Summer’s Secret

I walk through the meadow holding my hands to my sides, the bluebonnets bending on their stalks as I pass barefooted through their masses. It’s summer again, time for another meeting with the neighbors who border my property, 50 acres of east Texas prairie that reverted to me when my husband disappeared a dozen years ago.

“Still no sign of Johnny?” they’d asked last year, their collective stares burning into me from around the candle-lit room.

“Still no sign,” I responded, keeping my chin held high. Of course, I knew this to be untrue in the respect I knew where he was, but also true in the respect I hadn’t actually seen him since he’d vanished. Then, after talk of the weather and other banalities centering on life in this pure yet isolated country, they’d filed out my front door, the men folk touching a hand to their hats, their wives offering me narrowed glanced as they passed, because in their eyes I’d killed my husband for the million dollar insurance payment, and nothing causes more jealousy in a woman than one of their own reaping a harvest they never planted.

I pick a handful of bonnets and place them in my favorite vase as soon as I make it home. To lighten the mood. The neighbors, ten or so couples who each live within an hour’s walk of here, begin arriving just after six. I’ve placed a roast of pork in the oven, and the aroma fills this space I alone call home. When the last guests arrive, grim-faced and anxious, they wait for grace to be said then quietly begin eating. But then one of them, a man named Tom who had once saved a drowning cow, places his fork down and speaks up.

“Now, Summer, I might as well come out and say what’s on everyone’s mind. We figure it’s time you fess up to what really happened with Johnny. It just don’t make sense him up and disappearing like you say he did.”

Their gazes fall on me and I meet each of them with relative calm. “I see how it must look,” I say, moving my eyes between them. “But it’s the truth. He up and left one day and hasn’t come back since.”

Annie, the preacher’s wife, says in her high-pitched voice, “did ya’ll argue or something? If you did, maybe we can rest easier knowing he ran off upset, you know?”

I smile a tight sort of smile that says I don’t believe I’m smart but definitely don’t believe I’m dumb either. “The sheriff already asked me that. I told him Johnny and I never fought a day in our lives. You all know how much alike we were. Folks even said we could have been twins if we didn’t have different parents.”

She turns her nose up at that, but I pay her no mind. Another one of the group, a man named Red due to his ruddy cheeks, puts his hands down hard on the table. “I think it’s time we all let this go. Johnny was known to stray, that ain’t no secret.” Red looks to me with pity or sadness, or both. “I know you don’t like hearing that, Summer. But it’s the truth. I think it’s likely he run off with another woman and figured he couldn’t show his face again.”

A murmur passes among my guests, until the preacher speaks his mind. “I agree. The Lord works in mysterious ways. I say it’s high time we all let this pass and trust what Summer tells us. It ain’t right for none of us to judge, for we all live in glass houses.”

Agreement percolates between them, and one at a time they give me hugs and kisses on the cheek and tell me this will be the last summer we all meet this way. From now on, things will be different. Life will pass easier and joy will replace suspicion. I wave to the last of them then close the door.

My heart pounds in my chest. Sweat beads my brow. I’ve done it. They believe me. It took a dozen years, and after suffering months of pain from the surgeries, five of them in all, and sleepless nights from the hormones that ravaged my body, I can finally live my life as I am today. All without another year of waiting and worrying someone will discover the truth.

I wash the dishes then use the restroom, standing before the toilet to urinate as I’ve done since my youth. I wonder if I ever slipped, maybe turning around at hearing the name Johnny, letting on that I’d really killed my wife and taken her identity.

But a million dollars says I did just fine.