Cover

Author of the New York Times Bestseller

That Summer

Jennifer Weiner

An eShort Story

Off Season

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

Title Page

Off Season

“A writer?”

The agent smirked at the familiar tone—excitement, fascination, a slightly morbid curiosity. The way kids sometimes sounded when they glimpsed some odd-looking animal at the zoo. “She is. One of mine, as it happens.”

“An actual writer. Staying at our house.” Donna Jenkins’s voice had turned dreamy. “How exciting!”

“Very exciting,” the agent agreed, and wondered how much of Donna’s enthusiasm had to do with the idea of an actual, published writer inhabiting their house, and how much could be ascribed to the extra $60,000 she and her husband would be making by renting their place for the off-season, when all the summer people returned to the cities they’d left in June, leaving their big, empty houses behind. “But she’s got some requirements.”

“Oh?”

“She needs absolute privacy to work. She can’t be disturbed or distracted. She can’t have anyone in the house, or around it. No workmen, no lawn service, no cleaning ladies. Nobody shoveling out the drive, or coming to repoint the brickwork. Just her.”

“Hmm.” The agent could hear Donna thinking, weighing the inconvenience of a troublesome houseguest against the paycheck the guest would bring. “We were planning on having some things done in the winter. The living room needs to be repainted, and we were going to replace the carpet in the—”

“I understand,” the agent interrupted. “If it’s too much of a disruption, I can keep looking.”

“No! No. I’m sure we can reschedule everything.” Now the agent could hear a hint of desperation in Donna’s tone. Her husband, Mark, had taken an early pandemic-related retirement package from the bank that had employed him. The money faucet that had gushed reliably all through the 1990s and the aughts and the boom-boom Trump years had slowed its flow to a trickle. If Donna and Mark were going to keep their summer palace, they’d need a new income stream.

“It’s just—a six-bedroom house for one woman.” Donna gave a nervous giggle. “Her books must sell very well.”

“Not yet,” the agent said. But they will, he thought. He’d taken steps to make sure of it.