Home for the Summer

by Holly Chamberlin

  Bella sank onto one of the benches overlooking the sea and hunched her shoulders against a gust of wind that drove raindrops against her face. Why, she wondered, did people used to say you could “catch your death of cold” in wet, chilly weather? You couldn’t get sick from air, but maybe in the old days people didn’t understand that. Ariel had loved cold weather, maybe because she suffered so much on really hot days. “Ariel is a delicate flower,” their father used to say. Not like me, Bella thought, frowning. I’m tough. I’m a freakin’ cactus. I can handle anything. Ha! If it had been she who had died in the crash, Ariel would already have gotten past the sadness and depression. She would probably have set up a scholarship fund or something in her sister’s memory. Ariel had been tough in the ways that mattered.

  “Mind if I sit here?”

  Startled by the interruption, Bella looked up to see a girl about her own age. She was wearing jeans and a red rain slicker with the hood up. Her hair—what Bella could see of it—was brown. She was pretty, but her face looked haggard. It wasn’t a look you usually saw on young people, Bella thought, except when they had gone through something really bad. She remembered catching sight of her own face in the bathroom mirror a few months after her father and sister died and being thoroughly shocked at what she saw, Bella but not Bella, a much older, sadder, and no wiser version of herself. Since then she tried to avoid looking at her reflection; you could wash your face and brush your teeth without the help of a mirror, and as for makeup, well, she had stopped wearing makeup shortly after the funeral. No amount of makeup could disguise the look of grief.

  “Sure,” she said. She wasn’t in the mood for company, but a stranger probably wouldn’t want to talk too much. Besides, she thought, she could always get up and walk away.

  The girl smiled and sat next to Bella on the wet bench. “Looks like you and I are the only two people in town who don’t mind a little rain,” she said. “I like the rain, actually. Rain fits my mood these days.”

  “Mine, too,” Bella said. “I was pretty much just saying that to someone.”

  “I’m Clara by the way. I’m working at The Flipper until the end of August. Then I’m off to college.”

  “I’m Bella. My mother and I are staying at my grandmother’s in Yorktide for the summer.”

  “You have a job?” Clara asked.

  “Yeah,” Bella said. “At Wainscoting and Windowseats. My grandmother’s friend Phil owns it.”

  “Lucky! You can’t get fired. My boss can be a bear.”

  Bella shrugged. “Phil’s cool. I’ve known him all my life.”

  They sat in silence for a long moment, Bella almost forgetting she wasn’t alone, lulled by the rhythm of the silvery waves out at sea and the pattering of raindrops on the rocky ground at their feet. Finally, the girl spoke again. “So, where are you from?” she asked.

  “My mother and I live in Massachusetts,” Bella told her.

  “Are your parents divorced?”

  Bella winced. “No,” she said, staring resolutely at the water. “My dad’s dead. He and my sister died in a car accident a little over a year ago.”

  Clara shook her head. “I’m so sorry. Really, I’m sorry. I guess I just assumed when you said you and your mother . . .”

  “It’s okay,” Bella told her. “Where are you from?”

  “A little town in upstate New York. Bet you’ve never heard of it. Whimsey Corner.”

  “You’re right,” Bella said. “Never heard of it. How’d you wind up in Maine?”

  “A friend of my parents used to work here in Ogunquit during the summers a million years ago,” Clara explained. “She thought it might be a good thing for me to do this year. She said I’d have fun. My parents agreed. They kept reminding me how much I’d always wanted to see the ocean. So my parents’ friend called the guy who owns The Flipper—she used to work with him—and got me a job.” Clara laughed. “I’m eighteen, legally an adult, but I didn’t have much say in the decision.”

  Bella knew all about adults thinking they knew what was best for you. There was the vice principal of her high school who had argued that Bella should attend the school’s memorial service for Ariel back in April. There was her former grief counselor, Colleen Milton, always pushing her to face challenges like going through the photos the family had taken on that fateful final vacation. And her mother and grandmother could be bossy and know-it-all, too. Her mother was trying to convince her that a celebration of Ariel’s birthday was a good thing and her grandmother was insisting they make ice cream like they had in the old days with her father and that Bella go to Phil’s Fourth of July party even though she didn’t want to.

  “Why?” Bella asked. “Why did your parents and their friend think it would be a good idea for you to come to Ogunquit?”

  Clara sighed. “You really want to know?”

  “Yeah,” Bella said. Why not? she thought. Maybe hearing someone else’s story would get her mind off her own, even for a few minutes.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you the short version. The guy I was seeing for the past four years broke up with me a few weeks before graduation. He didn’t give me a real reason. He just said he’d decided to go to California for college and that it was best if we see other people. I had no idea anything was wrong. We were supposed to go to the same college. We were supposed to get married. But . . .” Clara cleared her throat.

  “Sorry,” Bella said. “Sounds tough.”

  “It was,” Clara said, her voice catching. “It is. I loved him with all my heart. I still do. I think about him every minute of every day.”

  “But why go so far from home? I mean, why not stay in Whimsey Corner to be close to your friends? They must all feel for you, no?”

  “No,” Clara said flatly. “I’m on my own. I mean, I had friends, but once I met Marc I stopped seeing them. My mom told me that I was making a mistake giving up my girlfriends for a boy. She just didn’t understand that with Marc in my life I didn’t need anyone else.”

  “But now?” Bella asked. “Do you need those friends now?”

  Clara shrugged. “I’m fine. I don’t need any of my old friends. Not that they’d want me around after all this time.”

  “Do you know that for sure?” Bella asked. “Maybe they’d be happy if you reached out.”

  “Trust me. They wouldn’t be. They were all madly jealous when Marc picked me and not one of them.”

  Bella hesitated for a moment and then the words just came flowing from her mouth. “I have no friends anymore, either. When Ariel, my sister, died I just couldn’t stand to be around them, even my best friend, Kerri. Everyone wanted to help. Everyone thought they knew what I was going through. Everyone wanted me to talk about losing my dad and my sister, but I didn’t want to talk about it. So I pretty much rejected them all. Even Kerri, and I’d been friends with her since fourth grade.”

  Clara didn’t reply, but Bella realized she didn’t much care. It had been enough to say what she had said; it had been enough to finally make the choice to talk to someone about her life. Once again the two girls sat in silence before the gray sea under a leaden sky, and Bella thought more about Kerri. It had been about two months since they had last talked. Well, since they had argued. Clearly, Kerri no longer needed Bella in her life. But do I need her? Bella wondered. Of course not, she thought. No.

  “Look at the two of us,” Clara said suddenly. “Sitting on a bench getting soaked by the rain! We must be nuts!”

  Bella smiled. “Maybe it’s time to go. The wind is picking up, too. Welcome to summer in Maine.”

  “I’ll walk back into town with you,” Clara said, “if you’re heading that way. My car is parked off Main Street.”

  “Yeah,” Bella said. “Sure.”

  The girls rose and silently walked back along the graveled path that led into town, past a row of beautiful resorts, their green lawns and blue pools now empty of guests. When they reached the end of the path, Clara briefly put a hand on Bella’s arm.


  “Hey,” she said. “You want to get together sometime? Hang out?”

  Bella didn’t hesitate. “Yeah,” she said. “That might be okay.”

  They took out their phones and exchanged numbers. “I’ve got to get going,” Clara said then, tucking her phone into the pocket of her rain jacket. “My shift starts in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay,” Bella said. “See you.” She watched as Clara walked off, her head bowed against the pelting rain. Bella didn’t know quite what to make of the encounter. Meeting Clara the way she had felt somehow serendipitous, as if it was meant to happen. Since when had she ever shared so much personal information with a total stranger who wasn’t being paid to tell her that what she was doing was wrong and what she should be doing instead?

  But maybe, Bella thought, she and Clara weren’t total strangers after all. Okay, a boyfriend breaking up with you wasn’t half as devastating as your father and sister dying in a car crash in a foreign country, but still, it was loss and Clara and Bella had that in common. They each had lost so very much.

  Loss. It might be a bond on which to form a friendship. Bella shoved her hands deeper into the pockets of her sweatshirt and headed toward the lot behind the pharmacy where she had locked her bike.

  Chapter 14

  “What did you do with yourself on your day off?” Ruby asked her granddaughter at dinner that evening. “I mean after this morning when we concocted what will be the world’s greatest blueberry ice cream.” It was true that Bella had been more of a witness than a participant in the process, but at least she had taken her turn at the crank.

  “Hung around.”

  “I assumed that,” Ruby replied patiently; it took some effort. “Teenagers do it so well. Where did you hang around?”

  “Mostly on Marginal Way,” Bella said without looking up from her plate. “I met someone there. She’s working at The Flipper for the summer.”

  “Oh? What’s her name?” Frieda asked.

  “Clara,” Bella said. “I didn’t ask her last name. She’s from some little town in upstate New York. Whimsey Corner.”

  “How old is she?” Frieda asked.

  “About my age,” Bella replied, again without looking up. “She just graduated from high school.”

  Frieda frowned. “She’s a long way from home for someone so young.”

  “She said it was her parents’ idea she come here. They have a friend who used to work in Ogunquit.”

  Ruby spooned another helping of carrot salad onto her plate. “Well, to each his own. Are you going to see her again?”

  Bella shrugged. “We might hang out.”

  “And how was your day?” Ruby asked her daughter.

  “Not bad at all,” Frieda said. “I landed another copyediting gig. It’s with a new and very talked about academic journal. The money is decent enough and the job scope is reasonable.”

  “Good for you,” Ruby said warmly.

  “Oh, and Jack Tennant called. We’re having lunch tomorrow.”

  Bella finally looked up from her dinner and frowned. “The guy whose wife died? Why are you having lunch with him?” she asked.

  “Why not?” Frieda said. “We grew up together. I mean, we weren’t close friends, but we did go to the same schools for twelve years. That’s a connection.”

  Ruby nodded. “It’s comforting to be with people who knew you back when. It becomes more comforting the older we get.”

  “I don’t miss being with Kerri,” Bella stated.

  “You might someday,” Ruby said, getting up from the table. “If everyone is finished I’ll get the ice cream. Frieda, would you clear away the dinner things? Bella, would you grab some bowls and spoons?” Ruby opened the freezer and removed a large plastic container. “Ah, there’s George’s car now!”

  Frieda laughed. “The man has a sixth sense for food, doesn’t he?”

  A moment or two later George joined them in the kitchen. “I’m prepared to be amazed,” he said. Ruby smiled at him and scooped some of the ice cream—which was a really gorgeous blue/purple color—into one of the bowls Bella had lined up on the table and handed it to George. “Here goes,” he said.

  Ruby watched as George put a heaping spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. “Well,” she said, “what do you think?”

  George said nothing. With a grimace, he swallowed.

  “What?” Ruby demanded. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need a glass of water,” George croaked. “Pronto.”

  Frieda hurriedly fetched him a glass and he drank it in one gulp. “It tastes like salt,” he rasped. “And a lot of it.”

  “What? No, it doesn’t. Here, let me try.” Ruby dipped her spoon into George’s abandoned bowl. A second later she turned to the sink and spit out the small bit she had taken. “Oh my God,” she cried, “that’s awful! What did we do wrong?” She turned around to see Bella smiling slightly.

  “You were the one who did the measuring, Grandma,” Bella said.

  “Oh. Was I?”

  “Mom,” Frieda said. “Could you have mistaken salt for sugar?”

  “Maybe,” Ruby admitted. “Obviously.”

  George coughed and sank into a chair. “I can’t believe you actually swallowed it,” Bella said to him, and Ruby saw that her granddaughter’s smile had strengthened.

  “I didn’t want to be rude,” he said miserably.

  “Poor George.” Frieda put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

  “Let me get you some good, strong coffee,” Ruby offered. “It will get rid of the taste of salt. I hope.”

  “If I didn’t have to get up early for work tomorrow, I’d ask for some good, strong whiskey. But coffee will do.” George smiled at Bella. “I guess it’s back to the drawing board, eh?”

  Bella shrugged. “I’m going to my room,” she said. “Bye, George.”

  “I’m off, too,” Frieda added. “I want to get a bit more work done before bed.”

  When her daughter and granddaughter had gone upstairs, Ruby turned back to George. “Thanks for being such a good sport,” she said. “I’m sorry I almost killed you.”

  George laughed and finished his coffee. “It’ll take a lot more than a surfeit of salt to knock me over. Just promise me that next time you do a taste test before you measure out white grainy stuff.”

  Ruby promised and walked with George to the front door, where he kissed her warmly. She watched as he got into his car and drove off. And she thought, What woman in her right mind wouldn’t leap to accept his proposal of marriage?

  Maybe, Ruby thought, turning away from the door, the problem was that she wasn’t in her right mind.

  Chapter 15

  Frieda hit send and the e-mail with its attachment flew off. Until she heard back from the head of the marketing department at the well-funded historical society back in Warden about her next assignment she had only the one new copyediting job lined up. And though money was always welcome and indeed necessary, she would be lying if she said she wouldn’t appreciate a few moments of downtime. The last months had taken their toll and there were days when Frieda thought she could very easily sleep right through breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  Still, there was light on the horizon. Bella had found what might turn out to be a friend here in Yorktide and that made Frieda happy. Poor Bella. She had gone through so many pronounced stages of grief since the accident. At Frieda’s initial one-on-one meeting with Bella’s grief counselor only weeks after the tragedy, Colleen Milton had explained that it was common for teen survivors of a trauma to need to know every little detail of what had happened in an attempt to make sense of it all. Indeed, not long after that meeting Bella had become obsessed with asking questions. Had Ariel been wearing a seat belt? How fast had their dad been driving? Had he stuck to the left side of the road or had he forgotten and veered into the wrong lane? It didn’t matter that the accident was not a result of driver error; Bella still wanted to know. Had her father and sister realized they were about to die? Had
they been scared or had things happened so fast they didn’t have time to be scared? Had they suffered or had both died right away? Some of the questions Frieda could answer and some of them she simply could not. Nobody could and that had made Bella near mad with frustration.

  Finally, that phase of fevered inquisitiveness had passed, to be replaced by—Frieda’s thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of her mother’s landline. She got up from the kitchen table and reached for the receiver of the old-fashioned wall unit.

  “Hello,” she said. “Ruby Hitchens’s residence.”

  “Frieda?”

  Frieda froze. She recognized the voice immediately though it had been approximately thirty years since she had last heard it. Her father. Her ne’er-do-well father.

  “Ruby isn’t here,” she blurted, already moving the receiver away from her ear.

  “Wait, Frieda. It’s you I want to talk to.”

  Frieda hesitated and then put the receiver back to her ear. “How did you know I was here?” she demanded. “Did Mom tell you?”

  “Yeah,” her father said, “she did, but believe me, she had no idea I’d be calling to talk to you.”

  Frieda wasn’t sure she believed that. But why would her mother not warn her if she knew he would be calling? Then an unpleasant thought occurred to Frieda. Maybe her father was in Yorktide; maybe he intended to do more than just talk to his daughter on the phone, like show up at the house uninvited. That would be an unmitigated disaster. She didn’t know what she might do if she came face-to-face with the man after all these years. Something unpleasant, of that she was sure.

  “Where are you calling from?” Frieda asked.

  “A diner. One of those old-fashioned ones with a pyramid of doughnuts under a glass dome on the counter and decades of grease on the grill.”

  Frieda tried and failed to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “I mean, where in the country are you calling from?”