastically.

  “Sounds like it,” he said, nodding approvingly. “So . . . have you given up looking?”

  “I haven’t given up. I’ve just run out of ideas.” She laughed.

  So did Jonathan. “Well, at the very least, maybe you’ll be reasonable about it now.”

  Jane gulped down her laughter. Be reasonable about it? She realized then what had been in the back of her mind for a long time. Jonathan thought the hunt for her birth mother was a whim. He’d indulged it; he’d been indulging her all along, thinking she’d been playing at things that meant quite a lot to her. “I haven’t given up hope yet,” she said coolly. Maybe she’d finally come to terms with the fact that, in spite of a few lingering doubts she had about Susanna having given birth to her, she would probably never know if she was Spanish or Italian or whatever, or if she was predisposed to any illness or to longevity. She hadn’t really analyzed it, she only knew that a tiny door had opened in her heart and somehow she’d made herself step through it. She still didn’t know exactly where she belonged, but she had hope she would learn to adapt.

  She thought about Asher and the kids every day. When she and Nicole had gone shopping for supplies for their classrooms, she’d wondered if anyone had thought to take Levi to get his school supplies. One night at the restaurant, when a couple had come in with a sullen teenager with a cell phone, she’d
pictured Riley’s blonde head bent over her phone.

  Asher weighed most heavily on her mind. She thought about him so much that she ached with memories that bent her back, stooped her shoulders. She relived their lovemaking a million times over, remembered the way he’d looked at her when he’d been inside her. She thought of his smile, so startlingly warm, of his hand, light but possessive, on her back. Or how he would push her unruly hair from her face. She thought of their conversations, especially those they’d had in bed, when they’d been listening to the night air rustle the leaves of a cottonwood outside her window. They’d talked about everything. Everything.

  Jane thought of Asher all day, every day.

  She denied anything was wrong to Nicole, although she confessed something had happened. “Summer fling,” she said airily one afternoon when she and Nicole took Sage to the park.

  Nicole was dumbstruck. For a moment. “You had a summer fling and you didn’t tell me?” she cried, punching Jane in the arm.

  “Yep. But it’s over,” Jane said, focusing on the monkey bars.

  “Really? Because you’ve seemed really preoccupied lately.”

  “With my thesis,” Jane said. Yes, deny it. That keeps tears at bay. “I am so close, did I tell you?”

  “Who cares about your thesis? Are you going to tell me about the fling?” Nicole asked excitedly.

  Jane smiled and shook her head. “Another day, okay, Nic?”

  Jane denied it to her mother, too. “I’m just bummed, Mom. I really wanted to know more about my birth mother.” She had told her family that her birth mother had been killed in a car wreck and had left it at that.

  Jane also denied it to her family at dinner when Eric asked bluntly why she was so down.

  “I’ve just been through a lot this summer,” Jane said patiently.

  “I guess so,” Eric said. “I mean, a, you went to look for a mom who really means nothing to you,” he said, holding up her index finger. “And b, you didn’t find her, go figure, and c, now you’re home with a family who loves you. So lighten up, sis.”