Secrets of the Lost Summer

by Carla Neggers

  They talked about design, Boston and her family’s custom millwork business. Dylan deflected questions about himself, not necessarily, Olivia thought, because he had anything to hide but because he wanted to know about her, whether she could help him understand why his father had bought Grace Webster’s house.

  Or he was just bored and curious.

  He switched on an overhead light in the dining room of Grace’s—his—house. They’d walked up the road after dinner, dusk making the surrounding fields and woods seem even quieter, more isolated.

  “Grace left a lot of books behind,” Dylan said as they entered the dining room.

  Olivia ran her fingertips along a row of musty books on a shelf of one of Grace’s old bookcases. “Latin readers, English grammar books.” She smiled back at Dylan. “A little midnight reading for you.”

  He eased his jacket off his broad shoulders and hung it on the back of a dining chair. Olivia left her own jacket on. She didn’t expect to stay long, wasn’t even sure why she’d come.

  He withdrew a slender volume from another shelf and read the spine. “Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. Have you read it?”

  “When I was a teenager. It’s a lot of fun.”

  “It’s about a swashbuckler during the French Revolution, isn’t it?”

  “The main character is a fugitive who becomes a master swordsman.”

  Dylan flipped open a page. “Noah might like it. He’s a master fencer.”

  The mention of Noah Kendrick only reminded Olivia how little she knew about the man next to her. She abandoned the grammar and Latin books and checked out his shelf. She read a line of titles. “The Scarlet Pimpernel, Jane Eyre, Rebecca, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers. We must have stumbled on the action, romance and adventure section.”

  “You seem surprised.”

  “I guess I am. The Latin readers seem more in Grace’s character.”

  “Most of these books look as if they’re in decent condition. They could be sold or donated. Why would she leave them here?”

  “Good question,” Olivia said, glancing at the bottom shelf, which held more titles in a similar vein. “She’s in her nineties. Maybe she just didn’t want to bother, or she thought your father would enjoy them.”

  Dylan slid Scaramouche back onto the shelf and pulled out a thick, warped copy of The Count of Monte Cristo and opened it. A yellowed bookplate was stuck to the inside cover, with Grace Webster printed in neat lettering under a sepia drawing of a cat sitting on a stack of books.

  “Is there a date?” Olivia asked, then pointed, her arm brushing against his. “There. In the corner—1938. She must have had this book since she was a girl.”

  He turned a page. “‘Chapter One, Marseille, The Arrival.’”

  “Hooks you right into the story, doesn’t he? Have you read it?”

  “I saw the movie,” Dylan said with a wink, replacing the book on the shelf.

  “Your father was into adventures, although I suppose not ones in the pages of an Alexandre Dumas novel. He didn’t buy this house because Grace liked swashbucklers, but if she thought of him as a swashbuckler…” Olivia stopped herself. “She asked me if you were a scoundrel.”

  Dylan laughed but seemed surprised as well as amused. “A scoundrel, huh?”

  Olivia ran her fingertips over the row of adventure novels. “Your father was a treasure hunter. He could have stirred up her teenage soul.”

  “That wouldn’t explain why he landed here in the first place. He loved looking into old mysteries and lost ships and such, but he lived in the present.”

  Olivia watched Dylan return The Count of Monte Cristo to its spot on the dusty shelf. He was out of place here, in this leaking wreck of a house, she realized, but she couldn’t picture him in San Diego. Where did he live? What was his life there like? Finally she said, “This all must seem so foreign to you. You have a life in San Diego. You’ll go back to it tomorrow. Right now you’re trying to reconcile yourself to never knowing exactly why your father bought this place, aren’t you?”

  He turned to her, pushed a few stray strands of hair out of her face. “Not even close. My father left me a trunk filled with files and God knows what else. I want to have a closer look.” He skimmed a knuckle across her cheek. “Then who knows.”

  Her skin tingled from his touch, and she fought an urge to sink against him at the same time she fought an urge to run. “You can afford to do whatever you want with this place. Sell it, keep it, give it away. You have the means, and you don’t have any emotional attachments.”

  “Do you? To this place?”

  Olivia shook her head. “I guess it’ll always be Miss Webster’s house to me, but no—no emotional attachment.”

  “It’s not a historic center-chimney farmhouse?”

  “Are you making fun of me, Dylan McCaffrey?”

  He leaned closer to her. “You’re not the starchy Yankee I expected Olivia Frost of The Farm at Carriage Hill to be.” He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Olivia…” He sighed. “Well, damn.” He spoke half under his breath, then kissed her, a quick, intense kiss that said he wanted more even as he stood back from her. “I’ve been thinking that was bound to happen. I suspect you have, too.”

  She waved a hand, feeling a little breathless even from that brief contact. “Maybe.” She steadied herself. “Maybe in the back of my mind.”

  “Hmm. I hope that means you’re not going to sic Buster on me.” He reached for his jacket. “Come on. I’ll drive you back down the road.”

  “I can walk. The air will do me good. I walk Buster after dark all the time.” Olivia glanced around the sparsely furnished dining room. “Where do you sleep? I can’t imagine you brought an air mattress with you.”

  “I made a bed out of old blankets. It’s not too bad.”

  “Not quite the five-star accommodations you’re used to.”

  “Softer than a skating rink.”

  Before she could consider what she was doing, she said, “I have spare bedrooms if you want a proper bed.”

  Dylan took a second too long to respond, the pause getting her heart racing. “Thanks for the offer. I should camp out here again tonight. I have an early flight.”

  “Right. Well. At least you have your choice of reading if you can’t sleep.”

  He walked out with her, giving her instructions on how to reach him should his property require more work and wishing her luck getting ready for the opening of The Farm at Carriage Hill.

  It was as if their kiss had never happened. Of course, he lived a very different life from hers. He was worth millions. Sneaking a kiss probably wasn’t that big a deal for him.

  Olivia figured a for sale sign would go up within days of his return to San Diego.

  She had grabbed The Three Musketeers to take with her. She doubted she’d sleep well tonight, home alone, with scoundrels, swashbucklers, treasure hunters and one incredibly sexy ex-hockey player on her mind.

  Dylan watched Olivia head down his driveway and onto the back road they shared before contemplating his situation. What did he know now that he hadn’t known the day he’d received her note?

  Nothing more about why his father bought this place and didn’t tell him about it. But he had learned he didn’t particularly like hauling old appliances out of snow, mud and dead leaves…and that a certain brunette looked even better in person than on the internet. Kissing her might have been a mistake but it didn’t feel like one.

  Turning down a bed in her house felt like the mistake.

  His house was quiet and still.

  He returned to the dining room and went through more of Grace Webster’s books. He didn’t know what he had expected to find. A treasure map? A forgotten letter describing lost treasure?

  He found nothing.

  Taking The Count of Monte Cristo with him, he went upstairs to his makeshift bed. He couldn’t pinpoint why he hadn’t accepted Olivia’s offer of one of her spare rooms, except that it hadn’t felt like
the right thing to do—for her sake, at least.

  He pulled back a wool blanket that smelled like mothballs.

  This house, this place, his father, his pretty neighbor. He wasn’t accustomed to his head spinning with emotions, but he had to admit it was.

  He plugged in a small lamp on the floor next to his pallet and adjusted the shade so that the dim bulb was pointed at his book. Had his father ever spent a night here? Olivia had raised a good point, Dylan thought. What if he never knew why his father had come to Knights Bridge?

  He opened his book to page one, and, putting everything else out of his mind, started reading the tale of Edmond Dantès and his adventures.

  Nine

  By the summer of 1938, the state had “disincorporated” the towns of Prescott, Dana, Enfield and Greenwich. Officially, they no longer existed. The valley emptied out slowly, painfully, one family and one business at a time. Work on the reservoir went on, as relentless as a summer storm. I watched graves being dug up, and I watched trees getting chopped down and houses—some of the nicer houses of the valley—being dismantled and moved on trucks to other places.

  I learned about the baffle dams that would turn the water of the east branch of the Swift River north again, so that it wouldn’t enter the aqueduct that would take it to Boston too soon and would have time for the reservoir’s natural filtration process to occur. Engineers had made precise calculations about every aspect of the massive project. Winsor Dam and Goodnough Dike—two massive earthen dams—would impound the waters of Beaver Brook and the three branches of the Swift River.

  The modern world had come to our quiet valley, and my father could no longer pretend it hadn’t.

  He didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  The letter we had received from the state was to the point:

  “You are hereby notified that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts acting through its Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission requires the land and buildings now occupied by you.”

  Our home, in other words.

  Gran tried to put the best face on the inevitable. “At least we have a chance to move. We’re not being wiped out by a tornado or an earthquake.”

  “No,” my father said, “we’re being wiped out by our fellow citizens.”

  I ran out of the house. It was a bright, clear, early-spring morning, and I knew our last days in the valley were upon us, but with the sunlight dancing on the stream bubbling along the lane, I pretended that everything would stay the same. The sugar maples that my great-grandfather had planted would leaf out, just as they had for as long as even Gran could remember. I’d pick wildflowers in the woods, and Gran and I would snap beans in the shade.

  My vision ended, proven to be the delusion it was, when a truck lumbered past me, filled with the belongings of a family down the road. The dad was driving. He kept his eyes pinned straight ahead and didn’t smile or wave. I don’t think he even saw me.

  I veered off the lane and followed a stone wall on the edge of a hayfield that no one had tended last summer and no one would tend this summer. When I came to a giant elm tree, I climbed over the stone wall and took a path to a small pond. Carriage Hill Pond, it was called. In the distance, I could see Carriage Hill itself. On the other side was Knights Bridge; Daddy and Gran were considering buying a house there. I hated the idea. I didn’t want to move.

  A one-room cabin was perched on a hillside a few yards from the water. It used to belong to a family who had spent summers on the pond. The state had bought them out last year, and the cabin would eventually be demolished. I went inside. I still remember the stillness as I stood in the doorway. I would create my own little haven in the abandoned cabin. It would be my secret. No one else need ever know.

  The family had left behind a cot, a chest of drawers and a table, and I gathered up blankets and linens, added cheerful curtains, found a hooked rug for the bare wood floor. There was no kitchen or bathroom, just an outhouse, which wasn’t that unusual in those days.

  It was perfect. While Gran and Daddy figured out where we would go, while workers ripped apart our valley, I would sneak off to Carriage Hill Pond and escape into the world I’d created in my tiny hideaway cabin. I’d bring food in a basket and stay there for hours.

  One summer morning, I escaped to my cabin after I overheard Daddy discussing the imminent razing of our house with two workers. I was breathing hard, my chest tight with emotion. I kicked off my shoes, climbed under the blankets and quilts piled on the cot and grabbed a book from the stack I’d left on the floor. Using money I’d earned selling vegetables, I’d bought books at a sale our library held when they had to shut down for Quabbin. The building was gone now, only the foundation left.

  For next to nothing, I bought The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Three Musketeers, Scaramouche, The Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and so many others. The librarian, one of Gran’s friends, gave me a Latin primer and a grammar book for free. I’d come to the cabin whenever I could and read and study and try not to think about the future. If I got married, I knew I would die in childbirth, like my mother. So I wouldn’t get married. I’d become a spinster teacher like Miss Johnson, my teacher. But where?

  Not here, I thought. Not in the valley of my childhood. It would be under water.

  We would have to move soon. We had no choice, but I didn’t want to live among strangers.

  I opened my book and realized I’d grabbed Ivanhoe. I’d read it already but happily started it again. I’d fallen in love with spies, swashbucklers and adventurers. I knew I’d never meet one in real life, but I wished I had a romantic name, like Marguerite or Rowena. Grace was so plain in comparison.

  I read the first page under my covers, but I had to go back and read it again; I kept hearing my grandmother sobbing last night, alone in her room.

  “Where will we go? What will we do?”

  Poor Gran, I thought. She was stoic and pragmatic during the day, but at night, her fears and her sense of loss would overwhelm her. These were hard times. The modest payout from the state wouldn’t make a fresh start elsewhere easy.

  “And I’m old,” Gran would cry, alone in her room.

  Everyone said the evictions were hardest on the old people. Some of the younger people were excited about having the chance—the excuse—to make a fresh start somewhere else.

  I put Ivanhoe in my lap and looked out the cabin window at the pond. The water glistened in the sun, and I saw a lone duck in the shade on the opposite bank. Every day, I tried to etch bits and pieces of the valley in my mind. I’d have my memories forever. No one would take them away.

  Of course, that was before I wished someone could.

  Ten

  Olivia was out back contemplating the design and location of her aromatic herb garden and trying to put Dylan’s departure out of her mind when Jess stopped by after lunch. “How was Boston?” Olivia asked, joining her sister on the terrace.

  “Great. Thanks for letting me use your apartment. I left the keys on your kitchen table. Liv…” Jess hesitated, then said, “Why aren’t you working at the studio anymore? I was right, wasn’t I? It’s because of Marilyn Bryson.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I ran into Mark in Boston. He talked to Roger Bailey this morning and Roger said he was working with Marilyn now. Is that true? Did you introduce them? Did he jump ship before you left?”

  “Design’s a competitive business. Marilyn’s hot.”

  “She went after Roger? Isn’t it unethical to steal clients from a friend?” Jess made a face. “I knew I didn’t like her.”

  Olivia appreciated the sisterly solidarity even as her pride and natural reluctance to discuss her problems with her younger sister stopped her from saying more. “I’m happy freelancing.”

  “You’re doing okay with it—making enough to pay the bills?”

  Just barely, but she said, “Yeah. It’s fine. I like making my own schedule, and I like being here.”

  “You’ll have the last l
augh when this place opens.”

  Olivia noticed a lone daffodil, not quite in bloom, by a small lilac off the end of the terrace. “I’m not here because I’m running from anything, Jess. Marilyn was in a downturn last fall—”

  “And you helped her turn her career around. Now she’s stealing your clients.”

  “She’s a friend, or she was. She’s in high demand. I thought I could have it all—stay on with the studio and still work on this place—but I had to choose. My only regret is that I didn’t have more money in the bank before I quit full-time work.”

  “Do you think you’d still have Roger as a client if you hadn’t helped Marilyn?”

  “Jess…”

  Her sister gave an exaggerated shiver in a sudden breeze. “I can’t wait for spring to really get here. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, Liv. We all have things we contemplate while we’re weeding the oregano and trying out recipes for lemon tarts.”

  Olivia smiled. “When have you ever tried out a lemon tart recipe?”

  “Ah, yes, good question. Hey, I didn’t see a car in Grace’s driveway. Your good-looking neighbor’s on his way back to San Diego?”

  “First thing this morning, or so he said. I didn’t see him leave.”

  “Will he be back?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Jess tightened her heavy sweater around her. “At least he’s a nice distraction. Not that you’re looking for distractions. I wonder if Mom is, and that’s why she’s planning this trip to California.”

  “She wants to go, don’t you think?”

  “I want to go to Paris,” Jess mumbled, “but it doesn’t mean I’m looking for a distraction—or that I’ll ever get there.”

  Olivia tried to ignore a sick feeling in her stomach as she envisioned her mother on a plane flying west across the continent and her sister on a plane flying east across the Atlantic while she stayed in Knights Bridge.

  “Olivia?”

  She heard the note of concern in her sister’s voice and forced a smile. “Would Mark go with you to Paris?”