The Fourth Summer

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  Marcus apologized. His computer was updating itself; it would be another few minutes.

  “I’m ready to go,” Keith announced and pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m not afraid of some reporters.”

  “Me either,” Dave agreed.

  “You should be,” Seth said bluntly. They didn’t know what it was going to be like out there. He did. “The judge is right. We don’t know anything. It’s going to be a piece of cake for someone to make us sound like idiots, and there will be people who want to make us sound like idiots.”

  “Why would they want to do that?” someone asked.

  “Because it will sell papers.”

  “I can’t believe that this is over,” April said...and she didn’t laugh.

  “Why don’t we all go back to the inn and have dinner together?” Joan suggested. “We’ve stuck together this long. Let’s figure out our next move together.”

  Marcus’s computer was finally on. “Does anyone remember what date we were sequestered? It may be easiest to start there.”

  During their last day of “freedom,” the judge had learned that the big newspaper in Charlotte was about to publish a story based on the supposedly secret details of pretrial plea negotiations. Both defendants had been willing to plead guilty to some of the charges; they had even been willing to do some jail time rather than go to trial, but the prosecution had been inflexible. The district attorney had wanted to go to trial. This was an election year.

  “Wait a second,” Dave said. “Are you saying that we ended up exactly where they could have started?”

  “It looks like it,” Marcus said mildly.

  This was beyond wack. What a waste.

  The judge had been heavily criticized from the beginning, Marcus continued. Some commentators thought that he should have made the lawyers agree to a deal.

  “Are they kidding?” Keith said. “How could he have done that? He couldn’t get them to shut up.”

  When the van came, Marcus switched to reading on his phone, following the case in the local newspaper. After taxpayers started to realize how much sequestration was costing, the judge was criticized for that as well. The jurors weren’t supposed to be reading about the trial, so how would they have found out about the plea negotiations? And if they did, couldn’t the judge instruct them to ignore it?

  That seemed impossibly naïve.

  “What about the lawyers?” Caitlin asked. “Aren’t people criticizing them?”

  “Yes. Apparently...hmm, this is taking me a minute...oh, okay, North Carolina has some statewide prosecutors who specialize in financial crimes. But the district attorney was trying to make the case that out here in the western part of the state we can handle our own stuff.”

  He certainly hadn’t made such a great case for that, now had he?

  There were people with notebooks and cameras outside the entrance to the parking lot. Deputies were keeping them off the inn property.

  “How would you... Did you... Tell us...” Questions were being shouted from the sidewalk.

  The innkeeper was waiting inside with a tray of champagne flutes.

  What on earth were they supposed to be celebrating?

  CHAPTER TEN

  There was a glass of champagne in her hand. Caitlin didn’t remember taking it.

  The innkeeper was saying that he had put the phones back in the rooms. If people wanted to talk to their families in actual privacy, they could go call.

  “Can we take the champagne with us?” someone asked.

  “Of course,” he answered. Apparently they were normal people again, able to make phone calls and drink unsupervised.

  Caitlin’s glass was almost empty. She didn’t remember drinking any. She held out the glass for a refill.

  Up in her room, she called her parents. They had heard the news. “So do you want us to come get you?”

  “I don’t know...I suppose not. I think we are all trying to get some kind of closure.”

  “It’s important to say goodbye,” her mother said. “You learn that in the military.”

  Caitlin felt confused. She didn’t want to go on being sequestered. Of course not. But what was she going to do next? Her apartment in San Francisco was sublet for the next two months. She could probably stay with friends if she were desperate to go back, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to go back at all.

  Her parents were still talking. The whole trial was being viewed as an election-year stunt, and the lawyers on both sides were being blamed for time-wasting courtroom antics. After a while she stopped them. “You know, I don’t really care.”

  “We’ve saved all the articles for you. You can read them when you get home.”

  Caitlin couldn’t think of anything she would want to do less.

  She tapped on the wall. There was no answer from Seth. Maybe he was already on the balcony. She opened the door and peered out. No, he wasn’t there. Maybe he had been in the bathroom. It was going to be hard to break that singing “Happy Birthday” twice habit. She went back in to tap again.

  And then remembered that she didn’t have to tap. She could knock on his door, go into his room.

  She crossed the hall and knocked. It felt very strange. How could something that had been completely forbidden just this morning be okay now?

  He opened the door. Over his shoulder she could see that his suitcase was almost completely packed.

  His expression was tight and hard. She had never seen him look like this. All the puckish openness to new adventures, the friendliness, the easy play of facial muscles, had contracted into something fierce.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Oh, right. We are independent adults again.” He sounded bitter, but he stepped back so she could come in. “This was some kind of big joke, wasn’t it?”

  “It does seem that it was a waste.”

  He drew back. “Aren’t you angry?”

  “No.” It seems like you are angry enough for both of us. “It happened. It’s over. I’m going to look for the good.”

  “The good? What good has come out of such a mess? Do you believe it? The whole trial, everything could have been avoided if the DA hadn’t been such a dick.”

  “His political career is probably over.”

  “Who the hell cares about that?”

  “Seth, why are you so angry?” It made her uneasy. “This isn’t like you. I thought the code on the slopes was not to look back, not to waste time in regret.”

  “That’s for snowboarders. Tell me what I have done that has anything to do with shredding? Do boarders need to know how installers are assigned at Sears or what it takes to become an assistant manager at the Nine West store at the outlet mall?”

  Those were April’s and Heather’s jobs.

  One thing about being a military kid was that your parents didn’t protect you from failure. They taught you how to deal with it. Make a mistake that cost your boat a race, and you knew what to do next.

  Seth’s parents, by getting him out of the very technical competitions, had kept him from failing. It had been the right decision for his career and for their company, but it had left him here, at twenty-five, not even understanding what failure was.

  “Seth, you didn’t fail.”

  “I set a goal, to get all twelve of us to deliberations, and that didn’t happen. Are you going to try to spin that as success?”

  “Well, no,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t in your control.”

  “What difference does that make? Technically it wasn’t my ‘fault’ that I medaled in the Olympics. Other people messed up. So why do I get to claim that as a big personal success and not get pissed off about this?”

  Caitlin had no idea. She couldn’t follow his logic. There probably wasn’t any.

  There was no point in talking. He wasn�
�t thinking clearly. She took his hand and started leading him toward the reading chair. “You can’t like feeling this way.”

  “No.”

  Words weren’t going to help. She pushed him back into the chair, circled behind him, and put her thumbs on the back of his neck and threaded her fingers through his thick hair. She had no training as a masseuse, but she knew the human body. At first she used her fingertips, feeling his scalp shift over the bone of his skill. Then, with firmer pressure, her thumb followed the muscles along his neck, muscles that connected his head to his shoulders.

  Even those muscles were strong. Snowboarders turned their heads constantly while wearing a helmet. Along the rest of his upper back each muscle group was cleanly defined, and his core, his glutes, his hamstrings, all those must be even finer, more perfectly developed.

  She leaned forward and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt so she could slip her hand down the front of his torso, following the contours of those muscles. She leaned forward and kissed his neck, letting her iris-scented hair brush against his face. Immediately his hand came up to touch the side of her face, hold it, cradle it. Her body grew soft and heavy with longing.

  Then suddenly he jerked away, almost lurching out of his chair. The buckle of his cheap watch caught her hair, and she winced.

  What was going on? Why had he stopped? Didn’t he want this as much as she did? Hadn’t he lain in his luxurious bed night after night and thought of her?

  After the Olympics, back when he wasn’t returning her messages, had she given up too easily? She had wondered that several times after college. Should she have tried harder to understand why he wasn’t calling? Maybe she would have found out that it had nothing to do with her. But she had been a kid herself; of course she had been wounded by his rejection.

  But she wasn’t a kid any more. She was a grown woman who cared deeply about a man who was struggling, feeling defeated. That was the richness, the meaning, the magic, that she hadn’t felt in June.

  His back was toward the bed, so she touched his chest, letting her fingertips rest on the warmth beneath his open collar. She pushed gently, easing him back until he was sitting on the bed.

  “Caitlin.” His voice was thick. “No. It wouldn’t be—”

  Be what? Fair? She knew he was feeling weary, wrung out. She didn’t care about herself. She pressed her fingers to his lips. “No, let me.” She dropped her hands to his shoulders, pushing him back. Now he was lying across the bed, his arms stretched across the sage-green coverlet, the buttons of his shirt straining. His eyes were half-closed, and a pulse throbbed in his neck.

  She slipped out of her panties and shimmied her skirt up over her thighs. She straddled him, and as she leaned forward to kiss him, his response was immediate.

  By the time she had his belt buckle undone, he was so aroused that she wasn’t sure she could free him from his clothes, but he lifted his hips, and in a moment his erection was pushing against her leg, moving, searching. She shifted, trying to lower herself onto him. She gasped at first, but all she had to do was look at his face, his much loved face, with his eyes now fully shut, and her body softened.

  She began to move. His arms curved upward, and he gripped her hips, moving her to his rhythm.

  How strong he was. He wasn’t hurting her, but he had taken control. For a moment she wasn’t sure that she felt human. Was she just something that he was moving up and down on his penis? A second later he thrust deep into her, shuddered, and climaxed

  His arms fell back to the bed, and she began to lift herself off him. “No, wait.” His voice was still thick. “Give me a minute.”

  She didn’t want a minute. She didn’t want her “turn.” That hadn’t been what this was about. Not for her. She murmured a few words and then moved herself back to stand up. Her skirt was twisted about her belly. She tugged it back in place and left, at the last minute remembering to pick up her panties.

  She set the six jets in her glass-walled shower to a gentle rain and let the water flow caressingly down her body. As she had done the first afternoon at the inn, she wrapped herself in the big white robe, then looked around the room. How much stuff she had accumulated—the crocheted pot holders Delia had taught her to make; the one scarf she had knit. She had done it in a garter stitch, row after row of knitting. She had wanted to do the stockinette stitch, a row of knitting, then a row of purling, but Joan had said that beginners should not be too ambitious. Normally Caitlin would have resisted that—I can learn anything—but part of Team Jury was going along, not arguing about every little thing, so Caitlin had obediently knit the whole thing.

  All the games and videos her parents had brought were in the library. She supposed that she should pack them up. Maybe the innkeeper would let her leave them for future guests. She didn’t want to see them again.

  And her clothes. She never wanted to wear any of them again. They felt like a prison uniform.

  * * * *

  The innkeeper had prepared dinner for them, grilling steaks he had been given by a caterer up in Boone, who was eager to have some of the future wedding business. He also announced that he was hiring a new assistant manager and head of housekeeping—Stephanie.

  Stephanie was flushed and happy. She had liked working in the bakery, but she was going to have so much more responsibility. One night a week she would be at the inn by herself, completely in charge. Her new boss had already given her a notebook to read, and she was going to take a CPR course. Signing up for that had been her own idea.

  Despite this good news, the jurors were picking at the food, cutting their steaks slowly, leaving their baked potatoes wrapped in the aluminum foil.

  Seth had come downstairs just as they were taking their places at the table. His hair was damp, and he was wearing his narrow, square-rimmed glasses. He apologized for being late. He had fallen asleep.

  A couple of people said that they were surprised at how tired they also felt. Then someone brought up the trial, and everyone acknowledged that they had no idea how they would have voted. They would have had to listen to the rest of the defense, then go through the charges one by one and for each of the defendants. It would have taken a long time, but they all would have rather done that than to be like this, sitting here in front of steak and a baked potato, feeling like it had all been a waste of time.

  “Okay, Seth,” Keith said, “you’re the most experienced at talking to reporters and such. So tell us what we should do.”

  Caitlin wondered how Seth would answer. He was weary. He felt like a failure. He didn’t want to be the leader anymore.

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, but then he came through. “Decide what your purpose is, why you are talking to them. I know that right now my purpose would be to punish everyone involved. I want to criticize the judge and all the lawyers. But that’s not going to achieve anything, and that’s not the kind of person I am. So I am going to keep my mouth shut.”

  “I would like people to know how great Sally has been,” April said. “Taking me dress shopping and all.”

  “Yes, but we don’t know what the office politics are. Public recognition could get her in hot water. You should touch base with her first.”

  They talked about it for a long time. Some people thought that they should all agree to talk to no one. Others didn’t like that idea. Still others weren’t sure. It wasn’t a rancorous discussion, and eventually everyone agreed that they should talk about it again at breakfast the next morning.

  “One more thing,” Norma said. “Caitlin, can you lip-read?”

  Caitlin stared at her. “How did you know?”

  “After you met with the judge, all the lawyers kept their mouths covered. It was the only explanation, especially since you know as much about the movement of facial muscles as some plastic surgeons. But why didn’t you tell them from the beginning?”

  “Because I couldn
’t when I started.” Caitlin explained what had happened and how she had anguished about whether or not to tell the judge.

  “I thought that this was the sort of thing that we were all supposed to talk about together,” someone said.

  “The thing is, if I decided not to tell the judge and then it came out later, that could be grounds for dismissing the verdict. And asking twelve people to keep a secret forever—”

  “You could have asked these twelve,” Delia said. “We could have done it.”

  Caitlin wasn’t sure what to say. She hadn’t trusted them. There was no getting around that.

  “I asked this before,” Norma said, “and Caitlin answered, but now you answer, Seth. Did Caitlin talk to you about this?”

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Yes.”

  “I was the one who lied about that,” Caitlin said quickly. “Not him. I didn’t want people to think that we were working behind the scenes.”

  “But you were,” Joan said flatly.

  “So those times when we would see the two of you, up on your balcony,” Stephanie asked, “were you talking about the rest of us?”

  No one liked the sound of that.

  “I started it,” Seth said, “and it was always in the context of making sure that everyone was okay.”

  “But weren’t we supposed to do that as a team?” Stephanie answered.

  There was no answer to that.

  “I don’t know,” Heather said. “This makes me feel creepy. Like all this Team Jury stuff was a fraud.”

  “I thought that tonight was going to be a happy time,” Yvette said.

  “We’ll try again in the morning,” Delia promised her. “We will all be here for breakfast.”

  That seemed like a good choice, for everyone to go upstairs and pack tonight. Then the celebration, the closure, the whatever, could be in the morning.

  * * * *

  Caitlin had finished packing everything that she wouldn’t need in the morning when she heard the familiar tap on the wall. Curious, she went out to the balcony.