The Fourth Summer

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  Caitlin waited until Marcus stood up. “You’ve been outside,” she whispered. “You got some exercise.”

  “How did you know?” He looked puzzled.

  “You’re looser, lighter. I don’t know how I know. I just do. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you out of your mind?” She was still trying to keep her voice down. “Are you trying to be thrown off the jury?”

  “No, of course I’m not. It was legit. I was with Andrea. We went for a run. It was her idea. She suggested it last night. She’s training for a marathon. She said that she wanted a training partner.”

  A training partner? If Joan and Delia were right, a training partner wasn’t all Andrea wanted. “Why didn’t you ask the rest of us?”

  “She’s the deputy. I don’t know if she asked other people or not.”

  Oh, she didn’t. Caitlin could pretty much guarantee that. “And I suppose she brought you water.”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, she did.”

  Caitlin could not compete with this, someone who could get Seth out of the motel. She was powerless. She couldn’t even get Fred to stop poking her with his elbow.

  The day went slowly. The Revelation game started up again, and the four men played all day. People were still annoyed with Stephanie for finishing the puzzle. She was clearly a very nice person, and she wasn’t used to people being angry with her. She kept offering to take the puzzle apart so everyone else could work on it again, but no one wanted that.

  Caitlin was coming to an unhappy realization. She had indeed become the popular girl, the queen bee, Miss Congeniality. People—sane, adult, mature people—wanted to sit next to her, be doing what she was doing, have her approve of what they told her about themselves. When at lunch she had gone to an empty table, hoping to sit with Marcus and Seth as she had done at breakfast, April and Heather instantly moved from their table to sit with her, and Stephanie followed.

  April was getting married in the fall, which meant that Heather had to talk about every wedding she had ever been to, heard about, or read about. Stephanie wanted to know if Caitlin had a boyfriend. Stephanie and Heather didn’t either, but they wished that they did, and they wanted to talk about that...even though there was nothing to say.

  * * * *

  The deputies had brought pizza for lunch and promised tacos for dinner. Subway, McDonald’s, Chinese, pizza, tacos, and the motel breakfasts, that’s what they had had to eat so far. Caitlin asked if someone could go to the grocery store and buy some microwavable bags of fresh vegetables. There was a microwave in the breakfast room.

  But the deputy said that the judge would have to authorize it.

  Sally came by in the middle of the afternoon, looking even more exhausted than the day before. She did have good news. The first was that their families would be allowed to visit on Sunday. The jurors would be taken to a nearby park so that their location would not be disclosed.

  “Like they can’t all figure it out?” Keith said.

  Sally ignored that. Family members had been told that they could bring more clothes for the jurors, and enough had wanted to bring food that it would probably be like a picnic.

  “Do you know who is coming?” Yvette looked worried. Caitlin knew how unwelcome Yvette felt in her sister’s mobile home.

  Sally shook her head, but Delia and Joan both said that Yvette didn’t need to worry. Their families would bring enough food to share.

  When Andrea came on duty in the evening, Caitlin couldn’t see how she could engineer a private conversation to ask the deputy about joining the morning run. But even if she could have, she didn’t want to. She wanted Seth to ask. She wanted him to be thinking about her, trying to take care of her.

  But he obviously did not. It was clear on Sunday morning that he had had another long, satisfying run, and no one else mentioned having gone.

  Well, this was hardly the first time he had put himself first.

  * * * *

  Their first kiss had been the start of a magical time that third summer. The overgrown, chained property at the lake started to feel like theirs. They brought a bucket and a broom to scrub the pollen and moss off the dock. They tested the rocks along the shoreline to find an easy path into the water. They bought old lawn chairs at a yard sale and hid them back among the trees.

  And it wasn’t long at all before Caitlin was ready.

  Her boss moved her to the day shift, and they had every evening together. Their families were used to the two of them being together as much as possible so there was only one question, and that was from MeeMaw.

  “Do you love him?”

  They had never talked about love, but Caitlin could answer instantly. “Yes.”

  “Have you told him?”

  She shook her head.

  “I suggest that you should tell him. You’re too young to be making promises, but you should at least tell each other that.”

  So in his car outside the Dairy Queen the next afternoon, she said, “We weren’t going to play games with each other, right? We were going to be straight.”

  “Yeah.” He sounded puzzled, as she had already been straight about having sex.

  “Then I want to say this. I love you, Seth.”

  “Oh.” He was surprised. He hadn’t thought about this. “Oh, yes. Yes, of course. That’s what this is.” He waved his hand between the two of them. “It’s love, isn’t it?”

  Then two weeks later, it was over. He was gone.

  He followed obsessively what was happening in the snowboarding world. He knew who was training where, who was practicing which trick, who was getting hurt. Most of the top US snowboarders were together in New Zealand while Seth was stuck in North Carolina.

  A couple of the hopefuls apparently weren’t making the progress the national coaches had expected. “See,” he said to Caitlin, “they should have asked me.”

  “I thought that your parents didn’t want you to train year-round.”

  “Some guys said that that was the only reason I wasn’t asked. I know I am as good as three-quarters of those people.”

  Then suddenly his dad got a call. Nothing had really been said, but his dad had gotten a call. And he hadn’t ruled it out.

  “Why would your parents change their minds?” Caitlin asked. “What’s different?”

  “The company. The factory. It would be huge if I got on the Olympic team.”

  “But you’re only sixteen. I thought you were aiming for four years from now.”

  “Well, sure, but...”

  She knew Seth. And Seth really liked being on top, one of the best.

  His mother took him all the way across the state to the Duke Medical Center so he could be tested and poked by sports-medicine doctors who concluded that her maternal instincts were far too cautious. There was no reason why Seth couldn’t go back to training.

  So the people who ran things in the snowboarding world were sending him a ticket to New Zealand.

  Of course he was thrilled. “I wish you could go with me,” he said to Caitlin. “That would make it perfect if you were there.”

  “Seriously? Like that would ever be possible?”

  She must have sounded a little sharp because he drew back and after a moment said, “You know that I have to go, don’t you? For the company and all.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Seth. Your parents talked to the doctors because of the company. You, you’re going for yourself.”

  Caitlin knew that there was never any question of him staying in North Carolina for her. And really there was only a month left to the summer, actually only three and a half weeks. He would have been nuts to give up this opportunity for another twenty-five days with her.

  Yet still...couldn’t he have minded more?

  “It’s going to be different from now on,” he s
aid. “We aren’t kids anymore, and we love each other. We’re starting to have our own money. We can figure out how to see each other during the year. We won’t have to wait until next summer. I promise.”

  But MeeMaw had been right. They were too young to make promises.

  * * * *

  A different bus was waiting to take them to the park to meet their families. Yvette was clinging to Caitlin; there was no way not to sit next to her.

  “Do you think my sister will come?” Yvette asked.

  “I don’t know.” Caitlin tried to sound cheerful. “But Delia and Joan said that their grandchildren are likely to be there. You can help with them.”

  “Oh, okay.” That seemed to comfort Yvette.

  The two of them were sitting near the back of the bus, and when they got to the park, the people in front of them were taking forever to get off. It turned out that the light outside was so bright that each person unthinkingly paused at the door, waiting for his or her eyes to adjust.

  They had all turned into moles with no idea what to do in the sunlight.

  Her parents and MeeMaw were waiting under a tree. They had brought lawn chairs, and there were four chairs. They had brought one for her.

  Of course they had. It was common decency. But it seemed like so much more than that, someone trying to make something right for her, someone caring about her. By the time she reached them, she couldn’t help herself. She was crying.

  “Caitlin, sweetheart.” Her mother pulled her close. “Baby, what’s wrong? Is it that bad?”

  “No, no, it isn’t.” Caitlin still clung to her. “It’s just boring, and the water’s so horrible.” And Seth, he’s running with a deputy. I can’t talk to him. I can’t be alone with him. MeeMaw handed her a tissue. “I don’t know why I am crying. I just want to be home.”

  “Oh, honey, it’s going to be a—” Her mother broke off and then forced her voice to get all bright and mom-like. “It’s going to be fine.”

  But that wasn’t she had started to say. She had started to say it’s going to be a while.

  Of course it was going to be a while. Caitlin knew that. They hadn’t even had a full day of testimony, and the dick lawyers seemed determined to drag things out as long as possible.

  “Here you go.” Her dad handed her a bottle of water. “Tom Street brought a couple flats of water. He figured that you were at the Best Western and that their water might be bad.”

  Caitlin turned the bottle to look at the label. It had the Street Boards logo with its “& Snow” red graffiti. And the water was wonderful, coming from the pure underground streams of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Caitlin felt it flooding through her body, down her arms and legs, into her cells, cleansing, restoring.

  There was an insane amount of food. Big aluminum pans of potato salad and macaroni and cheese, a platter of Dave’s smoked meats and fish, two casseroles, brownies, and cookies, all of it homemade. Fortunately her parents had brought a big green salad.

  Caitlin would have liked to sit in the sun, drink water, eat salad, and let her mom hold her hand and her dad put his arm around her. Jurors weren’t supposed to touch each other. She wanted to be touched. She wanted to be a little kid, to be taken care of. But she had to sit at one of the picnic tables and go over business. Seth and his family were at another table; they had papers spread out in front of them too.

  Trina had been working hard. She had forwarded to Caitlin’s parents every email she had sent or received, and Caitlin’s parents had printed them out. But much too much of the work had involved farming out ongoing projects to other designers.

  “You’re going to take a big financial hit, aren’t you?” her dad asked.

  She nodded.

  “Do you know if you are allowed to sublet your apartment? Trina suggested if you could sublet it for a month—”

  “A month?” Caitlin was horrified.

  “I’m not saying that’s how long the trial will last,” her father said quickly. “You can always stay with us afterward or go visit your sister. Do you know if you are allowed?”

  She nodded. She had started out subletting the place herself, but now she had a “master tenant” lease. Since her rent was by far her biggest expense, subletting the apartment would help a lot. So she suggested that her parents contact her friends Richard and Peter. Peter was a real estate agent.

  It was hard to get all their business done, as the other jurors were interrupting, wanting to introduce their families. Some people knew MeeMaw was Dr. Thurmont’s wife, and of course everyone commented on how Caitlin and her father had the same dark eyes.

  Far too soon the bus pulled up, and reluctantly the jurors got back on. The shopping bags and suitcases that the families had brought went into the hold. Deputies would have to search them. People were allowed to take only the food that they could keep without refrigeration in their rooms. Apparently health department regulations wouldn’t allow the leftovers to be stored or served in the motel’s breakfast room.

  On the bus she was sitting with Yvette, but Seth was across from her. He was wearing a watch again. His parents must have brought it for him. It looked new and very ordinary. The black strap was so shiny that it had to be vinyl. He shot her a quick glance and raised his eyebrows. It was a signal of some sort, but she didn’t know what it meant.

  In the parking lot back at the motel he knelt down to tie his shoe. He wanted to talk to her. So she told Yvette to go on ahead—fortunately Yvette didn’t ask questions—and she reached Seth just as it would have looked strange for him to be fussing with his shoe any longer.

  Had he seen her crying? Was he going to ask about that? Was he concerned about her? She would laugh it off. Oh, my parents brought a fourth lawn chair so I cried. But he would have noticed. That mattered.

  “What do you think I should do about the water?” he asked.

  Oh. He hadn’t noticed. Well, water was the source of life and all that. “Do? What do you mean?”

  “Only you, Marcus, and I really care. This is what Keith and Yvette drink all the time, and the others all seem delighted to have free soda.”

  “Some people do have to watch their pennies more carefully that you do.” She knew that she was sounding a little schoolmarmish. “But you aren’t suggesting that we hold the water for the three snobs, are you?”

  “I was asking what you thought.”

  She was suddenly angry. “I’m thinking that you could start being more of a team player.”

  “Team player? What are you talking about?”

  The other jurors had gone inside, but some of the deputies were unloading the bus and didn’t seem to care that Seth and Caitlin were still outside.

  “That stupid game you men have been playing all day. That’s all the four of you have done, and you won’t include anyone else. And your parents brought you a watch.”

  “So? What does that have to do with being a team player?”

  “You could have asked them to bring one for Marcus. He doesn’t have any family around.”

  “Oh...I guess I should have.”

  She had landed a body blow. So she hammered on. “And the running... Once again you didn’t take anyone else out.”

  “I asked Andrea about that,” he said. “But she said that she was only authorized to go out with one person.”

  “That’s crap. The smokers go out with one deputy all the time.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. She’s being completely unprofessional. She’s training for a marathon, and she knows that the rest of us will slow her down.”

  “She may have a bit of an agenda,” he acknowledged, “and I’m sorry, I really am, but my not going with her probably won’t change anything for everyone else. She’ll just wait until she is off duty and go by herself.”

  “I suppose,” Caitlin said gr
udgingly.

  “And the game. Haven’t you noticed that every time we stop, Fred tries to pick a fight with Teddy? At least the game is keeping that from happening.”

  What had he said at the end of the third summer? I’m doing it for the company.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Seth,” she said, just as she had said back then. “You’re having a grand time, and that’s really what you care about.”

  * * * *

  Okay, Caitlin thought as she freshened up after the picnic, to the list of godawful citizen, ungenerous sister, bitchy juror, and resentful puzzle owner, she could add—what?—stupid-ass, lovesick teen.

  No, that wasn’t right. She didn’t love him. She wasn’t wallowing in bitterness about what had happened years ago.

  It was simply that she was disappointed in him. She had expected better of him.

  In every crew a few rowers have longer arms than the others. They can stretch forward farther and pull back more, giving their oars a few more precious inches in the water. But they can’t stroke to their maximum. All eight oars have to catch and release at exactly the same instant. Each rower must do exactly what the person in the stroke seat is doing. Few other sports require such precise teamwork.

  But snowboarding? It was as individual as a sport could get.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Where did Caitlin get off being so pissed off at him? Telling him that he wasn’t a team player? Him, of all people?

  He and his friends were dedicated to keeping snowboarding what it used to be. The medal podiums now were dominated by the people who practiced in secret, who lived to win, who had entourages instead of friends. He, Nate, and Ben, they weren’t like that at all.

  Okay, so maybe Caitlin had learned the names of everyone’s kids and pets, and he hadn’t. What was she doing, running for prom queen?

  Wait, no. He didn’t want to be angry with her. Of all the people here, she was the one he should be getting along with.

  She was the one he had known forever. She was the one whose brain he could trust, whose heart he could trust. She was the one he had once loved.