Damian he’d worry about when he got there.
Chapter Four
Summer studied the papers strewn across the blue polyester motel quilt. After only twenty-four hours away from the museum, she felt dissociated and out of the loop. Later in the summer, their museum would have the rare opportunity to borrow a collection of artifacts recovered from the 1607 Jamestown colony. She ran a finger down the list of broken wine cups and cooking pots. She loved reading background material, reliving archeological digs that brought such finds to light. And yet all the documents in the world could never explain the most important things.
They couldn’t explain why a young girl, on a particular day, might have chosen to mix corn and venison stew in her cooking pot. Or whether she’d learned the technique from a Potomac Indian woman or raised a callus on her finger as she stirred. Had she watched her mother nurse a newborn? Had she blushed and dropped her chin when a certain boy walked by?
Summer pushed the papers together in a heap. She reached for the glass of water on her nightstand and wished it held something much stronger. I only like putting other people’s pasts in order because I can’t remember my own. That’s what an ex-boyfriend had told her once. She downed the water and wondered if it were true.
She’d been back in Pine Point for over a day and, aside from the one dizzying moment in the house that afternoon, she hadn’t experienced a single memory of that night. Not that she wanted to. Her eyes filled as she tried to remember her brother’s face, his laugh, the way he teased her about being in love with Gabe. She couldn’t. It had all become a fog, which was just as well. More than one therapist had told her she was better off not remembering anything about the accident. Selective amnesia they called it, the brain sorting out and banishing any traumas too painful to recall.
Summer pulled off her T-shirt and pink panties and flung both over a chair. The sheets, pilled but soft, she drew up to her chin. Sleep, she ordered. A good eight hours of it, please. The day, too long and too full of memories, had worn her out. Tomorrow morning she’d find Sadie Rogers and get the house on the market. A couple of days later she’d fly out. And the whole thing would be over.
* * * * *
Damian settled himself into one of the faded lawn chairs on the front porch and stretched out his legs. Folding one hand behind his head, he stifled a yawn and studied the mountains that wrapped their arms around the town. At night, especially in the absence of a moon, they became shadowy giants that towered over the residents. After almost three years of living in Pine Point, he still couldn’t decide whether they soothed him or scared him. Sometimes he suspected it was a little bit of both.
The phone rang. Two minutes later Dinah appeared, framed in the doorway. “For you.” She held out the receiver. “It’s Catfish.”
“Hey, Cat. What’s up?”
Damian’s best friend belched loudly into the phone. “We going out tonight?”
“I don’t care. Sure. Where?”
“Murphy’s?”
Joyce Hadley flashed into Damian’s mind, pink and sky-blue and smiling with eyes that wanted much more than to coach his kid sister. We’ll be at Murphy’s tonight…
“No. No way.”
Cat belched again. “Well, where else?”
“How ’bout Jimmy’s?”
Damian nodded in the dim light. “Yeah, all right. I’ll meet you there around nine.”
“Sounds good.”
“I’m going out with Cat for a little while,” Damian told his mother a few minutes later.
“Good.” Hannah smiled over the dishes she washed, though her expression seemed weary. “There’s no reason for you to sit home with us every night.”
But I would. He didn’t need to say the words; they hung in the kitchen above them all, understood.
“We’ll be fine,” Hannah said, and the set of her mouth confirmed her words. “Go.”
Out of habit, Damian checked the deadbolts on the front and back doors before he left and made his mother promise not to open the door for anyone except the police. She nodded, slipping into her quiet nighttime mood, and Dinah waved goodbye from her beanbag chair by the television.
With the day behind him and food in his stomach, Damian felt rested and more relaxed than usual. He tapped the steering wheel as the music poured from his speakers. He headed down Main Street toward the highway until he reached a side street just beyond the overpass. Cat stood outside Jimmy’s Watering Hole, waiting. A corner bar away from the center of town, the place attracted the local thirty-somethings more than the drunken college kids home on summer break. Much better than Murphy’s.
Damian had never really been into the bar scene, though he’d done it enough when he first started college. But one too many nights of wandering home near dawn and puking into a cracked dormitory toilet bowl had turned his stomach. Now he only went out occasionally, usually to quieter bars or the ones with a good band playing. Tonight the place was more crowded than usual, though, and he wondered if even Jimmy’s had been a mistake.
“Thanks.” He took the beer Cat bought him and shoved his way through the narrow room until he reached the back wall. Before him, a sea of faces blended together. He finished his beer in a few long swallows and propped the empty bottle on the table beside him. A collection of other bottles sat there next to a wrinkled cocktail napkin with a smeared phone number scrawled across it.
Damian worked his hands into his pockets. He was getting too old for this sort of thing.
The door to Jimmy’s flung open and three—no, four—women pushed their way inside. Clad in too-tight T-shirts and miniskirts, they strutted across the room and winked at the bartender. Damian’s chest tightened. The Hadley sisters—Tara, Joyce, Eva and Marie. All blonde, all beautiful. According to Cat, they’d grown up in Pine Point, two years apart in age, and never left. Damian wondered if they ever would. What the hell were they doing here?
He glanced over his shoulder and wondered if Jimmy’s had a back exit. Nothing but bodies stuck too close together. Damn. He shrank into the wall and looked at his feet.
“Damian!” She’d spotted him.
His stomach did a slow flop, over and back, and he raised his chin. No use avoiding her. “Hi, Joyce.”
The tallest and blondest of the four wound her way through the crowd, and heads turned as she passed. When she reached him, Joyce looked up through mascara-drenched lashes and shook her head with a teasing smile.
Damian cleared his throat. “Thought you were going to Murphy’s.”
Joyce moved closer and bumped him with one hip. “Changed our minds. Besides, I thought you might show up here.” She tucked a strand of hair behind one pierced ear. “You’re with Cat?”
Damian nodded.
“Why don’t you both come back to the house?” She curled an arm through his and pressed her breast against him. Warmth from her skin seeped through his shirtsleeve and into the crook of his elbow. It felt good, and for an instant he considered her offer. Maybe his mother was right. Joyce was easy on the eyes, and she sure wasn’t making things tough for him.
Then he took a deep breath and shook his head. “Sorry. We’re just on our way home, actually.”
“Liar.” Joyce pushed her lips out in a pout.
He shrugged. “I’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow.” That, at least, was true.
She released his arm and pouted a moment longer. “I’ll be around if you change your mind. And you have my number.” With a wiggle of her slim hips, she rejoined her sisters at the bar.
Damian watched her for a minute and then searched for his friend. In the dark ocean of faces and beer bottles, he couldn’t see anything at first. Then he spied Cat at the other end of Jimmy’s, leaning against the only window in the place. One of Joyce’s sisters was giggling into his shoulder. Well, at least one of them would get lucky tonight. He threaded his way to Cat’s
other side and mumbled a goodbye.
“You’re leaving already?” Cat pulled himself away. “We just got here.”
“Long day.”
“Call me tomorrow, then.”
“Yeah, all right.”
Eva Hadley started snaking her tongue along Cat’s earlobe right about then, so Damian slid out the front door before Joyce could bury her fuchsia nails into his own skin and drag him home with her.
On his way back into town, he circled through Park Place Run, Pine Point’s answer to Fifth Avenue. Cat told him there used to be cornfields here, as far as you could see in every direction. He had a hard time picturing it now. Seemed a shame to lose so much countryside, but he supposed everything changed in the name of progress. Now, instead of fields, sidewalks of red brick wound into darkness, and white lights dotted miniature trees in a crooked connect-the-dots pattern.
He slowed the car. One restaurant remained open and a few people sat at the bar. Suddenly Damian longed to be part of a couple just for one night, to sit at a bar and drown in a woman. To watch her cheeks darken and her skirt shift as she crossed her legs. To lose himself in her conversation as evening became midnight and then wound its way to dawn without taking a breath. He hadn’t felt that way in years. Sometimes he thought he might not ever feel that way again.
* * * * *
Summer sat up, no closer to sleep than she had been twelve hours earlier. Naked, she strode into the bathroom and rifled through her overnight bag. Nothing. She’d used up her last Ambien on the flight here. Not even a lousy Tylenol PM lay loose in the bottom of her bag.
She stared at her reflection. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark circles beneath them. A decent body, thanks to five days a week at the gym and curves that had emerged sometime around the tenth grade. She pulled her hair away from her neck. If she looked closely enough, though, she could see the scar along her collarbone. It mirrored the smaller ones on her left arm, the ones that crawled up the inside of her wrist, spider-web fashion.
Or broken-glass fashion.
She dropped her hand and let black locks cloak her face. She didn’t need to look. She could trace the marks inside her mind.
Without warning, the dizziness started again. Oh, God. No. I have to get out of here. Sweat broke out on her forehead. She reached for her T-shirt, her jeans, a pair of flip-flops by the door. Car keys and purse. The walls wavered in her peripheral vision, and she had to brace herself with one hand. Deep breaths, she tried to tell herself but the oxygen seized up inside her chest and she started to wheeze.
“What’s happening to me?” The words echoed inside the room and she stumbled against the wall.
“Summer? Where are you? I can’t feel my legs. I can’t—”
Summer yanked the door open and flung herself into the narrow motel corridor. The door swung shut behind her. A second too late, she patted her back pocket. No keycard for Room 101.
“Crap.”
It didn’t matter now. His voice wouldn’t disappear from inside her head. She began running down the hall. Her pulse jumped; she could feel it inside her wrists and at the base of her throat. Perspiration dotted her upper lip and the corners of her mouth, and she tasted salt. At the far end of the hall, just in time, she reached for the bar across the exit door and pushed. Hard.
“Summer? I’m scared. Where’s Gabe?”
Sweet mountain air flooded her lungs, and the voice vanished.
Oh, God. She’d forgotten how good it tasted—or that air could even taste at all. A complex combination of pine trees and starlight and wet, steamy pavement fell onto her tongue. She skittered to a stop and looked up. There they were, the dark shadows that hugged Pine Point. They hadn’t changed at all. They still stood, half-gorgeous, half-ominous, and looked down on her in silence. She remained there for long moment and just breathed.
Donnie. She laid one hand against her chest and willed her heart to slow. She hadn’t dreamt of her little brother in years. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d called up his voice inside her head. And yet just a moment ago, he’d sounded as though he sat right behind her, with anguish in his words. Tears filled her eyes and she pressed the heels of her palms to her face to stop them from coming.
“I have to get out of Pine Point.” She’d been a fool to return in the first place.
I’ll take a drive. Maybe that’ll relax me.
Summer climbed into her rental and fumbled with the headlights. Ahead of her, at the end of Main Street, she saw the fading taillights of another car. Other than that, all of Pine Point looked deserted. She took the first left and followed Perkins Lane around the back side of town. Not much new here. She passed the same collection of low-slung homes and double-wide trailers set back from the road. Every other one had a basketball hoop hanging from its garage door and pots of impatiens on the front step. At the corner of Melody Lane she braked. Her mouth tasted chalky, and perspiration slid down her spine. Of course. She’d driven the familiar route without even realizing it. Her stomach turned over and she was glad she hadn’t eaten much for dinner.
From here, she couldn’t make out the one-story house with the sagging roof. She couldn’t see the pine trees that grew together and closed in the windows. But she knew it waited, a short half-mile away. Her childhood home. The yard she’d spent so much time playing in, the stream she’d spent so much time digging around. She turned the steering wheel without pressing on the gas. She wanted to see. She didn’t want to see. Daisy petals plucked themselves off the stem in her mind. Yes. No. Still she kept her foot on the brake. Not tonight.
“Wanna come over later?” Gabe’s hand, warm on her bare thigh, moved upward. “Celebrate graduation?”
She cut him a glance. Not with my kid brother in the car.
“What?” Donnie’s carrot-top head bobbed in the back seat. “What didja say, Gabe?”
“Shh.” Summer turned up the radio. June-warm wind lifted the hair from her neck as the car darted along the empty roads outside Pine Point. She felt full, sated with the night and the happiness of finally leaving high school and the thrill of the guy in the seat beside her. Yes, she wanted to spend all night with Gabe. All of tomorrow too, and every day of summer until they had to leave for college.
She hadn’t known love could make her feel like this, like a helium balloon filled up to bursting. She adored him. And yes, she wanted to celebrate with him. God, more than anything. She wanted him to run his hands over her, to peel her clothes off the way he had last weekend when his parents were at the shore. But they had to take Donnie home first, or—
The other car came out of nowhere. Blinding lights. Grinding brakes. A snapping motion that engaged the airbag and bloodied her face. Tree limbs scratching at her arms and face. And the screaming, high-pitched and panicked in the dark.
“Summer? Summer?”
Something cold stiffened her spine. The voice came from somewhere over her shoulder, and she would have tried to see where, except she couldn’t move her arms and she couldn’t find her legs and all she could hear was her little brother looking for her—
Summer sucked in air and tried to stop her heart from leaping out of her chest.
“Why is this happening?” Her head dropped onto the steering wheel, and this time she gave in to the tears.
Stupid question. She knew the answer. Everyone in the town knew. Three miles from this spot, ten years ago, her world had shattered. Her brother—gone. The life she’d known—fractured. She’d spent a decade trying to piece herself together again, but being back in Pine Point was stirring her up in ways she’d never dreamed possible. Summer pressed her lips together to try to keep her weeping at bay. She tried to recall her brother, the other driver, what had happened when the cops arrived. She couldn’t. She only remembered the blinding beam of a flashlight moving over the car. Sirens. Gabe’s hand in hers.
And a lot of questions she couldn’t
answer.
Chapter Five
Summer eased her car into the last open space on the Hunter lawn, wondering again why she’d agreed to come to Rachael’s lake party. She had no time for this. She had less than a week before she left Pine Point, and if she could work a small miracle, she’d be gone even earlier. No more dizzy spells or memories of the accident since the other night at the motel, thank goodness, and that one she was chalking up to fatigue. Still, fear laced the hours now.
“Summer!” Rachael Hunter waved from the front porch of the ivy-covered house.
Summer climbed from her car and looked toward the oak that hid the water. I climbed that tree. I sat in the branches and spied on Cat and his friends until the sun went down. How many days had she spent here, basking in the warmth of Rachael and her family? How many times had she fled the emptiness of her own home, left her father sitting alone while she tried to find a place to feel normal? And why hadn’t she come back at least once in all the years since to visit her most loyal childhood friend? Because I couldn’t cope. Not even with seeing Rachael. Suddenly she felt much older than twenty-eight. She palmed the car keys and locked the doors before she remembered she was in the middle of farmland, not downtown San Francisco.
“God, ten years, Summer. Look at you! I can’t believe you’re really here!” Rachael met her halfway and flung her arms around her best friend.
“Me either.”
Rachael gave her a long look up and down. “You look good. Too thin, but good. How long are you staying?”
“Only a few more days.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I have a ton of work at the museum.”
“C’mon…you haven’t been back here since high school. Can’t you take some more time off? You’re still running that museum, right? You’re not dealing with anything that’s going anywhere.”
Summer's Song: Pine Point, Book 1 Page 4
