The Summer I Dared: A Novel

by Barbara Delinsky

  Quietly now, she said, “I don’t understand my mother.”

  Zoe sighed. “With a little luck, she’ll have left for work, and George will be the one to pick up the phone.”

  Julia didn’t need luck. Without fail, Janet was on her way to work by eight. She claimed that the hour she had before the rest of her staff arrived was the most productive of the day, and who was Julia to argue? Janet was an important person. She headed one of the largest charitable organizations in greater Baltimore and was responsible for raising millions of dollars each year for the underprivileged. Life didn’t get any more important than that, Julia was taught, and from the time she was twelve, with brothers nine and seven, she had covered for her mother during those oh-so-important absences.

  Watch the boys for me, will you, sweetheart? Make sure Mark wears his jacket.

  Or, Oh my, I forgot! Jerry needs cookies for school. There’s a roll of those Pillsbury things in the freezer. Slice them up and bake them like a good girl, Julia?

  And it wasn’t only helping her brothers at the start of the day. Julia was often the mommy at the other end, as well.

  I’ve left a container of frozen stew on the counter. If you put it in a pot when you get home from school and put the gas on low under it, we can eat as soon as I get home.

  Or, If Mark comes home with grass stains on his uniform, will you just throw it in the wash? I’ll put it in the dryer myself, but the head start will help. He needs it clean for tomorrow.

  How could Julia possibly object? How could she be the one to make things hard for Janet, when Janet was doing such meaningful work? And Janet couldn’t have been more appreciative. If it wasn’t, You are the best daughter, Julia, I am a very lucky woman, it was, The boys listen to you, Julia, you have a knack for this, or, My friend Marie is struggling with her career because she doesn’t have a daughter like you at home.

  Julia thrived on the praise. She became the best homemaker there was, the best cook there was, the best helpmate there was. Only in hindsight, when she looked back on both her childhood and her marriage, did she wonder if she hadn’t been used more than necessary.

  “Hello?” came the wary voice of Julia’s father now.

  George was a whole other issue, so different in temperament from Janet that Julia had often wondered what had brought them together in the first place. An accountant by profession, George was introspective and shy. The most conventional of men in his navy suits and pressed sportswear, he was as supportive of Janet’s whims as he was supportive of Julia.

  Hearing his voice now, she felt a surge of warmth. “It’s me, Dad. Thank goodness I caught you before you left. I have to tell you—”

  “This isn’t a good time,” he cut in. “Your mother has a headache. She’s late leaving for work.”

  Julia was instantly concerned. Janet was in good health, but she was, after all, sixty-four. “A headache?”

  “Just tension,” he said and added in a whisper, “but it wouldn’t help seeing Zoe’s name on the caller ID.”

  Julia felt chastised. “I had no choice. This is the only phone I have. I had an awful experience last night.”

  “Be right there, Janet,” he called, then said impersonally, with innocent curiosity, as if he were talking to a friend, “Can I phone you later?”

  Julia wasn’t a friend. She was his daughter, and she needed comfort. “There was an accident.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “A boating one. I was on a ferry—”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Miraculously, no. But—”

  “Thank God. Listen, sweetie,” he said under his breath, “I will call you back. Right now, I need to get your mother some tea. She has an important meeting at ten. I’m going to try to get her there. She won’t be happy if she misses it. Later, Julia.” Without another word, he hung up the phone.

  Julia wasn’t as quick. Stunned, she held the receiver in midair, realizing only then how much she had wanted to talk, and not only with George, but with Janet. Her parents had given her life. She had nearly lost it last night. She couldn’t think of any more appropriate people to give her comfort.

  Disconnected. That was what she felt as she slowly returned the receiver to its cradle. Disconnected. And it went beyond the call to her parents, even beyond the call to Monte. She was feeling disconnected from everything back in those places she had called home. It was as if the accident had created a barrier between past and present, as if a wall had sprung up out of the water and was now separating the two.

  She would have thought that if anyone could moor her again, it was her parents. Apparently, she had thought wrong.

  Chapter 3

  Noah felt thwarted. He needed to blame someone for the accident, and Artie Jones fit the bill. Big boat, big noise, big wake—big house, big dock, big wallet—Artie was everything year-rounders dreaded and lobstermen despised. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t hurt anyone before. He would have made a perfect scapegoat for a disaster that shouldn’t have happened.

  Early word on the autopsy, though, ruled that out. Artie hadn’t been playing chicken. Nor had he deliberately aimed his boat at the Amelia Celeste. He’d had heart failure before the crash ever occurred—which meant Noah had no one to blame but fate.

  That realization came midday Thursday. Shortly thereafter, the Coast Guard recovered his father’s remains.

  With Hutch’s death confirmed and no fall guy, Noah was numb. He sat in the stern of the Leila Sue, staring out at sea, so overcome with frustration and regret that they canceled each other out.

  His cell phone lay beside him. He couldn’t go ashore to make the call, because something held him there on the water. He didn’t know whether it was Hutch’s soul, not yet fully risen, or the bond he had always felt with the sea. If there was comfort to be had anywhere, it was here.

  Determinedly, he picked up the phone and dialed his ex-wife’s number. Sandi had moved twice since the divorce, following teaching jobs that had carried her steadily into administration. She still taught history, now at a private high school in Washington, D.C., but she was also the dean of studies there. He phoned her office, guessing that her administrative responsibilities went on even though the school year was done.

  “Sandi,” he said when she picked up.

  “Yes,” she replied blankly.

  “It’s me.”

  There was a brief pause, then a cautious, “Noah? It doesn’t sound like you. Is something wrong?”

  “Hutch is dead.”

  In the ensuing silence, he saw her close her eyes and bow her head. Sandi had never been particularly fond of either of Noah’s parents, but she was a compassionate woman. She was also acutely aware that regardless of her feelings for Noah’s family, they were Ian’s forebears. She had been sympathetic when Noah’s mother had died. She would be no different now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “How?”

  “Badly. There was an accident.” He gave her the bare outline.

  She was appalled. “I hope he died instantly.”

  So did Noah. The alternative was too horrible to consider.

  “How are you?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Not at all.”

  “How?” she asked with some of the same bewilderment he felt.

  “Beats me.”

  “Were you the only survivor?”

  “No.”

  There was a pause, then, “One other? Two?”

  “Two.”

  “Are they hurt?”

  “Not much.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “One has a small cut.”

  “And the other?”

  “She can’t speak.”

  “Is it a physical problem? Burned windpipe? Crushed vocal chords?”

  “No.”

  “Trauma, then.”

  “Apparently.”

  “But you’re fine?”

 
; “Yes.”

  A long moment’s silence. Then she sighed. “I’d say you’re traumatized, too, if I didn’t know that even in the best of times, you suffer from an inability to speak. Why is it that every conversation with you is like pulling teeth? Okay. Don’t answer that. We’ve been through this before. I don’t know why I always expect more. I guess it’s because there was more when we met. So if this is your natural state, where did that come from? Or if that was your natural state, where did this come from? Is it just with me that you can’t say more than three words at a stretch?”

  Jaw tight, Noah waited until several seconds passed. When she remained quiet, he said, “Here’s more’n three words, Sandi. Hutch died night before last. I’m not going into my inability to speak right now. I just want to tell Ian the news. Hutch was his grandfather. His grandfather’s gone.”

  Sandi was quickly contrite. “I’m sorry.”

  “For his death or the outburst?”

  “Both. I’m always amazed at how close to the surface everything is, even ten years after the split.”

  Noah didn’t pretend that she still held feelings for him. Nor did he want it. They had failed as a couple. The divorce was mutually agreed upon.

  The problem was that Sandi didn’t like to fail. She had been analyzing their marriage since the day it fell apart, and, naturally, she blamed him. He worked unconscionable hours, she claimed, and was distant when he was home. He excluded her from his thoughts and was insen sitive to her needs. He was impatient with her colleagues and couldn’t stand her friends.

  So maybe she was right. Maybe the whole lot of it was his fault. Just then, though, he couldn’t have cared less.

  “Where’s Ian now?” he asked. At three in the afternoon, the boy would normally be playing baseball, but this was June. The varsity season, like the school year, was done until fall.

  “Stewing. He mouthed off to the coach yesterday, so he’s warming the bench today.”

  “What bench?”

  “It’s a local league,” Sandi explained. “I needed him to be involved in something until summer school begins. He isn’t an easy kid.”

  “Seventeen’s tough.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “I was thinking of him, not you.”

  “I was thinking of me,” she charged, “because you’re not around to deflect any of what’s going on. I didn’t have trouble being seventeen. I was busy with school, I had friends and dance class and soccer. I was excited about being a senior and excited about looking at colleges. Ian is none of those things.”

  “And you see no other kids like him?” Noah asked knowingly.

  “Of course, I do. That’s my job. But those are other kids. Ian’s mine. I take him personally.”

  Noah couldn’t argue with that. He had always felt Sandi was a good mother. “So when’ll he be home?”

  “Maybe four. Maybe five. He’s been somewhat unreliable lately.”

  “Have him call me when he gets there?”

  “When’s the funeral?”

  “Tuesday.” Noah would have rather it be sooner, but the medical examiner wanted Hutch for a while, and by the time Noah talked with the minister, three other funerals had already been lined up.

  “Should I fly him up?” Sandi asked.

  “Only if he wants to come.”

  “Noah.” She sighed. “That’s a cop-out. Do you want him there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell him that. It may not hold much weight. Lately, defiance is his middle name.”

  Noah was suddenly weary. “Just tell him. If he doesn’t want to come, he won’t come. I can bury Hutch just fine without him.”

  There was a pause, then a guarded, “I could bring him, myself. Do you want me there?”

  “Why? You couldn’t stand Hutch.”

  “It wasn’t that. It was just that over time I was seeing in him all of the things I had to struggle with in you. But that takes us back to the talking thing. I didn’t know Hutch. How could I? He didn’t have much to say to me. He didn’t seem to have much to say to your mother either, but she was used to it, being a Mainer and all, and there’s a whole other issue. There were times when I was up there and I’d see a bunch of local guys on the dock, talking and laughing. I’d approach, and they’d go stone silent. So was it just that they hated outsiders? That’s what I always felt like when I was there. An outsider.”

  Again, Noah waited until the silence lasted long enough to suggest she was done. Then, quietly, he said, “This isn’t the time, Sandi. Just have Ian call me, okay?”

  Julia didn’t get a call from her father. She did get a call from her friend Charlotte, who had heard about the accident from her husband, who had heard about it through Monte. Charlotte wanted to know for herself that Julia was all right, and once she was satisfied, she begged Julia to let her send clothes from the store. Charlotte sold the finest of Italian imports. Julia’s lost bags had held several of her outfits. But those clothes seemed all wrong now.

  Unable to explain this to Charlotte, she must have come across as being disturbed, because, less than an hour later, Julia got a call from their mutual friend Jane. Jane taught psychology at City College and was, actually, just the person Julia wanted to speak to. She described the accident and told her about Kim Colella. By the time she hung up the phone, she had learned the rudiments about post-traumatic stress disorder and muteness.

  It wasn’t until even later, though, when she was accessing her email on Zoe’s computer, exchanging comforting notes with her lawyer friend Donna, when she received one from George.

  SORRY I HAVEN’T CALLED, BUT IT’S BEEN A BAD COUPLE OF DAYS, he wrote in the all-caps style he insisted on using, though shouting was not his way. He was a quiet man of necessity; being married to as forceful a woman as Janet, he couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Julia had often suspected that since Janet didn’t use a computer, he spoke loudly on the web simply because he could.

  I GOT YOUR MOTHER SET YESTERDAY AND THEN HAD A MAJOR PROBLEM HERE AT WORK. I’M JUST NOW COMING UP FOR AIR. SUFFICE IT TO SAY THAT WE’RE BOTH GRATEFUL YOU CAME AWAY FROM THE ACCIDENT UNSCATHED. GIVEN THE SITUATION, JANET FEELS YOU OUGHT TO RETURN TO NEW YORK. LET US KNOW.

  Stung, Julia didn’t reply.

  Actually, “stung” barely covered it. She was angry.

  Heart pounding, she closed out her email, turned off the computer, and, putting the anger to use, set off for town. There, she bought the makings of half a dozen casseroles and as many batches of cookies. The first of the funerals wasn’t until Monday, but she wanted to take something to the families involved—and she was a good cook. She couldn’t do gourmet the way her daughter could, but she knew basics. She had thrown innumerable parties for Monte’s colleagues, and even apart from what a caterer brought, she always prepared something herself. She often gave home-baked bread or cookies as gifts when they went to friends’ homes for dinner. As for bereaved families, someone was always dying in Monte’s circle of clients, which went to show what happened when you represented clients who had taken long lifetimes to amass a fortune worth investing. Bottom line? Julia was a pro at making homemade little somethings to satisfy one or another of Monte’s professional needs.

  That said, she would have gladly cleaned rabbit cages if Zoe had shown her what to do. She found the rabbits surprisingly clean, and the scent in the barn unexpectedly pleasant, what with those little bursts of chrysanthemum extract and rosemary oil to keep the flies at bay.

  But Zoe was still out with the search, looking for Todd Slokum.

  So Julia baked. The familiarity of the activity was a comfort at a time when she was feeling unhinged. Monte hadn’t helped. Her parents hadn’t helped. If her life were a boat that had been torn from its mooring, she was all on her own as far as tying up again went. Embracing the old and familiar was one way to do it, albeit a stopgap measure. She didn’t know what the long-range answer was.

  Four o’clock came and went, and still Noah waited for Ian to ca
ll. He didn’t budge from the boat. There was nowhere better to go. Lucas was aboard one minute and loping down the dock the next, seeming unfazed by the gravity of the moment. But Lucas was a dog. He had no way of knowing Hutch was gone for good.

  Noah knew it and grieved. But grief wasn’t all. Making plans for the funeral had been an eye-opening experience in a pathetic kind of way. Had he known what Hutch wanted? No. They had never talked about funerals. They had never talked about Noah’s divorce. Or about his mother’s death. They had never talked about Ian. Or about why Noah had returned to Big Sawyer to haul traps after the divorce, rather than continue on in New York. He was good at what he’d done there, and had made a lot of money in a very short time. They had never talked about that, either.

  What did they talk about? They talked about the weather. They talked about the boat and the traps and the buoys. They talked about the day’s catch, the price it would bring, the new minimum-size regulation the state was rumored to be considering. They talked about the Trapper John’s engine overhaul and My Andrea’s new GPS. They talked about the lime-grape-lime buoys that were popping up in waters traditionally fished by Big Sawyer lobstermen. And they talked about the weather, again.

  These were the things lobstermen discussed. Noah could discuss them as well as he had discussed the pros and cons of an IPO with colleagues in New York. They were real. They interested him.

  Small talk did not.

  Julia visited the Hornsby house. Nestled not far from the harbor, it was filled with friends. She dropped off a chicken casserole, offered her condolences, and left. She did the same at the homes of Grady Bartz and Dar Hutter.

  The situation was different at the Walsh house. It stood on Dobbs Hill, where so many of the artists lived, and artists liked open space. At the high crests, jagged spruce tips grazed the sky, but the face of the hill was an expanse of rolling meadow. There were no crowds at the Walsh house, no neighbors milling about. A lone Volvo station wagon sat in front of the barn, which in turn sat not far from a weathered farmhouse.