The Days of Summer

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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This paperback edition 2007

First published in the U.S.A by

Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 2006

Copyright © Jill Barnett 2006

Jill Barnett asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560025

Ebook edition © SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007278916 Version: 2018-05-21

This writing life I’ve stumbled through has brought me an abundance of riches, the most valuable a friendship oftwenty years.

To Kristin and Benjamin Hannah, who have stood by my side and protected my back through all the wins and losses. Only the angels could have sent you.

Life can only be understood

backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard

Title PageCopyrightDedicationPart One: 1957Chapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourPart Two: 1970Chapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty OneChapter Twenty TwoPart Three: 2002Chapter Twenty ThreeChapter Twenty FourChapter Twenty FiveChapter Twenty SixChapter Twenty SevenChapter Twenty EightChapter Twenty NineChapter ThirtyChapter Thirty OneChapter Thirty TwoChapter Thirty ThreeChapter Thirty FourChapter Thirty FiveChapter Thirty SixEpilogueAcknowledgmentsThe Days Of SummerQuestions And Topics For DiscussionA Conversation With The AuthorAbout the AuthorAbout the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

Southern California

Warm and motionless nights were natural in LA, a place where so much of life was staged and the weather seldom competed for attention. There, events and people stood in the limelight. On most nights, somewhere in the city, searchlights panned the sky; tonight, in front of the La Cienega Art Gallery. All the art show regulars were there in force, names from the society pages, old money and new, along with enough existentialist poets and bohemians to fill every coffeehouse from Hollywood to Hermosa Beach.

Well-known art critics chatted about perspective and meaning, debated social message. They adored the artist, a vibrant, exotic woman whose huge canvases had violent splashes of color charging across them, and wrote about her work in effusive terms as bold as the work itself, likening her to the abstract expressionists Pollock and de Kooning. Rachel Espinosa was the darling of the LA art scene, and Rudy Banning’s wife.

Rudy came to the show late, after drinking all afternoon. His father was right: he was a sucker—something that was easier to swallow if he chased it with a bottle of scotch. The searchlights were off when he parked his car outside the gallery. Once inside, he leaned against the front door to steady himself.

A milky haze of cigarette smoke hovered over the colorless sea of black berets, gray fedoras, and French twists. In one corner, a small band played an odd arrangement of calypso and jazz—Harry Belafonte meets Dave Brubeck. The booze flowed, cigarettes were stacked every few feet on tall silver stanchions, and the catering was Catalan—unusual—and done to propagate the lie that his wife, Rachel Maria-Teresa Antonia Espinosa, was pure Spanish aristocracy. This was her night, and her stamp was on the whole production.

She stood near the back half of the room, under a canned light and in front of one of her largest and latest pieces, Ginsberg Howls. The crowd milled around her, but most managed to stay a few feet away, as if they were afraid to get too close to such an icon. A newspaper reporter for the Los Angeles Times interviewed her, while a staff photographer with rolled-up shirtsleeves circled around her, snapping photos with sharp, blinding flashes.