Status Updates From Wade House

He was on the potted palm, and the Bryn Mawr girl was on his lap.

<spoiler>I hate Jeff Wade and I'm not happy with the heroine's regrets for confronting him. I read in a blurb she murders her husband and right now I really hope that's true.</spoiler>

"But I can't imagine Jeff would be remotely interested in girls who read poetry." "And why not?" What sort of girl would you expect?"

"Some painted floozie with a pinchable bottom whom he picked up in a bar." His eyes, now serious, studied me for a moment. "Tell me," he said at last, "why did you marry that oaf?"

"My God!" He pushed his bill cap back on his head. "Edna St. Vincent Millay!" 'I only know that summer sang in me. . . .'
I leapt to my feet and snatched the book from his hands. "Poetry," he said. "Romantic love poetry." "And what's wrong with that?" "Nothing. Nothing at all. Wherever did Jeff fine you" "We met at school," I said. "Seems to me you ought to be there now."

I sat upon the hot sand, clasping my knees, gazing at the combers as they hit the rimmed rock....Suddenly I had the strange feeling I was being watched. It was a queer sensation, for I was all alone on the beach. And yet it persisted, a subtle rising of the hairs on the back of my neck. I turned around. No one was there. Then, above the sound of the waves, I thought I heard my name called.

"But I was neither pretty nor socially at ease, and rather than compete and fail, as I surely thought I would in the frenetic college whirl, I walled myself up behind my books and studies"

So far the book's heroine and set-up reminds me slightly of Rebecca and I'm here for it.

"I have not always lived with the dreadful memory of Wade House.

There was a time when a mourning dove, sitting high up in the elm's charcoal branches, calling with its bittersweet echoing cry, did not remind me of the death and terror that lay beyond the rusty iron-grille gate and sagging facade of that decaying house. "


I'm hooked 😍