Summer at Sunset: (The Summer Series Book 2)

by Beth Labonte

  He chuckles and looks around the room for recognition of his joke, but none of us respond. I barely even realized he’d been speaking. All of the voices in the room seem to have faded into the background and all I can process is the sight of that black smoke, curling up, up, up. Up from where? Not from Marmaduke’s. Not from Starbucks.

  No.

  There is only one place that could be on fire this morning. On this morning. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.

  That’s when my cell phone rings.

  I walk back into the kitchen like a zombie, and am not at all surprised to find that it’s Nadine.

  “Hello?” I answer. I listen for a few moments, close my eyes, and swallow hard. “Okay. Thank you.”

  I hang up and walk back into the living room.

  “That was Nadine,” I say, sinking onto the couch. “The Lakeview caught on fire this morning. It burned. It...it burned to the ground.” I choke on those last few words and cover my mouth with my hands. Babette lets out a loud gasp, clutches her hair with both hands, and starts walking in frantic circles around the living room.

  Mom freezes in the kitchen with a can of tomato soup in her hand. Dad, oblivious to the news, comes back into the room holding beach towels and a hairdryer.

  “What is it?” he asks. “Is it the neighbor’s house? Once the neighbor’s house goes up, it’s too late!” He staggers backward into the counter, knocking a frying pan full of eggs onto the floor. Mom shushes him and pulls him into the other room to explain.

  Graham just looks at me, seemingly at a loss for words. His face looks more ashen than I’ve ever seen it; except for maybe that time we climbed the lighthouse in Bermuda.

  “Oh, Summer,” moans Babette, sitting down next to me on the couch. I’m expecting a comforting hand on my shoulder, but instead she flops back into the pillows with her hand across her forehead. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Is this it?” I ask, through my sniffles. “The wedding’s off? After everything? After all that? It’s...it’s off?” I burst into tears again. This is all my fault. If I’d just had the wedding back home, none of this would have happened. I’m being punished, that’s what it is. It wasn’t enough that I apologized to Mom. No. God, or Zeus, or whoever is in charge up there, decided that instead of ending juvenile diabetes, they were going to make damn sure Summer Hartwell paid in full for planning a wedding without her mother.

  Thanks, guys. I get it. Lesson learned.

  “I think I’m having a nervous breakdown,” I moan into my hands.

  Graham takes Babette’s seat on the couch—she’s already gotten up and wandered off somewhere in hysterics—and puts an arm around my shoulders.

  “It’s going to be okay,” says a voice that doesn’t belong to Graham. Another arm comes around me from the other side, and I realize that it’s Mom. She’s put down her sack of canned goods and forks, and is looking at me through tear-filled eyes.

  “How, Mom? The wedding is in nine hours and we have no venue. We have no venue, no tables, no chairs, no food.”

  “One way or another,” says Mom “my daughter is getting married today. It may not be the wedding of your dreams, but I don’t think any of this was ever going to be the wedding of your dreams.”

  I give her a weak smile. How was I the only person who didn’t know what a mistake all of this was?

  “It may not be the wedding of your dreams,” she continues, “but there will be a wedding. Isn’t that right, Graham?”

  I turn and look at Graham. He really doesn’t look well. I mean, none of us do. We all just received some terrible news. But still, I’ve never seen him looking so...what is it? The word guilty flickers through my mind. That’s silly. What would Graham possibly have to feel guilty about? It’s not like he burned the place down.

  Oh.

  It’s as I’m looking into his eyes, and the synapses in my brain are beginning to form connections between thoughts of Graham and thoughts of arson, that a montage of Francine images starts running through my mind. In each image she’s holding a cigarettes in one of her shaky hands. She’s flicking ashes on the ground. She’s blowing smoke in my face. And then, like a geriatric Vin Diesel, she’s driving calmly away in her golf cart as The Lakeview goes up in flames behind her.

  Graham never talked to her.

  That’s why he looks so ill right now. He thought he could get away with not saying anything, and now he thinks that this is all his fault. I open my mouth to accuse him, when another thought stops me in my tracks. What if he did talk to her? What if talking to Francine pushed her over the edge, making her so angry that she decided to set fire to the place? Then this would all be my fault.

  Maybe I don’t ever want to know whose fault it was.

  Graham and I look at each other in silence for a few more seconds, telepathically communicating that we shall never speak of what may or may not have happened last night—not to each other, not to anyone. It will just stay buried for all eternity, ‘til death do us part, forever and ever.

  Amen.

  “Graham?” says Mom, still waiting for a reply.

  “Yes,” he says, jumping a bit. “Of course she’s getting married today. This is just a minor setback. This is nothing, Sum. Venue? We don’t need no stinking venue!”

  Dad returns to the living room, beach towel and hairdryer free, and sits down on the coffee table across from me. He squeezes my hand. I smile, and look back and forth between him and Mom. Ironically, John and Babette have both disappeared, while my parents are the ones still here, holding it together. Sometimes I feel like my parents were simply constructed with some of their wires crossed. Like, this one time when Dad fell off a ladder, they were totally calm about the whole thing. But then, this other time, I forgot to bring my car in for an oil change and they totally lost it.

  They’re stronger than you think. The words Graham once said to me come floating back.

  So, here I am. Back to square one. Back to square one with the two people who should have been here all along. Lesson learned.

  God, or Zeus, or whoever, sure works in infuriating ways.

  36

  “Seventy-five,” says Graham, into his cell phone. “Seventy-five chairs, that’s right. And tables to match. And a tent. And we need it all delivered and set up by two o’clock. Yep, two o’clock today. Whatever it takes. Money’s no object.” He gives me a wink. “Thanks.”

  I smile and turn back to surveying the charred remains of The Lakeview. The fire trucks and police cars are still there, probably searching for signs of arson.

  I’d point you right to her if I had any proof, fellas.

  But the longer I sit here looking at the extent of the destruction, the more I start to doubt that Francine could have done this. I mean, she could have. It’s not hard to start a fire, and fires certainly like to spread. But seeing the reality of it, laid out in front of me with its smoky tendrils curling up toward the sky, it seems too insane. Even for her.

  I stand up to stretch my legs, and suddenly feel the oddest sensation beneath my feet. It’s a light vibration—almost as if a train were about to whiz through town—only, there aren’t any trains around here. It’s weird, but I shrug it off. It’s probably just pins and needles from sitting here so long. I’ve been sitting on the fountain, across the street from The Lakeview, staring at it with a dulled sense of loss, for the past half hour. I know my wedding was supposed to have been in there. And I know that it would have been beautiful—as long as Nadine took care of those bubblegum table linens—but, like Mom implied, how much of it would have actually been mine? That wedding was more Babette’s than it was ever mine. I see that now.

  Graham’s been on the phone for the past thirty minutes trying to order last minute supplies for our suddenly outdoor wedding. Judging by the thumbs-up he just gave me, the chairs, tables, and tent shall indeed be here. And by “here,” I literally mean here.

  We’re getting married right here in Duke’s Landing. On the town common. />
  The town common, you say? Isn’t that where retirees drunkenly line dance, night after night? Isn’t that where the daring ones get frisky, get arrested, and get drinks named after them? Why, yes. Yes it is. In a few short hours, I shall walk down a makeshift aisle in my wedding dress—the real pretty one that wasn’t eaten by an alligator—and begin the next chapter of my life. I shall begin the next chapter of my life five hundred feet from the blackened heap that was once The Lakeview.

  I know, I cried about it too.

  At first, saying our vows directly across the street from a smoldering graveyard of wedding decorations and filet mignons seemed like a bad omen—like a black cat crossing your path, or seeing a single crow. I even called the Sunset Havens Recreation Department to check on the availability of the other town commons, but Duke’s Landing was the only one not hosting a special event tonight.

  Then, as I dejectedly hung up the phone, I thought of how well-done our filet mignons must be by now. I mentioned it to Mom, and we laughed about it for a long time. After that, I felt a little better.

  Now, I’m fully onboard.

  In other words, I’ve come to accept that I have no choice. It’s make the best of a bad situation and get married out here at Duke’s Landing, or postpone the entire wedding. And while I see now that I should have involved my parents all along, there’s no way that I can go back home and start over from scratch.

  I’m tired.

  I want to get married—today. I want to go on our honeymoon—tomorrow. I don’t care how it happens. I just want to be Mrs. Summer Blenderman more than anything else in the world. Besides, it’s a well known fact that if you hit rock bottom and manage to survive, things can only get better.

  ***

  I take back what I said.

  Things can get worse. Things can always get worse. Even when you’ve hit rock bottom, someone can come along with a stick of dynamite, blast through that layer of rock you’ve been resting comfortably upon, and push you further into the Earth’s crust. That’s where I am right now. Crust bottom.

  “How is he dead?” I screech into my phone.

  “Well,” says Nadine, her voice shaking. “He was quite old. I...I don’t know the exact cause. I suppose I could find out. We may need to wait for the autopsy—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “I don’t want any autopsy results. It was a rhetorical question, Nadine. I’m stressing out here.”

  Arthur Spanley, our pre-historic Justice of the Peace, died in his sleep last night. Nadine called while I was having my hair done to tell me the news. I’m not trying to be disrespectful. I understand that a man has lost his life and that this shouldn’t be all about me...but.

  I’m getting married in—I glance at the clock—five hours. I’m getting married in five hours and our Justice of the Peace is as dead as a door nail.

  “Can you get us somebody else?” I ask. “Who’s next on the list?”

  There’s silence on the other end. All I can hear is a light shuffling of papers as Nadine digs through her binder.

  “Oh,” she says at last. “Oh, my.”

  “What?”

  “Well, one of the others is up north for the summer, in Massachusetts. He’s usually fabulous.”

  Perfect. The fabulous, totally alive Justice of the Peace is back home in Massachusetts.

  “Are there any others?” I ask.

  Nadine clears her throat. “Well, there was a third, up until this week. But we’ve since been forced to sever ties.”

  “Why?”

  “He got into a bit of trouble with the law. Do you know Flavio? From Zumba?”

  “Flavio was a Justice of the Peace?”

  “Oh, yes. A lovely one, too. Very handsome.”

  An image of Flavio performing our marriage ceremony in one of his neon, nineteen-eighties aerobics outfits flashes through my head. Maybe it was a blessing that he threw that brick at us.

  “Okay,” I say, my head swimming. “Where does this leave us?”

  “I’m afraid I’m out of ideas,” she says, flatly.

  “But you’re our wedding planner! You’re supposed to be there to solve any problem that comes up!”

  “I suppose you could get married at City Hall,” she says. “But you’d have to wait until Monday.”

  I don’t even say goodbye. I just click off my cell and scan the rest of the faces in the room—Tanya, Babette, Sarah, Amber, and a bunch of hairdressers. The one person that I need right now isn’t here. She’s outside calling every restaurant in Orange County, looking for someone to cater a wedding on short notice. I told Mom that she should let someone else handle that—God knows Babette’s been totally useless since The Lakeview burned down—and that she should just come inside and have her hair done. She replied by saying, Oy, please. Who’s going to look at an old lady’s hair? Her response made me smile at the time. Now, my smile is gone and I stand impatiently by waiting for her to get the hell off the phone.

  “I’m not having any luck with any of the local caterers,” she says when she finally hangs up. “I hope you don’t mind, but we’re going to have to consider—”

  “Mom,” I interrupt, “that’s going to have to wait. This is more important. Arthur Spanley is dead.”

  Mom drops the phone into her lap. “Oh, no! Your father will be devastated. Dr. Spanley’s been his proctologist for more than thirty years.”

  “What? How would I possibly know that dad’s proctologist died? No, Arthur Spanley was our Justice of the Peace.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “Mom!”

  “What? Your father’s proctologist is very gentle,” she says, with a shrug. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  “Focus, Mom. Please. What are we going to do?”

  She looks at me thoughtfully for a few seconds. Then, in the most deus ex machina moment ever, she says, “I’m an ordained minister. I suppose I could marry you.”

  I didn’t exactly expect her to have a nervous breakdown at the news about Arthur Spanley—since this morning, I’ve become accustomed to this new, less-stressed, version of my mother. But I was in no way expecting those words to come out of her mouth. I’m an ordained minister.

  “You’re a what?”

  “An ordained minister,” she says. “I became one on the Internet.”

  “But why?”

  “I was on AOL,” she says. “checking your father’s email, and this ad popped up on the screen. Universal Life Church, it said. So, I clicked it, like I always do, and it took me to this website.”

  “Didn’t we tell you to never click pop-ups?”

  Mom shrugs. “The next thing I know, I’m an ordained minister!” She takes her wallet out of her purse and hands me a folded up piece of paper. I unfold it.

  Joan Hartwell, Certificate of Ordination. Universal Life Church.

  Well, I’ll be damned. Mom’s either an ordained minister or she’s been scammed out of a lot of money. Either way, her computer is filled with spyware.

  “Hang on a minute,” I say. I take out my phone and google the Universal Life Church. I scroll through the page, noting that Conan O’Brien and Benedict Cumberbatch are also ordained ministers. Seems legit. I put my phone away and smile at Mom.

  “You’re an ordained minister!” I throw my arms around her neck and bounce her up and down. “Wait a minute. If you’re going to be performing the ceremony, everybody is going to be looking at your hair!”

  I turn and start marching her back toward the salon. I pull open the door, then I pause and close it again. “Hang on a minute. I have one more thing to say to you.”

  Mom looks at me hesitantly, like she thinks I’m going to say something snarky, which makes me feel awful. It also makes what I’m about to say even more important.

  “I love you,” I say. “And I’m sorry that I planned my wedding without you. And I’m not just saying that because you keep swooping in and saving the day. I’m saying it because not including you was an extremely shitty t
hing for me to do.”

  “Summer!”

  “I’ll be a married woman soon, Mom. Let me swear. Just listen. I’m sorry about the wedding, and I’m sorry that you’ve been lonely living in the house with just Dad. When I moved out, I thought you’d be obsessing over whether or not I knew how to turn on the heat in my apartment, but I never considered that you would miss me. I want to fix that. I want us to spend more time together—as friends.”

  Mom’s face lights up. “You want to be friends?”

  I nod.

  “That would be nice,” she says.

  “Maybe when we get back home, we can plan a little shopping trip, or go out for lunch or something.”

  “Or I could teach you how to knit!”

  “Uh, sure,” I say. “Like, a scarf?”

  “Or a sweater! I can teach you how to knit your own cardigans!”

  “That would be great,” I say. “A married woman can never have enough cardigans.”

  I suppose I can use them to cover my old, married bosom.

  Okay, so being friends with Mom is going to take some getting used to. I’ll just have to work on my patience.

  “And you can teach me how to use Facebook!”

  Nope. Nobody has that much patience. Least of all, me.

  “One thing at a time, Mom,” I say, pulling open the door to the salon. “One thing at a time.”

  37

  Typically, when a woman is about to walk down the aisle—her arm hooked through her father’s elbow, the butterflies in her stomach beginning to stir—she finds herself adrift in the scent of roses, lilacs, or Chanel No. 5.

  Not, typically, McDonald’s French fries.

  That unmistakable scent—the one that lingers in your car for weeks after hitting the drive-through—is wafting all over the town common. Ground zero is the back of John’s Lexus, where Dad’s stuffed about three hundred bags of the stuff. Dad’s tuxedo reeks of it too, since he’s been driving from McDonald’s to McDonald’s all afternoon, gathering up enough Chicken McNuggets to feed seventy-five people. The downside of finding out that Mom is an ordained minister, is that it somehow fell to Dad to finish up the business of finding a caterer. But, he did the best that he could on short notice, and he did it all out of love.