Summer at Oyster Bay: A gorgeous feel good summer romance

by Jenny Hale

  “You’re creative! You haven’t even considered a compromise. Why can’t you find a way to make us both happy? You know what I think? I think that it’s because you’re so used to getting your own way that you won’t even try.” She turned around and walked up the stairs of the old farmhouse.

  When she got to the top, she looked back at him, waiting for him to show some sort of grand gesture, something to prove his feelings were real, but he said nothing. She’d hoped he would, because the truth was, she wanted nothing more than to have him beside her too, to tell him about her day, to laugh with him. But when he offered nothing, and it was clear he wasn’t going to, she went inside and closed the door.

  Charlie ran up the stairs after her but she closed the door in front of him. Emily had nothing more to say, and he couldn’t use that persuasive business talk of his to make things any better. He might have convinced the planning commission that this was a good idea, but he’d never convince her. She watched him pace the porch for a few minutes through the window. He dragged his fingers through his hair, his jaw tight, his lips pursed.

  Eventually, he got back into his car and drove down the long drive to the main road. As Emily stood—alone—in the empty house, she felt just as empty. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to cry, no one to hold her. She looked up at the ceiling, her eyes focusing on the small iron chandelier Papa had hung. “I’m so sorry, Papa,” she said through her tears. She needed him there to fix this—he could always fix everything. As more tears fell, she sat down on the floor with nothing but silence around her.

  Later that night, she got a text from Charlie:

  I miss you.

  She couldn’t answer it. She couldn’t bring her fingers to move. There was nothing he could say that would make this all better.

  Twenty-One

  Most of Gram’s jewelry had been boxed. Even if Gram was staying in Clearwater, it wouldn’t be at Oyster Bay. Emily had spent much of the night changing sheets, cleaning, and packing. She’d moved on to the hall closet that had the rest of the photos that Gram had told her she still needed to go through. She’d pulled the boxes out, stacking them against the wall in date order.

  At the back of the closet, she found a slightly larger box. Needing a break anyway, Emily sat down and opened it to see what was inside. It was filled with all her old artwork as a child, school reports, certificates she’d received for perfect attendance. She pulled out a rainbow she’d drawn at the age of eight—the colors dramatically scratched in an upside down U-shape, little flowers along the bottom and a sun in the upper corner. She placed it back in the box. She found a paper kite she’d made in art when she was probably ten or so. The edges were bent from being squeezed in there for so many years. She found all her lists for Santa and the letters she’d written from summer camp as a child.

  Emily pulled out the stack from camp and set them on her lap. They were secured with a rubber band. As she straightened the rubber band, it snapped and the letters fell loose in her hand. She could see her youthful handwriting, memories and emotions nearly overwhelming her. Those had been her hardest years when she’d held in the most grief. She flicked through them. As she got ready to tie the rubber band back on, one of them caught her eye and she pulled it from the stack. It didn’t have her swoopy handwriting. She knew exactly whose handwriting it was—Papa’s.

  She opened the letter and the memory came rushing back. Usually, at camp, they all wrote paragraphs to their family about what they’d been up to and how much fun they were having. But that time, she’d felt so homesick that she couldn’t get her hand to write. Papa could always calm her, and with him not there, she was struggling. She wrote simply, “I miss you, Papa. I wish you were here.” Her camp leader had mailed it to him just like that.

  She could still remember getting the letter from him. She’d brought it home in her gym bag and Gram must have saved it. He’d written back to her on that same paper. Underneath her note, blinking to clear the tears as she looked at it now, his words had new meaning so many years later. She read, “I miss you so much, Emily. You are stronger than you think. It feels like I’m gone, but remember I’m right here. I’m just a thought away, wherever you go. I love you. Papa.”

  It was like he was talking to her now. With sobs welling up, she stood and put the letter in her pocket. Then, she continued packing the rest of the closet.

  Emily was exhausted. She’d slept terribly. Her mind had been full all night, and she’d tossed and turned until the wee hours of the morning. So she made sure to have a double-shot espresso when she arrived at work.

  She was apprehensive about seeing Charlie, so she decided to stay out of his way. There was a part of her that just wanted him to wrap his arms around her to make her feel better. But the other side of her wanted to never have to see him again. When she’d asked—blatantly asked—him to show her how he felt about her, he’d walked away.

  All day she replayed their time together in her head and it just didn’t make sense. How had she not made him see? Why hadn’t he understood? She couldn’t come up with an answer.

  For the rest of the afternoon, she tried to keep her mind on her work, but she couldn’t. She thought about how hard it had been to lose her parents, how difficult to say to Brad that she was going to choose a different life, how sad she’d felt when Papa had died. The one constant in all those things was that she’d gotten through them. They’d made her stronger than she thought she was. She had to tap into that inner strength of hers. She’d given saving the house all she had, but in the end, it wasn’t meant to be. Now, she had to go on living like Gram wanted her to do so badly. When three o’clock finally came, she said goodbye to Libby and headed out to get Gram. She never did see Charlie. Had he left without even saying goodbye?

  The next day was moving day. Gram wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavy. She wasn’t supposed to go up and down the stairs. She was under strict orders to rest or she’d have to return to the hospital. So when the movers came and started packing things up, Emily had to help them do everything. She had to load the boxes of old family photo albums and Gram’s jewelry—Winston’s locket—onto the trucks for Gram, she had to assist the movers with wrapping up her mother’s teacup collection, and she marked what furniture would be going into storage—which was most of it, it seemed.

  By the end of day one, she was exhausted. The movers had started to disassemble rooms, packing the dishes, wrapping furniture, rolling rugs… Gram was sitting in one of the living-room chairs the movers had left for her, reading and seemingly unaffected by everything going on. Emily wanted to shout, “Doesn’t any of this bother you?” The thought surprised her so much because, growing up, she’d never wanted to yell at Gram.

  She sat down on the floor beside her. “Why aren’t you the least bit upset?” she asked as calmly as she could.

  “Sorry?” Gram looked up from her book.

  “Doesn’t this bother you?” She waved her hands in the air. “And I thought you were considering staying. Have you thought about asking Charlie if you could buy Oyster Bay back from him?”

  “Emily, things move on, and we have to move with them.”

  “But you aren’t still going to Florida, are you? Tell me you’re not.” This conversation was wearing thin. Emily knew that. But moving on didn’t have to mean that everything needed to fall apart. They might not have Oyster Bay, but they could still be together. Gram had said she worried about leaving them.

  She wanted Gram to say, “I was wrong to sell Oyster Bay and I want to stay with my family,” but she wasn’t saying that. Why had Gram even mentioned the possibility of staying? Didn’t she know how important it was to Emily for Gram to stay close to her and Rachel? She was so frustrated.

  Gram looked back down at her book. “I don’t know whether to go to Florida or not, to be honest.”

  “Well, have you thought about where you’ll stay while you’re making up your mind? Is Winston still alive? Maybe you could stay with him.” It was a low b
low, coming out of nowhere and certainly hitting Gram like a ton of bricks, but Emily was upset. She bit her lip, immediately feeling remorseful.

  “Excuse me?” Gram had closed the book and set it on the arm of the chair. She didn’t look surprised or angry. She looked completely perplexed.

  She’d started now. She might as well keep going. “Did you love him?”

  “How do you know his name?” Gram looked up as if the answer were there. “I haven’t heard that name in a very long time…”

  “Did you cheat on Papa?”

  Gram’s eyes grew round with the question as they landed back on her, but then she straightened out her expression. “Of course not.”

  “Who was he?”

  “He was my husband.”

  “What?” Had she just heard Gram correctly?

  Gram leaned forward, a gentle look on her face. “When I was a child, probably eight or so, I used to play with your Papa and his friends. We grew up together, did everything together. Then, when we were teenagers—too young to marry but old enough to experience those big feelin’s—we would meet each other on Wiley’s pier. Remember Tom Wiley? He built the pier so we called it that, but it was the public pier where we used to take you girls for picnics.”

  “I remember.”

  “We met on that pier every day after school and every mornin’ in the summer. We’d sit there, side by side, our bare feet danglin’ above the water, and talk for hours. I could always talk to your Papa.” She smiled, giving significance to the lines around her eyes. “So, when Winston McBride, Papa’s best friend, began to court me—askin’ me to fancy parties and buyin’ me flowers—I thought that if Papa wanted to intervene, he would. He didn’t. So, I carried on. I stopped goin’ to the pier, feelin’ guilty for havin’ feelings for another man while I was seein’ Winston. I was in love with Papa, but he hadn’t given me any indication that I should be.

  “I didn’t see Papa anymore and eventually, Winston and I married. The problem was that, even though Winston was a wonderful man, he wasn’t the man I wanted, and I ached for your Papa. I wanted him. I cried myself to sleep every night, but what I didn’t know was that Winston could hear. He was torn apart by it—he thought he was doin’ somethin’ wrong. Finally, he asked me about my cryin’. I told him how I wondered where Papa was, I wondered what he was doin’, I wondered if he cried like I did. I held Winston’s hands and I told him how very wonderful he was and how terrible I had been—although it was naivety. I thought I could love him. He was such a good man.”

  Emily was so still she had to remind herself to breathe. With every word Gram said, she felt so much better, like she was finally whole. Gram loved Papa—just as she thought. When all the sadness was gone, that would remain. She had faith in love again, faith in life.

  “To my surprise, Winston understood,” Gram continued. “He cried too and said he loved Papa and me. He said he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t let me go. It was almost unheard of back then, but we divorced. I didn’t know if Papa would want me after I’d been divorced, if he’d want someone else’s wife. But because I loved him so much, I had to leave Winston whether Papa wanted me or not. It wasn’t fair to him to stay.” She looked down at the gold band she still wore, spinning it around her thin finger.

  “So what happened?”

  “I left. I sobbed all mornin’, and I needed to clear my head. I went down to Wiley’s pier.” Gram’s eyes became glassy with the memory, and Emily couldn’t wait to hear the rest of the story. “I walked to the pier and sat at the end of it,” she said, the tears falling down her weathered cheeks, “and, in the bright sun of that afternoon with water as far as I could see—enormous and rough, mirrorin’ my emotions—Papa sat down next to me. He’d come to that pier every day—he’d never stopped. He’d thought I was in love with Winston so he didn’t want to come between us. I held his hand that day on the pier and neither of us had to say a word. We were together from then on.”

  Emily wiped her own tears as they fell—this time they were tears of happiness. “But Gram, I don’t understand why, with a story like that, losing Papa didn’t break you into pieces?”

  Gram smiled, her own tears still present for the man she’d loved her whole life—just like she’d always said. “Because, dear, for some reason, Papa went on to the next life before I did, and just like he had before, I know he’s waitin’ for me. And that makes me the happiest woman in the world because I know that the next time I meet him on that pier, it will be forever.”

  That night, when she went to bed, Emily wished that Papa had said something to Gram before she’d married Winston. It seemed silly now, knowing how he’d felt and how happy their lives were once they were together. People should tell each other when they feel something, she thought. As she lay there, she couldn’t help but think about Charlie.

  Twenty-Two

  The movers were there to finish boxing up the house. There were things everywhere—mirrors leaning against the wall, boxes of dishes open in the middle of the kitchen floor, rugs rolled and taped for easy packing. As Emily looked at the chaos, she was glad that Jeff had offered to use his truck to take the things she’d marked to her storage unit. With everything in shambles, she wanted to get Papa’s boat and the furniture she was keeping into storage where things wouldn’t get bumped around or nicked. She’d helped him load them on and then she gave him the second key to the unit. He’d headed down the drive, taking all her favorite things with him.

  The team of movers walked through the house, their boots scuffing the hardwoods as they toted boxes to their giant truck outside. Emily’s first inclination was to ask them politely to watch the floors, but then she remembered that pretty soon these floors would all be gone.

  She was dusty—her hands felt gritty from moving things all morning—her nose was sniffly from the dust, and the heat from the open doors had made her sweaty.

  “Gram,” she called into the living room where the single chair sat in an empty room. Gram was reading a book. “I’m going out to the beach one last time,” she said.

  Gram nodded and smiled, although she could’ve sworn she saw fear in her eyes. There was an airy smack when one of the movers shut the door, and the reality of what was happening had definitely set in. Emily felt that if she didn’t get out of that house right now, she was going to suffocate, so she hurried across the yard and nearly ran down to the beach where she gulped in the fresh air. She sat on the swing that hung in the sand, the other one empty beside her. She didn’t want to look back at the house because she didn’t want to remember it that way—all a mess, boxes everywhere, empty rooms, piles of dust.

  She sat there for a while, thinking about the rush of success as she’d brought the pub in Richmond into the limelight, turning it from a drab, insignificant location into an upscale, sought-after hot spot. She was doing it now with the inn, working slowly to add in changes that would eventually pay off and put it on the map. Emily was great at doing that—taking something run down and making it new again. She decided that her life was a little like that right now. One thing she’d learned over the years was how to build herself back up whenever she was knocked down, and this was no different.

  She had one more thing to do, one more knock to take. She didn’t want to face him because it was going to be too hard, but she knew that she’d better go see Eli one last time before he left the only home he’d ever known. She’d agreed to rent a little piece of land by Shelly’s house. It was a wiry spot of grass along the main road, separated only by a small fence, cars whizzing by at all times of the day, but it was the best she could do with such short notice. She hoped to find somewhere better. Would he get spooked? Would he spend his final days wondering why Emily had broken her promise?

  She made the long journey to the barn, her chest heavier with every step. When she got there, Eli was standing in the field, looking so strong and content. She let herself in and walked over to him, the lump in her throat rising with the tears in her eyes.<
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  “Hey there, old boy.” She could barely get the words out through her tears. She rubbed his side. He didn’t nicker this time and she worried that he knew somehow. “I just wanted to come see you to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep my promise.” She wiped away a tear. To her surprise, Eli turned his enormous head and put it near her hands. She rubbed his face, feeling like she’d failed him.

  “I tried to show Charlie how great it was here. I tried to let him see who we are,” she said. “I tried.” She tipped her head back to feel the sun, hoping it would calm her, but it didn’t. “I promise I’ll come see you,” she said, feeling her face finally crumple with sadness. She wanted to spend more time with him. Perhaps she’d eventually assume responsibility for Eli herself, but only once she was settled and she could give her horse the attention he deserved.

  Eli began heading toward the barn, so Emily walked alongside him. When she entered, she saw Papa’s chair in the spot where she’d last returned it. Seeing it sitting empty and abandoned was a reminder of his absence. She said a final goodbye to Eli and went over to pick it up. It was big and awkward in her tired arms, but she carried it out of the barn, across the field, through the fence, down the long path and through the yard. In the middle of the grass, outside the house, she finally plopped it down where she liked it to be, leaning on it for support. In the daylight, there was something so beautiful about the age of the chair, as if it could tell its story just by looking at it.

  Flash, who’d been in and out all day, came running up to her, unaware of what was happening. He was about to lose his freedom, and she felt guilty about that too. She rubbed his head behind his ears as he panted in the heat of the day. She sat down in Papa’s chair and he lowered himself in the grass beside her. Emily took in this one last moment.