Chapter 4 Amanda looked across the table at her mother

Chapter 4
Amanda looked across the table at her mother.
Adrienne had paused and was staring out the window again. The rain had stopped; beyond the glass, the sky was full of shadows. In the silence, Amanda could hear the re-frigerator humming steadily.
“Why are you telling me this,fake foamposites for sale, Mom,ugg boots uk?”
“Because I think you need to hear it.”
“But why? I mean,LINK, who was he?”
Instead of answering, Adrienne reached for the bottle of wine. With deliberate motions, she opened it. After pour-ing herself a glass, she did the same for her daughter.
“You might need this,” she said.
“Mom?”
Adrienne slid the glass across the table.
“Do you remember when I went to Rodanthe? When Jean asked if I could watch the Inn?”
It took a moment before it clicked.
“Back when I was in high school, you mean?”
“Yes.”
When Adrienne began again, Amanda found herself reaching for her wine, wondering what this was all about.
Chapter 5
Standing near the railing on the back porch of the Inn on a gloomy Thursday afternoon, Adrienne let the coffee cup warm her hands as she stared at the ocean, noting that it was rougher than it had been an hour earlier. The water had taken on the color of iron, like the hull of an old battleship, and she could see tiny whitecaps stretching to the horizon.
Part of her wished she hadn’t come. She was watching the Inn for a friend, and she’d hoped it would he a respite of sorts, but now it seemed like a mistake. First, the weather wasn’t going to cooperate—all day, the radio had been warning of the big nor’easter heading this way—and she wasn’t looking forward to the possibility of losing power or having to hole up inside for a couple of days. But more than that, despite the angry skies, the beach brought back memories of too many family vacations, blissful days when she’d been content with the world.
For a long time, she’d considered herself lucky. She’d met Jack as a student; he was in his first year of law school. They were considered a perfect couple back then—he was tall and thin, with curly black hair; she was a blue-eyed brunette a few sizes smaller than she was now. Their wed-ding photo had been prominently displayed in the living room of their home, right above the fireplace. They had their first child when she was twenty-eight and had two more in the next three years. She, like so many other women, had trouble losing all the weight she’d gained, but she worked at it, and though she never approached what she had once been, compared to most of the women her age with children, she thought she was doing okay. And she was happy. She loved to cook, she kept the house clean, they went to church as a family, and she did her best to maintain an active social life for her and Jack. When the kids started going to school, she volunteered to help in their classes,WEBSITE:, attended PTA meetings, worked in their Sunday school, and was the first to volunteer when rides were needed for field trips. She sat through hours of piano recitals, school plays, baseball and football games, she taught each of the children to swim, and she laughed aloud at the expressions on their faces the first time they walked through the gates of Disney World, On her fortieth birthday, Jack had thrown a surprise party for her at the country club, and nearly two hundred people showed up. It was an evening filled with laughter and high spirits, but later, after they got home, she noticed that Jack didn’t watch her as she undressed before getting into bed.