The Summer I Dared: A Novel

by Barbara Delinsky

  Noah pinched the bridge of his nose with a forefinger and thumb. “I’ve seen him.”

  “In New York, twice a year. Not down here, and this is where he lives. When I said he should go up for the funeral, he argued about all the important things in his life that you’ve missed. He didn’t understand why he should go up there to be with you.”

  “Not me. His grandfather.”

  “I told him that. And I told him you wanted him there, but let’s face it, Noah. You didn’t call. You didn’t talk with him directly. You didn’t ask him yourself. You could have tried the number. You could have left a message. You could have pestered a little. Sometimes that’s the only way you get things done with kids this age. But no. You just let it ride. You sat and waited for him to call. Well, that’s not how it happens. Maybe when he’s a bona fide adult, you can sit back and wait for him to take the initiative, but at seventeen? Forget it. And it’s not just Ian. I see this all the time, well-meaning parents who want to be good guys and reason everything out with their kids, but for certain kinds of kids and certain kinds of things, issuing orders is all that works.”

  Noah waited until she was done. Then quietly he said, “I’m issuing an order, then. He’s to come up here next week.”

  There was a pause, then a disbelieving, “Where have you been, Noah? He starts summer school next week. I told you that way back!”

  “You said there were two sessions. He can spend three weeks here with me, then go back for the second session.”

  “We were going to look at colleges then.”

  “Do it afterward.”

  “Can’t. I have faculty orientation programs to run then. Besides, Ian doesn’t want to look at colleges.”

  “Well, there’s your answer,” Noah said. “If I change his mind, either I’ll take him looking, or you can do it in the fall.”

  Sandi was silent, before asking a suspicious, “Why do you want to do this? Ian’s going to want to know. Is it because Hutch is gone and Ian’s all you have left? Or because you really want to spend time in his company? Or because you need help with the boat and he’s free labor?”

  Noah hadn’t thought out the details. He said the only thing he knew. “He’s my son. I want him here. Where is he now?”

  “At Adam’s for the night. He’ll be back in the morning.”

  “When?”

  “Elevenish. He won’t be pleased, Noah. Three weeks away from his friends? Who’ll he hang with?”

  “Me.”

  Again, she was silent. Then came a guarded, “Are you sure you want to do this? Maybe you ought to think it over. Once you mention it to him, you can’t change your mind. You’ll have to be firm.”

  “Do I sound firm?” Noah asked in his firmest voice. Sandi would call it cold, but that was because she had never spent enough time among Maine men to know the difference between cold and firm.

  Then again, maybe she had wised up. Either that, or the prospect of being free of Ian and his teenage moodiness for three weeks was simply too appealing to resist. She relented with a quiet, “Yes. You sound firm. Do you want me to have him call you?”

  “No,” Noah said. He wasn’t making the same mistake twice. “I’ll call him.”

  Determined, he called Thursday morning at eleven, with the Leila Sue idling in the ocean swells and fresh traps on the rail waiting to be emptied. He called again at ten-minute intervals after that until finally, at noon, the boy was home and answered the phone. Strangely, what Noah got then wasn’t so much hostility as indifference. Ian didn’t show surprise. He didn’t argue. He didn’t ask any of the pointed questions his mother had asked. If he was pleased that Noah wanted him there, he didn’t let on. His tone was neutral to the point of being remote.

  Belligerence might have been easier to handle. Noah had lined up his arguments and was prepared for a fight. Remoteness was something else. It said nothing about what Ian was thinking or feeling. It did say, however, that Noah had his work cut out for him.

  At the same time that Noah was talking to Ian, Julia was driving to the southern tip of the head. Here, bordering the town beach, were streets of bungalows, all in a row. Some were owned by summer people, either used by them or put out for rent. Most had been opened for the season and had lawn chairs on the porch, grills on the lawn, even cars in the carport. A few remained boarded up.

  Other houses were owned by locals. Kimmie Colella lived in one of these. Julia found her street and cruised slowly down it until she reached number forty-three. It had the same beachy feel as the others, with the same weathered shingles, the same battered shutters, the same rangy lawn. This one had a pink door, but it wasn’t a pastel pink. This pink was strong. Number forty-three was a house of women who made no bones about who they were.

  The driveway was a bed of pebbles. A small red pickup and a vintage Mustang were parked there. Parking on the street, Julia followed a sandy path that time and feet had worn through the grass. There was no doorbell, so she knocked.

  At first glance, the woman who answered didn’t seem much older than Julia, which made it hard for Julia to decide whether she was the mother or the grandmother. She had pale, strawberry blonde hair twisted up on the top of her head and a pair of sunglasses propped on top of that. She wore a blouse and jeans, and was barefoot. On closer look, her skin gave her away. The sun had toughened it to a leathery sheen. Same with the fingers curled high up around the edge of the door. They were slim, attractive fingers, but there was nothing soft to them. Nor was there softness in the brown eyes skewering Julia.

  Julia forced a smile. “I’m Julia Bechtel—Zoe Ballard’s niece?”

  The woman emitted a gravelly “Uh-huh” that raised Julia’s estimate of her age even more.

  “I was in the boat—”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I wondered how Kim is doing.”

  “She’s doing fine.”

  “She isn’t fine,” came another voice, and another woman appeared. The family resemblance was there—pale reddish hair, brown eyes, slim, attractive fingers, several of which were half-hidden in the front pockets of body-hugging jeans. But the face was less leathery, the voice less coarse, the eyes less hard. “I’m Kim’s mother, Nancy, and this is my mother, June. Kimmie still won’t talk.”

  “She’s stubborn,” June said crossly.

  “She needs help.”

  “She needs time.”

  “She’s had time,” Nancy insisted. “She’s gone more’n a week without saying a single word.”

  “How do you know? Maybe she’s talking to other people.”

  “Well, she’s not talking to the doctor, and she’s not talking to the Chief, and she’s not talking to any of her friends.”

  “She came close to dying. So maybe she’s talking to God. Who else is up there on the bluff?”

  Nancy looked at Julia. “She’s not talking to anyone. She just sits up there staring out at the water.”

  “How do you know?” June asked.

  “Because I went there,” Nancy argued. “Three times yesterday I went there. I brought food. I brought beer. When in your knowledge has that girl refused beer?” She returned to Julia. “She may be twenty-one, of age and all, but she has me worried sick.”

  Julia could see it in her eyes. “Do you think she’s suicidal?”

  June snapped, “She is not!”

  Nancy didn’t look quite so sure. She raised her shoulders as much in a gesture of fear as of uncertainty. “She’s always been okay. But she’s never done anything like this before.”

  “What did she do?” June argued. “She wasn’t driving that boat.”

  “Oh, hush,” Nancy said without so much as a sidelong glance.

  “You’re the one who should hush,” June said, dropping her hand from the door and drawing herself up. “This person’s a stranger. Kimmie is no business of hers.” She held up a hand. “But you want to talk to her, go ahead. Kimmie’s your daughter. I’m just the one who raised her while you were o
ut running around.”

  Nancy glared at her mother then.

  “Do what you want,” June muttered and disappeared into the house.

  Julia felt awkward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to make trouble.”

  Nancy waved the apology aside. “The trouble was already there. She’s right. She did raise Kimmie. I was only seventeen when she was born.” She raised a brow. “Just like June was seventeen when she had me, only she had no one to help her, so she’s forever telling me how easy I had it. I did run around when Kimmie was little. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my daughter.”

  “Has she been here at the house at all?”

  “Only to sleep. Dawn to dusk,” she hitched her chin northward, “she’s up there on the bluff.”

  “Would she talk to me, do you think? She doesn’t know me at all. Maybe that would help.”

  Nancy raised her shoulders again. “It can’t hurt to try. You were there on the boat. You survived the accident, like she did. Maybe that’d mean something.”

  Julia was hoping it would. If she and Noah were feeling similar things, she guessed Kim might be feeling them, too—at least, some of them. Of course, there was the issue of muteness. Neither she nor Noah had experienced that.

  Thinking about it as she returned to her car, she had to smile. Noah was miserly with words from time to time, but being laconic was a far cry from being mute. He talked just fine once he got going.

  That thought gave her added incentive to see Kimmie. Leaving the beach behind, she headed north. The bluff was a straight shot from there, up on the highest point at the back of the head. While the rest of the island was green with meadow and spruce, here was a mass of granite-gray cliffs, rearing high above the tumble of rock to the sea. A lighthouse stood watch; its light was automated, and the keeper’s house long since decayed, but there was an authenticity to it. Julia had visited the spot before. She had felt that authenticity, along with a certain wildness.

  The bluff road was well marked, the pavement here broken, but her SUV handled it well. As she climbed, trees that had flanked the road thinned, then receded. Ahead were boulders, sky, and a rustic stone tower with a rotating eye at the top. The pounding of the surf, magnified by all that baldness, was strong enough to penetrate the walls of the car.

  Pulling up beside the ruins of the keeper’s house, she parked behind a small blue Honda. The instant she opened her door, the roar of the waves came full force, and one step out, she was hit by a stiff breeze.

  Leaning into it, she climbed over a short stretch of granite to the lighthouse, but it wasn’t until she was past it that she saw anyone there, and then she wondered if she had the wrong person. The one sitting out on the rocks facing the sea was a small, childlike bundle with her knees drawn up, arms cinching them to her chest. But it wasn’t the pose that was odd.

  It was the hair. It was bright red—not at all odd in and of itself, given the hair color of Nancy and June.

  What was odd was that Julia always noticed hair first. She noticed it when she was at the gym, when she was out to lunch, when she was at the theater. Monte said she simply wanted to know that other people worked as hard to maintain their natural color as she did. But the truth was she had always been attuned to hair, even way back when her color was her natural color, which was why she felt such an odd twist inside now.

  She didn’t remember seeing anyone in the stern of the Amelia Celeste with red hair. She didn’t think she would have missed it, regardless of how harried and rushed she had been. If there had been a flash of hair that red in the stern of the ferry, she would have remembered. And if Kim had not been in the stern, there was only one other place she could have been.

  Chapter 9

  Hello!” Julia called loudly enough to be heard over the pounding of the surf.

  Kimmie Colella looked around quickly. Her face was pale, her eyes blank. She showed no sign of recognition—and with good cause. If she had not been on the Amelia Celeste, she would not have seen Julia before, surely not in the crowd on the dock in the dark that night.

  Julia could be wrong. She couldn’t swear under oath that Kim hadn’t been on the ferry. Her own memory might be faulty. Yes, she noticed hair, but she had been preoccupied with getting herself and her bags aboard. If Kim had been sitting behind someone, or if she’d been wearing a hat, Julia might have missed the hair.

  That had to be it, Julia decided. A hat.

  She stopped ten feet from the girl. Girl? Just as on the night of the accident, she couldn’t think of Kimmie as a woman, though she knew her to be twenty-one. Then, she had been a sopping figure swathed in a blanket, her hair color muted by water and night. She was no longer wet now—wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers—but she looked smaller and more forlorn. That vivid red hair was as straight as Julia’s, though longer. In the hands of the wind, it became a shifting veil.

  “I’m Julia Bechtel,” Julia began gently. “I was on the Amelia Celeste.”

  Kim’s eyes held hers for another minute. They fell to her clothes, studying, and went to her car. Then they returned to the sea.

  Julia came closer. “I’ve been wondering how you are.” She squatted on a nearby rock. “There were three of us who survived—you, me, and Noah Prine. He and I talk every so often. We have this thing in common. It’s not often that people survive accidents that take so many other lives.”

  Long strands of silky red hair blew over Kim’s cheek. She tucked it back behind her ear.

  Taking that as a sign she was listening, Julia began to chat. “The accident was the last thing I anticipated when I left New York Tuesday morning. An auto accident? Maybe. I always think about those when I’m on the highway. How not to? Drive long enough, and you pass some sort of mishap. I did on the drive up that Tuesday. It was a minor accident, I think—no ambulances, only police.”

  She was talking, just talking, wanting to be pleasant and approachable. And maybe it was working, she decided. Kim wasn’t telling her to leave, and there were ways to do that without speaking. She could have thrown Julia dirty looks, turned her back, moved to a distant rock, even stood and left the bluff.

  “I’m here to visit Zoe Ballard,” Julia went on. “She’s my aunt, but more like a friend, since we’re only twelve years apart. I’ve visited before. I’ve come up from time to time with my daughter. She’s twenty and wants to be a chef. The field is a big one now. There’s a whole art to food presentation. And then those celebrity chefs.”

  You have a daughter? Kim might have said. Just about my age?

  Instead, she put an elbow on her knee and braced her head with a hand.

  “I was initially planning to stay for only two weeks, but I’ve extended that,” Julia said. “My parents think I’m crazy. They think that what with the accident and all, I should go right back home.”

  Your parents think you’re crazy, too? It was another opening, but ignored.

  “Have you been on a boat since the accident?” Julia asked. When Kim didn’t react, she said, “I was dreading that. But my car was back on the mainland, and I needed clothes to replace the ones that went down with the boat. I also had to go because my daughter would have thought I was a total wuss if I didn’t.” No smile from Kim. “There was fog, like there was at the time of the accident. I kept waiting for the nose of a purple boat to break through. I wake up in the middle of the night with that image.”

  She wanted to ask if Kim woke up with the same image. Only, if Kim hadn’t been on the Amelia Celeste, but rather on The Beast, the question would have been threatening, and that was the last thing Julia wanted to be. Kim might not be speaking, but she was listening. That was something.

  Julia continued. “Taking the ferry back to Big Sawyer was better. The sun was out, so I could see things. I was also feeling like the ocean might have swallowed me up on Tuesday night and it didn’t, so maybe there was a kind of truce between it and me. I almost feel an affinity with it.” She paused. With genuine curiosity, even beseechfulness, she
asked, “Do you feel anything like that?”

  A wave spent its force against the rocks below, sending spray nearly up to the bluff. Julia waited for another. It came after several smaller ones, but she appreciated those, too. The power of the sea was raw, its effect hypnotic.

  “I’ve always read that the ocean is as basic to our existence as amniotic fluid,” she mused. “So maybe any connection we feel with the sea is a primal thing?”

  She looked at Kim, but the girl was somewhere far away. Her eyes were glazed. They suddenly widened. She jerked. Her eyes flew to Julia’s.

  Oh, yes, she relived the crash. It was there, clear as day.

  Gently, Julia said, “They say that fades with time.”

  Kim blinked. She put her chin on her knees and looked out at the sea.

  “Is it different for you, living on the water? You were born here, weren’t you?” Kim didn’t answer. “The accident was something else. All or nothing. You either died, or you were unscathed. I think about that a lot. I think about why I was spared, and what I want to do with my life now. Like I have a chance to be someone different, and I have to decide who that is.” She paused. Very quietly, she said, “Do you feel any of that?”

  Kim met her eyes then, and there was something so bleak in them that Julia nearly reached for her. In that split second, she imagined the girl hurling herself over the edge of the cliff to her death on the rocks far below.

  Urgent now, she said, “You and I share something, Kim. We’ve had an experience that not many people ever have. It’s been good for me having Noah to talk with, but Noah’s male. I’d like to talk with another woman. I’m an outsider—a New Yorker, of all things,” she drawled in self-derision, attempting to lighten the mood, “and I’m not sure any of my friends back there will be able to relate to what I’m feeling. My husband doesn’t. My parents don’t. Even Zoe can only understand to a point. The chief of police just wants the facts, and the pastor at the church will pray for me. But I need other things. Talking with you would be therapeutic for me. Maybe you’d get something out of it, too.”