Rules of Summer

“I really love it here,” Isabel said, lying in Mike’s arms and watching the shadows made by the flickering candlelight. “It’s great to have this place to ourselves like this.”

Mike’s stubbly cheek brushed against her bare shoulder. “Yeah, it’s nice.”

She scratched Mike’s forearm with the tips of her fingernails. Three long days after their first time, they were finally together again. This time sex had been an altogether easier, and less awkward, experience. Again, Mike had been incredibly gentle with her, and again, he’d asked her multiple times if she was okay, if she’d wanted to stop. But now, lying in his arms, Isabel felt the same nagging feeling she’d had that morning in the shower. He still hadn’t said he loved her. She’d waited for it to come out of his mouth, especially at a few crucial moments, but it hadn’t. She pushed the thought away and snuggled closer into his shoulder. Bob Marley’s soothing voice came from the iPod dock.

“How long are Esteban and Pete up in Maine?” she asked.

Mike turned down the volume on the iPod. “The whole week,” he said.

“God, how amazing would it be if I could just pack a bag and come here and stay that whole time? Maybe I can.” Five nights of falling asleep in Mike’s arms and waking up next to him in the morning was an unbelievably tempting thought. “Maybe I should just try it,” she said. “I could tell my parents that I’m staying with Thayer or something. I could go to work with you in the morning. Help out at the stand.”

“Hmm-hmmm,” he said, busy kissing her up and down her arm.

“Hey, why haven’t I met your family?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said between kisses. “I haven’t met your family.”

“I know, but that’s because mine’s crazy.”

“So’s mine.”

“No, really,” she said. “I think I’d like to meet your parents. I’m really good with parents. They love me.”

“I bet they do,” he said.

“So… am I gonna meet them or not?” she asked.

He stopped kissing her. Quickly she turned to face him, but his gaze was on the wall behind her, studying something.

“Hey,” she said. “Do you not want me to meet your parents?” She laughed a little to balance the question, which had just a touch too much seriousness to it.

“You’ll meet them.” He pulled away from her and sat up. “But I think I’m gonna go up to Maine and meet those guys for a bit. Just for a few days.”

“You are?” she asked.

“Just sounds like fun to be at Peter’s summer house. It’s just for a few days,” he said. “Then I’ll be back.”

“So, when will you be back, exactly?” She propped herself up on her elbow, aware that her heart was racing.

“Next week,” he said.

“And you’ll be leaving…”

“Probably the day after tomorrow.”

“That’s longer than a few days.”

“It’s, like, five days,” he said, sitting back against the wall. “Is that too long?”

She looked down at the putty-colored bedsheet. Suddenly she was having trouble looking him in the eye. “No,” she said.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” he said, stroking her hair. “I’d think you’d be getting sick of me by now.”

“Yeah, right,” she chuckled. “Sick of you.” She circled his wrist with her fingers. “So I’ll meet your family when you come back?”

“Definitely.” He lifted her chin so that she could look him right in the eye. “I’m gonna be thinking about you the entire time. It’s gonna be torture.”

Then don’t go, she wanted to say, but she didn’t. Instead, she gave him what she hoped was one of her most seductive, enigmatic smiles over her shoulder. “Good,” she said, and kissed him softly on the lips.

The next day, she woke with a heavy sense of dread in her chest. That morning in the car with Rory, she had to tell someone.

“He’s leaving,” she said. “Going on a trip to Maine. For no reason. Don’t you think that’s a little weird?” She drove onto the highway, which was actually moving for once, and adjusted her mirrors.

“Car-and-a-half distance between you,” Rory reminded her. “I don’t know if it’s weird. Depends on what he’s gonna be doing in Maine.”

“Drinking beer? Hanging out? Nothing important. And I checked. Where he’s going, there’s not even any surfing. He surfs every single day. So, why’s he going to a place where he can’t surf?”

“Maybe it’s just for the reasons he said,” Rory said, leaning over to check Isabel’s speed. “Maybe he just wants to hang out with his friends. Hey, that guy up ahead is slowing down,” she said. “You might want to put on the brake.”

“I don’t know, there’s something about this that is just strange,” Isabel said, slowing down. “I mean, we just started having sex. Why does he want to go out of town now?”

“You’ll see him next week,” Rory said. “Invite him to your dad’s birthday party. That way he can meet your folks without all the attention being placed on him.”

“When is the party? The fifteenth?”

“I think so.”

“It’s so weird. I’ve never cared about meeting people’s parents before. Oh, and speaking of that, don’t worry. I talked to my mom. She’s not mad at you about the other day. I promise.”

“Great,” Rory said.

“I’m serious,” Isabel said, looking over at her. “She doesn’t care.”

Rory wondered if she should tell Isabel that she knew for a fact that Lucy Rule did care, at least enough to come by her room that evening after their trip to the club. But she knew that she couldn’t say anything. Not out of any loyalty to Mrs. Rule, but out of her own pride.

She’d been getting ready for bed when she heard the sharp knock on the door. She’d hoped it was Connor, wanting more of an explanation for why she’d unceremoniously dumped him in the cabana. Instead, it had been Mrs. Rule standing on the doorstep and smiling in a way that made Rory’s skin prickle with dread. “I know it’s late,” Mrs. Rule said sweetly. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Rory said, grabbing a few pieces of clothing from the bed and hiding them behind her back.

“I just wanted to have a quick chat,” she said. She closed the door behind her. In leggings and a long striped top, she looked like she could be Isabel’s sister. “I hope you had a good day off today,” she said with an inscrutable smile, reaching down to straighten the glass clock on the nightstand.

“I did.”

“And I also understand that you had words with some of Isabel’s friends at the Georgica,” she said, still smiling. She yanked the bedspread down on one end, making the wrinkles in the fabric instantly vanish.

“Yes,” Rory said.

“Rory, I understand that you may not be familiar with how one should act at a country club,” she said, perching on the edge of the bed, “but I hope you know that what I saw and heard was not appropriate. Especially for the Georgica. People are encouraged to be a little more… civil there, if you know what I mean.”

“Okay,” Rory said slowly.

“Frankly, I didn’t take you for that type.”

“Type?” Rory asked.

“The hard-edged type,” Mrs. Rule said. “The girl who tells people off. That kind of sassy, in-your-face thing.”

Rory looked at Mrs. Rule, trying to think of something to say to this.

Mrs. Rule stood up from the bed and ambled over to the dresser. “Well, you’ve certainly made yourself at home here,” she said, rearranging the various starfish and sand-dollar accessories that Rory had pushed aside over the weeks. “It’s a comfortable room, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Rory said.

“Well, I’m glad we had this talk,” said Mrs. Rule, looking in the mirror and running a hand through her hair. “I suppose I should get to bed. We have a lot of planning to do for Mr. Rule’s birthday party. And you are going to help out at that, of course?”

“Of course,” Rory said.

“Good.” Mrs. Rule gave her a beatific smile. “Have a good night.” With another smile, she waved and closed the door.

Rory stood alone in the room, looking at the tchotchkes that Mrs. Rule had just rearranged on the dresser. The Rules would allow you inside their world, they’d put you up in their best room, they’d even invite you to play Ping-Pong, but if you stepped over the line, they’d remind you lickety-split just where you stood. Now she understood why Fee was living in a cramped basement room. There was no doubt that she’d done the right thing with Connor.

Connor. His name echoed inside her stomach, a one-two punch of regret and longing. For the past few nights she’d lain awake wondering what he would do if she just slipped up the stairs and knocked on his door and said she’d made a mistake—that she did want to be with him, that she hardly thought of anything else. Would he let her in? Would he smile with relief and tell her he felt the same way? Would he pull her to him and ask her to spend the night?

It was impossible to know, because in the days after Mrs. Rule’s little chat, Connor seemed to have disappeared. His Audi was gone in the mornings when she walked out to the driveway, and he came home well after dinner, when she’d gone to her room. She tried to tell herself that his absence was simply about his busy schedule, but before the Fourth, he’d never been gone this much. Now it was obvious: he was avoiding her. He never walked out onto the beach in the mornings when she walked Trixie, and she never saw him doing laps in the pool. She never found him dozing on the couch in the TV room. Just as well, she told herself at night, lying in bed. This relationship didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.

But at least once a day, her mind would wander back to the Fourth of July, and she would feel a deep, gut-wrenching ache at the loss of something she’d wanted for so long.

“You did the right thing,” Steve said the next time he and Rory were alone in the kitchen and she’d given him the update.

“But it’s hellish,” Rory said, hunching over her coffee at the table. “Sometimes it’s all I can do to not go upstairs and knock on his door and tell him how much I miss him.”

Steve nodded over his Gatorade. “Believe me, it’s better this way.”

“But why should I let Mrs. Rule be right?” Rory asked. “That was totally out of line, what she did. Coming to me in my room, telling me how I misbehaved at the club? Why didn’t I say something to defend myself?”

“Because you’re in their house,” Steve said. “That’s just the way it goes.”

And then, one day, while she sat polishing all of Mrs. Rule’s silver tureens and chafing dishes, she heard that Connor was gone.

“They’ll just be five for breakfast for a little while,” Rory overheard Bianca say to Erica.

“Why?” Rory asked.

“Because Connor’s in New York,” Bianca said with a raised eyebrow. “Do you need more information?”

She went back to the silver, trying not to breathe in the toxic smell of polish. New York. For the rest of the day, she couldn’t think of anything else. She pictured a thousand beautiful girls gliding up and down Park Avenue, or wherever the Rules lived, in their sundresses and sandals, beckoning him with their eyes.

As temperatures soared, her mood worsened. A heat wave spread over the area, sending the daytime highs up past a hundred, and making afternoons almost unbearable. Rory sat day after day on the highway in the afternoon sun, feebly pressing the air-conditioning button, willing the Prius to somehow get colder as she drove to Southampton or Sag Harbor. In the late afternoons she’d eye the Rules’ pool, desperate to take a dip but too intimidated to get in. Instead, she’d take Trixie down to the beach and walk into the surf up to her waist, then sink her shoulders under the surface. It was the perfect vantage point from which to stare at the spot on the sand where they’d watched the fireworks. God, get over it, she’d tell herself, just as a wave crashed over her head.

But she did see Mrs. Rule every day, and it was almost impossible to look her in the eye. Fee was starting to notice.

“Everythin’ okay?” she’d ask Rory as soon as Mrs. Rule would leave the room. “Get up on the wrong side of the bed?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Rory would say, shaking it off. “Nothing at all. Just a little tired.”

Fee didn’t seem convinced, but she seemed to know that Rory didn’t want to say any more.

Luckily, Bianca didn’t seem to know about what had happened at the Georgica. Her comments about Rory’s clothes, shoes, and hair continued unabated, but she didn’t say anything about Rory being “sassy.” Not telling Bianca about Rory’s trip to the Georgica was the one small mercy Mrs. Rule had extended.

Without Mike in town, she saw less of Isabel, who’d stopped sneaking into her room at night. Isabel seemed to spend more and more days in her room, reading and listening to music that filtered through the ceiling. Except now the music had a distinctly sixties and seventies classic-rock flair: Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Van Morrison, Led Zeppelin. And Bob Marley. Stuff Mike liked, Rory assumed. One night “Waiting in Vain” played through the ceiling so many times that Rory almost went up there and told her to turn it down.

But she left Isabel alone. She had more uncomfortable things on her mind, like Mrs. Rule’s talking-to. Whatever happened, she’d make sure that she didn’t get another one.

The day before Mr. Rule’s party, Isabel marched up to her in the driveway as she unloaded some groceries and announced, “You have to come see this.”

“Huh?” Rory said as she grabbed a runaway Meyer lemon from the floor of the trunk and put it back in the bag.

“Right now. Come here.” Isabel grabbed one of the grocery bags and carried it to the back of the house. Rory followed. This had to be important if Isabel was pitching in with household chores.

After they’d unloaded the bags, Rory followed Isabel out of the kitchen, through the hot, still dining room, and into her dad’s office.

“What are you doing in here?” Rory asked.

“Just looking through photos. I was trying to remember this dress I used to wear in seventh grade. And look what I found,” she said, gesturing to a stack of dust-covered leather photo albums on her dad’s desk. She picked up the one on the top and opened to a page of photos. “These are my parents with the Knoxes. That couple that just moved back here.” She lowered her voice. “The guy I saw with my mom the other day. Look.”

She handed the heavy album to Rory. The photos were of the two couples sitting at a street café in Paris. And on a cruise ship. And standing in a harbor with an ancient-looking town built into craggy hills behind them.

“They were best friends,” Isabel said. “They went everywhere together. Vacations, cruises—look at all this stuff. This is all from the year before I was born.”

“So?” Rory asked.

“That night you spilled the sauce on me,” Isabel said, “there was this guy over for dinner. He’s a little bit psychic, and he told me that there were secrets in this house. That my parents had a secret.”

“Okay,” Rory said.

“And the other day at the Georgica, I saw Mr. Knox hanging around the courts looking like he was waiting to talk to someone. And then my mom basically yelled at me to get lost. It didn’t really add up until I saw these photos. If they were such good friends back then, then why aren’t they anymore? And why would my mom freak out at being seen talking to him?”

Rory shut the albums. “I don’t know.”

“What if there’s something between my mom and Mr. Knox?”

“Do you mean an affair?” Rory asked with more skepticism than she’d intended.

“I don’t know.” Isabel shrugged, reopening the album. “It’s crazy to think about, but it could have happened.” She gazed at the photos. “My mom’s always next to him in every picture,” she said, pointing to a shot of Lucy Rule sitting next to the handsome, blue-eyed man at a café table. “Look at how close they used to be.”

“I think I’m gonna head back to the kitchen,” Rory said. “This room makes me nervous.”

“Hold on,” Isabel said, opening drawers. “Maybe there’s something else in here.” The drawers screeched and whined as she pulled them open.

Rory dipped her head out of the room and did a quick recon of the hall. So far, the house was still quiet.

“Huh,” Isabel said, unfolding a letter from her dad’s desk drawer.

Rory watched Isabel’s lips move as she read the piece of paper.

“What is it?”

“It’s about the new property,” she said, looking up with concern.

Rory walked over to Isabel’s side and looked at the typewritten letter in her hand. She could only make out an address in the first line—127 Town Line Road—before Isabel pulled the letter away.

“It’s that farmer in Sagaponack,” she said. “Mr. Robert McNulty. He’s pulling out of the real estate deal. He says that he knows my dad has plans to build an ‘extravagantly large mansion that is in breach of our original contract,’ ” she read. “How would he know that?” Isabel put the letter back in the drawer and pushed it shut.

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you about your parents,” Rory said. “Maybe what you saw the other day was something totally innocent. Maybe it had nothing to do with what you think.”

“Maybe,” Isabel said. “But just… don’t avoid me, okay?”

“What?”

“I can tell, you’re avoiding me.”

“I’m not. I’ve just had lots of stuff to do.”

“You sure?” Isabel asked, pushing some hair over her shoulder.

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“Okay, good. Because this has been just such a weird couple of weeks and Mike’s still gone—he’s supposed to come back today—and well… I need a friend right now.”

Tell her about Connor, Rory thought. Just tell her. You’ll feel so much better if you’re honest.

“Sorry, I guess I’ve just been busy.”

“You want to go get in the pool?” she asked. “I can loan you a suit.”

“I have a suit.”

“Ugh, that orange one-piece,” Isabel said. “That doesn’t count.”

They left the room, and Rory realized that she instantly felt better. Mrs. Rule could keep her away from Connor, but she couldn’t keep her from being friends with her daughter.