Secrets of the Lost Summer

by Carla Neggers

  Olivia took in a deep breath and shifted back to him. “That was difficult and painful, but I’m here because of it. I’ve reevaluated, and I don’t blame Marilyn, or myself. I have no regrets about our friendship.”

  “Easier with her in your freezer. It’s okay to get mad, Olivia. It’s okay to be hurt. No one likes to be a victim, but sometimes we pick the wrong damn friends, or friends go their separate ways.”

  “I know I don’t have to like everyone and everyone doesn’t have to like me, but this was tough. Anyway, Marilyn and I aren’t like you and Noah Kendrick.”

  “No. Not at all. I have no idea how Noah’s brain works and he and I aren’t competitors.”

  “I don’t see myself as Marilyn’s competitor.”

  “How do you think she sees you? You’re both designers. Noah and I are business partners, not business rivals. You and Marilyn weren’t after the same guys, too, were you?”

  “Guys?”

  “Not clients. Guys. Men. Romance.”

  Olivia yanked open a small drawer and pulled out a folded white towel. “No, never.”

  Dylan tilted his head back. Now, this was interesting. “But there was a guy?”

  “He’s gone. I don’t know that he ever—we ever—” She sighed and unfolded the towel. “We were never serious.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “He’s in Seattle.” She laid the towel over a plate of tiny tarts obviously left over from the mother-daughter tea.

  “You weren’t going to fly to Seattle to keep the relationship going.”

  “There wasn’t much of a relationship.”

  Dylan grunted and walked over to the refrigerator and pulled open the freezer. The slip of paper with the traitor friend’s name was tucked into a tray of ice cubes. Olivia wasn’t leaving anything to chance, he thought with amusement.

  He took the paper into the living room.

  Olivia followed him. “What are you doing?”

  “Throwing Marilyn here in the fire. That’s a better ritual. She’ll be ashes. Gone.”

  “That sounds so brutal.”

  He grinned at her. “Freezing her doesn’t?”

  “Freezing her career. This is burning her. And I wasn’t serious.”

  “I’m serious. I want you to stop thinking about this woman. I want you to let her go and trust yourself again.”

  “I trust myself—”

  “Not the way you did before this happened. Am I right?”

  Olivia sat on the chair in front of the fire, on the edge of the cushion. Buster stirred and rolled over, then heaved a sigh and went back to sleep. “I second-guess myself more than I ever used to.”

  Dylan looked at the slip of paper. The name was written in thick red marker. He wondered if that had any significance, or if a red marker just was what was handy when Olivia decided to pop her friend into the ice-cube tray. He sat on the rug next to Buster. “You can’t let your experience with her undermine your confidence in your own judgment. You can’t lose faith in yourself.”

  “Did Noah lose faith in himself?”

  “This isn’t about Noah.”

  “He did, though, didn’t he?”

  “He’s never had any faith in himself when it comes to people. I’m his friend. I was his friend at six, I’m his friend now and I’ll be his friend at eighty. It’s just the way it is. It wasn’t that way with you and Marilyn Bryson.”

  “Maybe so.” Olivia looked past him at the fire. “I don’t want to be too hard on her, or on myself. Sometimes friendships aren’t meant to last forever. I don’t regret ours. She’s a lot of fun, energetic, optimistic.”

  “Would you ever have stolen one of her clients?”

  “No, of course not. Maybe Marilyn didn’t know that she shouldn’t—”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, skeptical. “Don’t start making excuses for her just because you admitted you had her in your freezer.”

  “You have a poor view of human nature, don’t you?”

  “Realistic.” He stood again, his eyes still on Olivia. Whatever she was telling herself now, her experience with Marilyn had eaten at her. “This woman looked after herself, and maybe she got too busy to call, but if she behaved unethically and that hurt you, then I’m glad you put her in your freezer.”

  “I’m not a mean, vindictive person, Dylan. Marilyn isn’t, either. I don’t think she calculated any of this.”

  “Her bad behavior will bite her in the butt, or it won’t. Not your call. Your call is to act out of your own sense of integrity and honor, and to forgive yourself your own mistakes.” He glanced again at the paper. “I bet she spreads lies about you.”

  Olivia bit back a smile. “Every now and then our inner eleven-year-old does come out. I can only imagine what all you deal with in your work. People must spread nonsense about Noah from time to time.”

  “Yep. Not everyone, and you start to recognize the self-absorbed, self-serving, entitled SOBs after a while. You have a good thing going here. If some bad as well as some good got you here, so be it.”

  He tossed Marilyn into the fire. Olivia watched the flare of the flames as the little slip of paper quickly burned.

  “It’s not her success that upset you,” Dylan said. “That has nothing to do with you. It’s the loss of her friendship. It’s misjudging her, and yourself. Maybe you were ready to shake things up.”

  She nodded but was obviously on the verge of tears.

  Dylan kissed her on the top of the head. “I’ll get out of here and give you some time to yourself. Your father said that fishermen can go right over the cellar hole to the Websters’ former home. I was thinking about getting a fishing license and renting a boat, seeing for myself.”

  “Tomorrow’s supposed to be beautiful.”

  “You could come with me.”

  “I could.”

  “I found a couple of old fishing poles in Grace’s shed. See you bright and early.”

  She caught his arm as he started to leave. “I have one en suite bedroom if you want to stay here. That way you won’t risk running into me in the hall.”

  “Just in the morning when your hair’s tousled from sleep and you’re especially irresistible.”

  “I’d be sure to get dressed first.”

  “No fun in that.”

  She let go of him and laughed, even as her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve lost some confidence in myself the past few months. Normally I’m more fun to be around.”

  “Pour yourself another glass of champagne and celebrate opening day and freeing yourself from the grip of a lost friendship. Take a hot bath. I’ll see you in the morning.” Dylan opened the main front door, hating to leave but knowing he had to. He looked back at her, saw that she was still fighting the tears. He smiled. “I’ll bring the poles. You bring some of those leftovers from your tea.”

  Eighteen

  Jess ran down from the mailbox the next morning and burst into the mill office. “It came! My passport. It’s here.”

  Her mother pushed back her chair at her desk and eyed the stiff new passport in Jess’s hand. “Good for you.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I’m so excited.” Jess smoothed the front of the passport with her thumbs. “It was easier than I thought it would be. Getting the photo was the hardest part. Now I have no more excuses. Honestly, Mom, I want to go to Paris as much as you want to go to California.”

  “Does Mark want to go?”

  “He says so. It doesn’t matter. I’m going. If I wait—I won’t get there for another twenty years. I want to see Paris before Mark and I have kids.” Jess tucked her passport into her handbag. “Assuming…I don’t want to jinx anything by speaking too soon.”

  Her mother got to her feet. “Has Mark…”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. He and I—” Jess broke off abruptly. “No, Mom. No ring yet. Go ahead and make your plans for California. I’ll work Paris around them if I’m needed here.”

  She looked over at the map on the wall. “Maybe I’m
fooling myself, Jess. Maybe I’ll never go to California.”

  Jess slumped. Louise Frost could be the biggest wet blanket in Knights Bridge without even putting her mind to it. “Mom…come on. Don’t say that.”

  She seemed to make an effort to smile. “I love my life here. Why would I want to leave, anyway?”

  “Because you want to go places and see new things. Why wouldn’t you?”

  “You’re right. Don’t worry about me.” She gave Jess a quick hug. “I have to make some calls. Enjoy your passport. It’s great.”

  Jess ran outside and down to the old sawmill, so frustrated with her mother that she kicked stones into the water. She immediately felt guilty and forced herself to focus on the sounds of the water rushing over the rocks, the twitter of birds, the rustle of the breeze in the trees. She wasn’t just frustrated with her mother. She was frustrated with Mark. With herself. With her life. Who was she kidding? She had a million things to do. When would she have time for Paris?

  Her father joined her at the edge of the dam. “You showed your mother your spanking-new passport? She just threw up.”

  “I didn’t need to know that, Dad.”

  He looked at her. “Sorry. Just kidding. She’s fine. When are you going to Paris?”

  “I wanted to go for our honeymoon.” Her eyes misted. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not? Don’t tell me Mark’s afraid to fly.”

  “No, he’s just not interested in Paris—or a honeymoon. I can tell. He’s been to Paris. He doesn’t care about going again.”

  “I don’t know if I can blame him for that.”

  “Dad!”

  “But I bet he’s interested in going to Paris with you. I’m not getting involved in whether the trip’s a honeymoon or not, but he’ll want to show you Paris.”

  “That’s what he says but I know he’s had his fill of cities.”

  “So? Do five days in Paris, then five days hiking in the Alps or kayaking somewhere.”

  Jess stared at her father. “That’s so easy. Simple. Why didn’t I think of it?”

  “Because you’re too close to the situation. I won’t even call it a problem. Not being able to afford food is a problem. Paris or no Paris—not a problem. See what Mark says. Don’t tell him I thought of it in case he hates the idea.”

  “Have you ever wanted to go hiking in the Alps?”

  Her father winked at her. “I’ll be hiking the California Pacific Coast Highway soon.”

  “Mom’s getting cold feet. Dad, I don’t know—she’s planning this trip to the minute. What if she doesn’t go? She avoids driving to Boston. How is she going to fly to California and then drive a hundred-plus miles up a winding, unfamiliar road?”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to make a big change than a little change. She’s trying, Jess.”

  “I know, Dad.”

  “We live in a beautiful place and yet we’re all thinking about other places.”

  “Olivia isn’t.”

  Jess considered her older sister a moment. “I think she wants to know she can get in an airplane, at least.”

  Her father picked up a smooth, flat rock and tossed it into the millpond. “If she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to.”

  “Maybe she could use a push, Dad. We can encourage her. I know you want to protect us all but sometimes we just need support, not protection.”

  “I’m supportive.”

  “You want to be. You’re protective.”

  “When did you get your shrink degree?”

  She laughed but felt a twinge of uneasiness. Her father obviously had his suspicions, but he still didn’t know for sure that one Louise Frost was seeing a therapist. Jess knew that he would do anything to keep them all safe, emotionally as well as physically. He was a bear of a man who was unconditionally on their side. Seeing a therapist wasn’t a criticism, or a sign he wasn’t doing enough or there was something wrong with him.

  “Never mind.” He gave her a quick hug. “Get back to work.”

  “Dad, what would you have done if Olivia had followed Peter Martin to Seattle?”

  “That was never happening. That guy wasn’t for her. She knew it.”

  “But if she had.”

  “I’d have wished her well.”

  “Mom?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “She would have, too.”

  Jess was skeptical. “Her older daughter living on the other side of the country?”

  “Yes. We’re not hemming you two in. Whatever’s going on in your heads, that’s not what we’re doing.”

  “You don’t want to get rid of us, do you?”

  “You both are grown.”

  “Dad, you know your lines, but what comes out of your mouth isn’t what you feel. You and Mom don’t want either of us moving out of New England. Seattle…” Jess grinned at him. “It’s another place I want to see.”

  “Your mother, too. She says I’d love some open-air market there.”

  “Maybe you’re the stick-in-the-mud.”

  “Maybe I am.” He picked up another stone, the breeze catching the ends of his salt-and-pepper hair. “I see Dylan McCaffrey’s back in town. What’s he up to?”

  “I have no idea,” Jess said.

  “He’s rich. He’s not as rich as his friend Noah but he’s still worth a fortune, more than anyone around here. Probably more than the whole town combined.”

  “Just because he has money doesn’t mean he’s up to anything.”

  “Doesn’t mean he’s not, either. He doesn’t need to stay out there in Grace Webster’s old house. It’s a wreck. What’s he doing for furniture? Appliances?”

  “He has his reasons for being there, I’m sure.”

  “Is Olivia one of them?”

  Jess gave her father a wry grin. “Who knows, maybe Dylan doesn’t need to worry about furniture and appliances because he’s staying with her.”

  “Is he?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Her father grimaced and plopped his rock into the water. “Some things I don’t need to know—”

  “Kidding, Dad. Kidding. I have to lock up my passport, then get back to work.”

  Jess ran back to her sawmill apartment. Talking first with her mother and then with her father had both energized and unsettled her, but she smiled when she slipped her new passport into her dresser drawer. She suddenly couldn’t wait to show it to Mark.

  She headed back to the mill and got to work, forgetting about Paris and her passport…at least for the moment.

  After work, she drove out to Olivia’s house. For the first few weeks, she hadn’t wanted to get too invested in having her sister back in town, since she could decide it wasn’t for her, or a getaway was an impossible dream, and return to Boston. Now, though, Jess was almost convinced that Olivia was in Knights Bridge to stay.

  Almost.

  Olivia had picked up their grandmother and Grace Webster for the afternoon. Jess found them on the terrace. The two older women were sitting on chairs in the sun, chatting while Olivia worked on clearing out an untouched corner of her yard. “Need some help?” Jess called to her.

  “I’m good,” Olivia said. “I’ve started a compost bin.”

  Jess had never been much of a gardener. She noticed the wheelbarrow parked next to her sister, overflowing with cut brush and raked leaves.

  “That man is getting to her,” Audrey Frost said as Jess sat next to her. “The one living in Grace’s old house.”

  “He owns it now,” Jess said.

  Her grandmother sighed. “Something’s going on between those two. I think it has to do with the father. Duncan McCaffrey. The treasure hunter.”

  Grace tightened her thick sweater around her. “Sometimes it’s best to let the past be.”

  “You wrote a book about your past,” her friend reminded her.

  “About my life. There’s no one to remember me when I’m gone. I have no children, grandchildren, brothers or sisters.”

  �
��Don’t you have a cousin in Chicago?”

  “Minneapolis,” Grace said. “We haven’t seen each other in years. I think he might be dead.”

  Jess was relieved when Olivia returned with the now-empty wheelbarrow. Grace eased to her feet. “I’d like to see my old house,” she said. “Can you take me there, Olivia? Jess can stay here with your grandmother while we scoot out.”

  Audrey Frost snorted. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Come on, Grandma,” Jess said. “We can go see how the rhubarb is coming along. I still want your recipe for strawberry-rhubarb pie. It’s my favorite.”

  Mollified, her grandmother got to her feet. “We used to eat rhubarb like celery. We loved puckering.”

  “Grace and I won’t be long,” Olivia said.

  “Is Mr. McCaffrey there?” Grace asked.

  “I imagine so.”

  The old woman frowned. “He doesn’t have enough to do, does he?”

  Olivia laughed. “Not nearly enough.”

  Olivia drove Grace the short distance to her former house. She parked as close to the steps as she could, but Grace got out of the car and walked up to the porch on her own, not waiting or asking for help. The sun was rapidly giving way to clouds, a hint of rain in the air. Olivia needed a quiet evening. Her excursion with Dylan on Quabbin that morning had frazzled her nerves. They’d been alone on the water, not another soul in sight. The reservoir and the surrounding wilderness were so quiet that she’d found herself barely able to imagine that the area had once been filled with towns and villages.

  “Are you coming?” Grace asked, pausing at the bottom of the porch steps.

  She nodded and smiled. “Right behind you.”

  Dylan would be there, she thought. She didn’t know how being out on the water—being with her—had affected him. He’d turned off the engine of their rented boat and sat for a while, fishing, listening to the birds and the wind on the water and in the trees on the shore. For miles and miles, there was nothing but wilderness. They’d spotted an eagle nest high in a spruce tree. Olivia wanted to see a moose. Maggie O’Dunn had said she’d seen a moose in Quabbin last fall.

  Using an island—once a hill—to orient themselves, they located the area where Grace had grown up. The water was deep, impenetrable, no old foundations or anything else visible on the bottom.