One More Summer

by Liz Flaherty

  “Phooey on you.” She was right behind him. “You hang. I’ll smooth.”

  They spent two hours hanging wallpaper, making a good team. They sang Eagles songs and argued over which ones came first. He told outrageous jokes gleaned from the internet until she was helpless with laughter, standing with her legs crossed inside the baggy robe and the smoothing brush dangling from her uninjured hand.

  Dillon had written about life-changing moments in each of his five novels, six counting the one in progress. He’d experienced them himself, although he never realized it at the time. It was always something he discovered in recall, like the time he and Steven had sat in the hall and listened to Grace telling Magpie stories to Debbie.

  Standing in the half-papered room, listening to the music in the laughter of the woman beside him, he understood that his life was changed.

  He just didn’t know how.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this?” Grace fussed, helping Promise draw the sleeve of a light blue cotton robe over her left arm. “If you just want us all to have dinner together, we can always eat up here.”

  “Grace.” Promise’s voice stilled her movements. “I’m alive. Let me be that way.”

  “I’m alive, Robert. I’m alive and these are my children and I’m going to enjoy them while I can. And, yes, I mean all of them. Leave us be.” Debbie’s voice echoed like a bell in Grace’s mind.

  She stepped back from Promise and smiled at her. “You ready to go down? I’ll let you hold my arm so you don’t walk so funny. I know you think it’s sexy, but it’s actually just strange. You know, your shoulder kind of hikes up and hunches over. It reminds me of when you tried to hold up that Juliet outfit that weighed four hundred pounds.”

  Promise laughed and hugged Grace with her right arm. “Well, I won’t faint on you this time, since you wouldn’t catch me anyway.” The smile faded from her lips and she shook her head. “That’s wrong,” she said softly. “We’ve been catching each other all our lives, haven’t we?”

  Grace nodded, not trusting her voice. “Come on. Let’s see what kind of dinner a cardiac surgeon and a novelist can come up with.”

  Steven met them at the bottom of the stairs. “We thought we were going to have to be Rhett Butlers in reverse to get you two down here. Dillon said he wouldn’t do it again. Said carrying Grace up today put his back out.” He offered an arm to each of them. “If you ladies will accompany me.”

  The screened back porch was lit only by candles, the table set with a white cloth and napkins folded sloppily into Debbie’s silver napkin rings. Steaks and baked potatoes were already on the silver-rimmed good china with salads in matching bowls at the side. The harmony of Crosby, Stills and Nash flowed softly from a CD player on a corner table.

  Dillon, wearing Dockers and a denim shirt, approached Grace. He brought a corsage from behind his back and pinned it to the shoulder strap of her jumper. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said softly, and bent his head to kiss her.

  His tongue did an exploratory foray, and for a moment, she forgot her surroundings and lifted a hand to his face. The scent of the roses in her corsage brought her back to earth and she drew away. She felt the color climbing into her cheeks because Steven was watching them with an odd expression on his face.

  When they sat down, Grace and Promise looked helplessly at their steaks, and with a great deal of metal clashing and several macho remarks, Steven and Dillon cut the meat into bite-size pieces.

  “Such precision,” Promise marveled, watching Steven slice her steak.

  Dillon snorted. “Everyone has to have a talent. His is chopping things up.”

  Steven snickered at Grace’s plate. “Well, that’s certainly not yours.” He smirked. “For that matter, Campbell, what is yours? Have you ever found one?”

  “I’m a wordsmith,” Dillon said haughtily.

  Grace remembered, for no reason she could think of, his demand that her brother apologize for his hurtful remark. She spoke softly, for Dillon’s ears alone.

  “And a slayer of dragons.”

  Chapter 12

  “This is supposed to be a prom.” Dillon pushed aside his dessert plate. He gestured toward the backyard. “The dance floor waits.”

  Grace got to her feet. “Remember how fragile these glass slippers are.”

  He nudged one of her bare feet with the toe of his sandal. “Damn near invisible too. Isn’t technology something?”

  Dillon and Steven had placed citronella torches in the yard, and the scent of the oil blended with that of the flowers. The Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” filled the air and Dillon put his arms around Grace’s waist. Gently, not pulling her close. She rested her hands lightly on his shoulders, suddenly shy. Other than aerobics classes in the church basement that Promise had dragged her to, she hadn’t danced since high school.

  As they moved across the lawn, however, his arms tightened and her hands crept up around his neck, the left one with its glaring white bandage held palm out. His muscled legs moved against hers, but the motions they made were liquid, graceful, and she wished whimsically for a waltz and a flowing dress.

  The song changed, and he sang close to her ear. The grass dance floor was cool and damp beneath her feet, the star-filled sky a splendid ceiling, the flickering torches the most romantic of lights, the subtle scent of roses a seductive aroma. Almost against her will, Grace’s eyes drifted closed as his lips lowered to hers. The ambiance was lost on Grace as Dillon’s kiss took over her senses. All she felt were his hands splayed on her back, his body flush with hers. All she smelled was the pleasant mingling of charcoal smoke and Irish Spring soap that lingered on his shirt and his skin. She tasted only his mouth, flavored with wine and coffee, and she couldn’t get enough of it.

  After the third kiss, when her insides were a roiling mass of sensation and emotion, she murmured, “Geezy Pete.”

  He said, “You got that right,” and stroked a hand up her back. “What’s this? You didn’t wear a bra to the prom?”

  She brought her injured hand into his line of vision and waggled it. “I couldn’t fasten it.”

  His hand came around between them to cup one small, denim-covered breast. “What a shame.” He found her nipple and worked the bead of its tip between his fingers.

  A low moan slipped uncaught from her throat. Clutching her composure like a lifeline before it disintegrated completely, she said, “The music’s stopped.”

  “Do you really think so?” he whispered, and teased her lips with the tip of his tongue until they opened.

  They had danced their way to where they stood among the trees. When she opened her eyes again, she caught sight of a torch to their left, anchored into the ground beside the single step that led inside the gazebo.

  The gazebo.

  “No decent man in his right mind’s going to want you, girl.”

  “No, Papa,” she whispered, caught in the horror, and moved restively in Dillon’s embrace.

  “Gracie?” His voice was soft, gentling.

  “I need to go in.” The words sounded much more urgent than the situation demanded, but she couldn’t unsay them.

  “Okay.” He answered immediately, and turned her toward the house, but didn’t release her. “I’ll take you back.”

  Steven and Promise weren’t on the back porch. The candles had been snuffed, but the dishes remained on the table. “Leave them,” Dillon said, leading her firmly past the mess and into the house. “Steven and I will take care of it. You go on up.”

  She nodded and moved toward the stairs, but turned when she stood on the second one. “Dillon?”

  “Yeah?” He smiled at her, the expression not erasing the frown of concern between his eyes.

  “Thank you. The ‘prom’ was wonderful.” Without waiting for a reply, she ran the rest of the way up the stairs.

  Steven’s falsetto joined Dillon’s voice for the chorus of “In the Garden,” but then they both stopped singing and shook their heads. Dillon to
ok the tops off two more bottles of beer and handed Steven one with a soapy hand.

  “Couple more of these,” Steven observed, “and I’m going to be cryin’ in it.” He set down his bottle and picked up a plate. “These were Mama’s Sunday dishes. When Faith married Grant, the old man gave them to her even though Grace always loved ’em. After he died, Faith brought them all back over here, still packed up the way they were when he gave them to her. Prom and Faith and Grace spent the afternoon after the funeral washing and drying and putting them away in Mama’s china cabinet. They laughed so hard that sometimes they cried. Leastwise, Prom and Faith did.”

  He dried the plate carefully and placed it on a stack. “I remember listening to them and telling Grant it was a damn shame you can’t dance to the sound of women laughing, because it was the sweetest music ever made.” He shook a wineglass dry and slid it upside down into the rack over the counter. “Hearing Promise laugh—hell, even hearing her cry—made me feel like the luckiest guy alive. At the same time, I kept listening for Grace’s laugh and never hearing it. I wondered what happened to it.”

  He put the stack of plates in the china cupboard built into the wall between the kitchen and dining room. He closed the double doors and stood facing their glass fronts for a moment. When he turned, his eyes were red around the edges and there was more than a hint of roughness in his voice. “I don’t feel so damn lucky anymore.”

  And I still wonder what happened to Grace’s laugh. Dillon let the water out of the sink and sprayed it clean, then folded the dishcloth neatly over the sink divider the way he knew Grace did. “Let’s go out to the guesthouse,” he suggested. “That way, no one will hear us crying in our beer.”

  They meandered through the yard, extinguishing torches as they walked. At the gazebo, Steven shook a support post to test its strength. “This thing’s a mess. Remember when Prom and Grace used to sleep out here in the summer and we’d sneak around and scare the hell out of them?”

  “We were nice guys,” Dillon said.

  Steven hesitated, then asked, “What are you doing with Grace, Dill?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I wouldn’t like to see her hurt.”

  Dillon had been angry with Steven before—they’d exchanged a black eye and a split lip or two over the course of their friendship—but nothing to equal the surge of rage that now flowed lava-like from his belly to his brain.

  “Then ignore it, you son of a bitch, the way you’ve been ignoring it ever since your mother died. That’s how long she’s been hurt. That’s when the laughter went away.” Dillon’s voice trembled, and when he raised his beer to take a calming drink, the bottle shook too. It clacked against his teeth and made him even madder. “What happened to her?”

  Steven seemed taken aback, and anger kindled in his eyes, to be replaced a moment later by such regret Dillon began to calm.

  “I don’t know.” Steven lowered himself to the step of the gazebo. “And you’re right. I should know. I was so glad Gracie could take care of herself instead of being needy like Faith always was that I just let her do it. And when she stayed with the old man instead of going out and finding a life of her own, I let her do that too.” He stared past Dillon at the house, his gaze settling on the lighted bedroom windows. “I let her do it,” he repeated.

  Guilt stirred Dillon. His friend had enough to deal with right now. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said quietly. “I just wanted to blame someone.” He sat on the step beside Steven and took another drink of his beer. “How are things with Promise?”

  “They aren’t. She’s worried about my future and she’s afraid—” his voice cracked, “—afraid she won’t have one to give me. She wants to break it off. In her words, it’s ‘goodnight, Irene’ to the story of Promise and Steven.” He lifted his bottle to his lips and scowled when he found it empty.

  “You going to settle for that?”

  “Oh, hell, no.”

  “…and then Ben Magpie went eyebrows over toenails all the way down the steps and sat there at the bottom all stunned-like. Mama Magpie just said, ‘Well, Ben, if you’d use the banister, you’d put a nice shine on it and wouldn’t get nearly so bruised up.’ So that’s what he did, and to this day, Mama hasn’t had to use a dust rag on that old banister.

  “But you all remember not to use your banisters at home, because some are made for sliding and some aren’t, and if you go down the wrong kind, you’ll be eyebrows over toenails just like Ben was.”

  “You’re done early, Miss Grace. Are you gonna sing us a song?” a voice piped from the crowd when the applause stopped.

  Grace squinted at the schoolhouse clock on the library wall and must have decided that “early” was relative—it read ten minutes past the end of the story hour—and said, “Why, you’re right, Clay. You going to come up and help me?”

  The song was an old one, and Dillon found himself singing along. He glanced at Steven, standing beside him, and saw the same expression Faith had worn the week before. Grace’s brother had laughed at the Magpie story, listened intently to the chapter of Anne of Green Gables and given an ear-splitting whistle when the applause rang through the library. But now he stood still and quiet, his lips tucked in at the corners and his dark eyes sad.

  “She used to be like that all the time, remember?” Steven said.

  “Until your mother died.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you just ask me?” Grace stared at Dillon. A few kisses didn’t entitle him to ask personal questions. She didn’t care if those kisses did make her knees disappear on her.

  “I asked what it was like for you when your mama passed on,” he repeated. “I know how it was for Steven, and Faith took it really hard—didn’t your dad send her away for the summer or something?”

  “Yeah. She couldn’t sleep or eat, so she went and stayed with Maxie. I wanted to go, too, but he wouldn’t let me.”

  “You’re too much trouble, girl. That’s why your mama’s not with us anymore. You drove her to an early grave. So you just stay here and keep quiet.”

  More than twenty years later, her father’s harsh words could still make her flinch. “It was hard,” she said evasively. “It was the summer I turned twelve, which isn’t a good time for any girl.”

  “Hold this.” Dillon gave her the end of the strip of wallpaper border. “I remember you used to hide in the attic.”

  “Yeah, but someone always found me. I wasn’t smart enough to come up with a good place.”

  “Steven and I were talking about when you and Prom used to sleep in the gazebo and we’d sneak up and scare you. A dirty trick.” He grinned at her from the other stepladder. “I apologize for that particular transgression. It was probably all Steven’s idea, though.”

  God, if only that had been the worst transgression that took place in the gazebo. Grace held the border against the wall so hard her hand began to hurt. She welcomed the pain. If it hurt enough physically, maybe The Other—that’s how she thought of it, capitalized and all—would release her from its grasp.

  “When did you move into your mother’s room?” Dillon asked.

  “That summer. Faith wanted to have her own room when she came home from Maxie’s.”

  “Bet it was hard, learning to sleep in a room by yourself.” Dillon left his ladder and came to hers. “Okay, we got that one down, if it will just stick. You can come down now. Ready for a break?”

  She nodded, but when she began to move down the ladder, she stepped on the leg of her overalls. She would have fallen, but Dillon caught her. He allowed her to slide down his body until her feet touched the floor, but instead of releasing her, turned her in arms and held her. His breath whispered across her hair and he rocked from side to side. Just holding her.

  It was comfort, nothing more and nothing less. Grace had no idea why he offered it, what made him think she needed it. She was thirty-three years old, for heaven’s sake. She didn’t need to be rocked like a five-year-old whose toy is
broken.

  Or a twelve-year-old who’d lost her mother. Oh, Mama, why did you leave me? But she didn’t worry about that anymore, didn’t think of the days and nights before Debbie died. Didn’t even think too much of the nights after. She had made herself a life. Not much of a life by some standards, but it was hers and she liked it. She didn’t need comforting anymore, didn’t need to be held.

  It was going on six o’clock. She should be in the kitchen cooking supper, plus she had Mrs. Willard’s laundry to take off the line and a cake to bake and decorate for Fionn Sawyer’s birthday. Good Lord, their own laundry was lying cold in the dryer. It had to be folded and Promise’s bed made up even though Promise thought she was well enough a week and a day after surgery to do it herself. Those were the things Grace needed to be doing, not standing in Papa’s old room with Dillon’s arms around her.

  She didn’t need to be held like this.

  With a mighty sigh, she allowed her body to relax, to lean into the strength and warmth of his.

  Maybe just this once wouldn’t hurt.

  Chapter 13

  “Listen to this. ‘Your words speak to people who have known loss and heartache. At least, they used to. In your latest book, you seem to have shut yourself off from those feelings and subsequently shut the reader off as well.’ Sounds kind of like what Grace was trying to tell you.” Promise handed the letter across the table to Dillon.

  He snorted. “Grace is definitely the expert at shutting herself off.”

  It had been a week since he’d held her in her father’s room, since her arms had crept up around his neck and she had leaned into him.

  It had also been a week since she’d offered him a civil word. She’d been acerbic—even for Grace—and taciturn, sometimes going full days without speaking to him. As snotty as she was being, he should have been relieved when she retreated into silence, but he wasn’t.