Oh, guilt. His old friend. He should be used to it by now as a parent. There was always something else, something better, he knew he ought to be doing. Every day he encountered some innovative parenting technique, some new superfood to add to their diet, a learning model he should be following.
“I’m quite certain you could find a friend here to ride with,” Ian said. “We will be here almost a month. Perhaps you could connect with some other girls and we can arrange a riding date or something.”
“I have friends with daughters around your age,” Gemma said. “I’ll talk to them about planning a few outings.”
“Maybe.”
Amelia did not look particularly enthusiastic at the idea of making a new friend. She used to be a friendly, open child. Since the onset of Susan’s illness and then her death a year earlier, Amelia had become more introverted and nervous about new situations.
For the past year, Ian felt as if they had been simply going through the motions of their lives. He had been hoping this trip together to the States would help snap them all out of their doldrums.
Neither child was thrilled about leaving their friends in Oxford to move back to Dorset to be closer to his parents. Perhaps by the time the summer was over, they would feel better about the move.
Regardless, he was glad to see his sister so happy. For different reasons, they had all struggled with their older brother’s death in a car accident just months before Susan’s diagnosis. Ian suspected Gemma’s grief was mingled with a certain guilt, considering she had been driving the car at the time and had also been coping with her own injuries.
The accident hadn’t been her fault whatsoever. An inebriated lorry driver had plowed through a light and struck the passenger side of Gemma’s car as she and David had been heading home after a party.
No one blamed her except Gemma herself.
He was delighted to see that her emotional scars seemed to be healing. Throughout the dinner, her happiness seemed to surround them all like a warm blanket. The dinner was pleasant and the company more so.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” he told her when they had all walked out to the car park and he’d loaded the children into the rental.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Gemma said, giving him a tight embrace.
“As am I.”
She looked to make the sure the children were inside the vehicle with the doors closed before she spoke in a low voice.
“How are you doing, Ian? Really doing, I mean. I don’t want to hear platitudes. I want the truth.”
The weight of responsibility pressed in on him. He had less than a month to savor this time with the children before he had to return to England, pack up their things and move to start the next phase of his life.
“Couldn’t be better,” he said, forcing his voice to be cheerful. “This part of the world is every bit as beautiful as you promised. I have my work and my children. I’m happy.”
“Are you?”
He knew all she was asking. Gemma knew the whole ugly truth about his marriage.
“I’m happy,” he repeated firmly. “We’re on a grand adventure. I can’t wait to dig into my research project, to go fishing on the lake, to take some hikes into the mountains. I’m here with my children. What else could I possibly need?”
She raised an eyebrow and he suspected he knew what she wanted to say. A woman. Particularly a woman like Samantha Fremont.
Why was it an unfortunate truism that those in love couldn’t rest unless everyone else in their circle shared their condition?
He couldn’t tell his optimistic, deeply enamored sister that he was done with love. He had scars on his heart that covered everything good and right that might have once been there.
“Don’t worry about me. This is the season of your life when you should be focused on you and Josh and the life you’re building together.”
“I can’t help it. I believe worrying about my family is one of my superpowers.”
He smiled a little and hugged her back. “Well, try to contain it, then. I don’t need you to worry about me. I need you to think about your spectacular dress and how deliriously happy you’ll be wearing it when you marry in only a few weeks.”
“Don’t worry. I am good at multitasking. I can do both of those things,” she said, which made him smile.
He really did feel better here in Haven Point than he had in months. Years, even, as if he had set a large weight down when he drove past the town’s welcome sign.
CHAPTER THREE
SUNDAY AFTERNOON AFTER CHURCH, Samantha was working away in her sewing room with the television set to a documentary about coral reefs she would likely never visit when her doorbell rang.
She waited for the chorus of yips and yaps that always heralded a new arrival at her home these days but was greeted by a frightening silence. With a jolt, she suddenly remembered she had put Betsey and the puppies outside in the large portable pet enclosure she had bought so they could play in the grass and enjoy the June sunshine.
Okay, that was only part of the reason. Mostly she needed a little peace and quiet to focus on her work. Gemma Summerhill’s dress would be spectacular. Each time she worked on it, she fell in love a little more with the elegant lines. Kat was right. It was one of her best designs.
Back in the early days, her mother had really been the seamstress, though Sam felt as though she had always known how to sew. Her mother started her with her own sewing machine when she was still in grade school and she could remember sewing an elaborate doll wardrobe for her and for Katrina.
At first, she had started designing with things found around the house. Scraps of fabric her mother had discarded, a glue gun, hair scrunchies.
After she received her own sewing machine for Christmas along with some lengths of fabric and a basic doll dress pattern, Sam had learned to add her own flair to outfits.
Oh, she and Katrina used to have fun. She felt a pang, missing those times. They still got together as often as possible and both worked hard to maintain their friendship. But Katrina was so busy with her marriage and children with extra challenges. Sam didn’t like to take her away from Bowie and the children too often strictly for girl time.
The doorbell rang again, yanking her out of her thoughts, and she winced as she jumped up. What an idiot. She had completely forgotten someone was there.
When are you going to get your head out of the clouds and focus on what’s going on around you?
Her mother’s voice was strong today. She sighed as she hurried to the front door and pulled it open.
The children from next door stood on her porch, their arms overflowing with familiar black-and-tan puppies.
“Hello, ma’am,” the girl said politely. “Are these your puppies? They’ve wandered into our garden.”
Wandered. Oh, no. She shot a look at the enclosure she had set up so carefully earlier that day, puzzled to see it looked completely intact.
How on earth had they escaped this time?
“Oh my goodness. You little rascals.”
“Excuse me?” The girl looked affronted.
“Not you. I’m sorry. I was speaking about the puppies. They’re very good escape artists. I’m not sure how they keep getting out. It doesn’t matter what measures I take to prevent it, they immediately find another way to escape.”
“I love puppies,” the little boy, Thomas, said with a dreamy look, resting his cheek on Coco’s head.
“They are adorable, aren’t they? These particular puppies are very mischievous, though. They are always trying to explore.”
“Can I put one down?” The girl, Amelia, had her hands full trying to contain them—the runt of the litter, Oscar, and his chubby older brother, Calvin.
“Yes. Of course. Here. Let me take one.” She grabbed the larger of the puppies, who licked at her forearm as it wriggle
d to get away. “I need to find their mama, too.”
“When we walked past on the way to your door, she was sound asleep in her pen,” Thomas informed her.
“Perhaps she was enjoying having all that room to herself,” Amelia suggested.
“No doubt you are correct. I imagine it can’t be so easy to have puppies climbing on you all day long.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Thomas said cheerfully. “I love puppies.”
He was adorable, she had to admit. She wanted to hug him like he was hugging the puppy.
“I do love them, too, especially when they stay where they’re supposed to. Let’s go see if we can figure out how they wriggled out this time.”
She and the two children walked to the metal enclosure, supposedly held into place by stakes she had driven into the ground. They did indeed find Betsey stretched out inside by herself, looking perfectly content with the world.
She could see immediately how the puppies had escaped. Somehow they must have managed to burrow under one of the metal panels that was raised off the uneven ground only about three or four inches.
She should have noticed that one of the fence panels wasn’t flush to the ground. If she hadn’t been so distracted by her workload, she might have done a much better job of ensuring the pen was secure.
“Oh, you little rascals,” she exclaimed again, shoving the panel farther down into the dirt.
The puppies were too smart for their own good and seemed to spur each other on to increasing levels of deviousness.
She set Coco inside the pen and the children did the same with the other two puppies.
“I love dogs. I wish we had one at home,” Thomas said with a happy sigh as soon as he’d set his puppy down inside the enclosure. “We don’t have one at home.”
“No. But Grandfather and Nana have four,” Amelia reminded him.
“Four. That’s a lot of dogs.”
“They’re very cute. We play with them whenever we go to their house. I suppose we’ll see them more, now that we’re moving to be closer to them.”
“Right now we live in Oxford,” Thomas informed her. “That’s in England.”
Fitting, that a nerdy salmon researcher lived in a university town like Oxford. Why was he moving to be closer to his parents? For help with the children, now that his wife was gone?
“How are you enjoying your stay here in the States?”
Amelia pursed her lips as if considering how to answer. “I miss my friends, if you want the truth,” she finally said. “My best friends are called Jane and Sarah and they’re eight years old, same as I am.”
“Eight is a very good age,” Samantha said.
“I think twelve is the perfect age. My father says I can get my ears pierced when I’m twelve. I like your earrings very much.”
Sam touched one of the dangles and sent it swinging. She had made these herself at McKenzie’s store one time when the Helping Hands had tried their collective hand at beading.
“Thank you. Have you gone swimming or anything like that out in the lake while you’ve been here?”
“I wanted to. We waded a little the other day but the water was so cold we nearly froze!” Amelia looked aghast. “I thought it would be like going to Nice in the summer. We used to do that with our mum during holiday. Swimming in the ocean there was like having a bath.”
“Only with about a hundred other people,” Thomas said.
“Yes. And in a really big bathtub,” Amelia agreed.
Lake Haven was always cold, since it was filled by snow runoff from the surrounding Redemption mountain range.
“That sounds nice. You must have enjoyed it very much.”
Amelia nodded. “The beach was nice, I suppose, but spending time with Mum was the best part. She liked to build sandcastles with us and she always said ours was good enough to win a prize.”
“Our mum died,” Thomas offered, his voice small and sad.
These poor children, losing their mother at such a young age. Her heart ached for them and she wanted to cuddle them both close.
“How lovely, then, that you have such wonderful memories of the time you spent with her.”
“Our mother was sick for an awfully long time. Months and months,” Amelia said.
“I imagine that must have been very difficult for all of you.”
“Yes.” Amelia acknowledged her sympathy with a regal sort of nod and they stood for a moment, each lost in thought, until Coco waddled after a ball and ended up falling on her face, which made the children laugh.
Samantha loved how resilient children could be. Even when they were grieving and sad, they could often still manage to find moments of joy in the world around them.
She had tried to be strong after her beloved father died when she was around Amelia’s age, as her mother told her she must be, but in her case the shock had been as powerful as the grief.
One day he had been there, the next he was gone.
At the time, Linda told her he had been sick, that he’d been sick a long time and they had kept it from her.
In her child’s imagination, she had imagined cancer or a bad heart. Something tragic but understandable.
She could still remember learning the truth about a year after her father died. She had been hiding inside one of the circular racks of clothing in the shop with her dolls. That had been her happy place, where she could be alone, away from her mother’s sometimes biting tongue. She used to love sitting inside the rack and playing surrounded by all the cool, soft fabrics of the dresses.
Two of her mother’s customers from Shelter Springs, women she hadn’t known well, had been looking through the rack, not knowing she was there. Shopping and gossiping were perennially two of the favorite pastimes of some of the women around Lake Haven.
One of the women had whispered something about her mother and the store and the ugly clothing Linda had started ordering in to stock the shelves, then they both had laughed unpleasantly.
“She’s awful, isn’t she? Is it any wonder her husband killed himself to get away from her?” the other one had said.
“Poor man,” the other one had said.
Samantha hadn’t known what they meant but knew by their tone it couldn’t be good. She remembered feeling sick, hiding there inside the clothing rack, her stomach turning as if she needed to throw up. She hadn’t wanted to reveal herself to those vile, ugly women, not wanting to let them know she was there at all or that she had heard what they said.
She stayed inside the rack until closing time, when her mother had finally dragged her out so they could go home and have dinner. She remembered barely touching her food that day and for several days afterward, those words running and running around in her head.
Killed himself. Her father had killed himself. He hadn’t had cancer or the flu or some other terrible disease. He had chosen to leave her and her mother.
That moment had changed her fundamentally, though it had taken her years longer to fully understand.
Technically, Linda hadn’t lied. Her father had indeed been sick for a long time, a deep clinical depression that he hadn’t been able to overcome.
When she was a child, she didn’t understand that. She had been hurt and angry, as any child would be. She had missed him dearly, especially as her mother’s personality had undergone a dramatic shift after Lyle Fremont died. While Linda had always been sharp-tongued and impatient, her comments began to take on a cruel edge. Linda had become bitter and angry, had changed from a devoted, loving mother to someone impossible to please, who seemed to find fault in everything Sam did.
As an adult, Samantha had tried to be compassionate, imagining how her mother must have felt after her husband killed himself. Betrayed, abandoned. Alone with a needy child and a struggling business.
She was aware that her compassion and sense of respon
sibility had kept her in Haven Point long after she would have otherwise escaped.
“We will always miss our mother but we’re managing,” Amelia said now, her voice small and resigned, as if it was taking every ounce of her energy to stay brave in the face of such overwhelming sadness.
“We still have Father,” Thomas said. “And Mrs. Gilbert, who looks after us. And Nana and Grandfather.”
“How very wonderful it must feel to have so many people who love you,” she said.
She would have adored that. After her father died, Samantha had been left with only her mother. Linda had been estranged from her family, something she never spoke about, and Lyle had been an only child whose parents died when he was still a young man.
Linda had been Sam’s only relative. As far as Sam knew, she had been all her mother had, too. Perhaps if she hadn’t been an only child, if there had been another sibling or two in the family, her mother’s laser-sharp focus on her might have been diluted. Perhaps she wouldn’t have had to bear the weight of her mother’s expectations all on her own.
“I suppose you’re right.” Amelia studied the dogs, who had once more started clamoring over Betsey to nurse. “I still miss my mother.”
“I understand. My mother died just after the new year. I miss her very much.” Though, of course, it wasn’t at all the same. She was nearly thirty.
To her astonishment Thomas slipped his hand in hers, his palm a little moist and warm but still providing comfort beyond words. She stood for a moment, staring out at the lake, holding the hand of a six-year-old boy and fighting the unexpected urge to cry.
“I’m very sorry,” he said.
“That’s very kind of you,” she managed through the lump in her throat.
“Was she a nice mother?” Amelia asked.
Samantha did not know how to answer that. No one would ever call Linda Fremont nice. Smart? Yes. Determined? Yes. Nice didn’t really apply.
“She could be nice,” she qualified. “What about your mother? What was she like?”
Summer at Lake Haven Page 4
