Books by Holly Chamberlin
LIVING SINGLE
THE SUMMER OF US
BABYLAND
BACK IN THE GAME
THE FRIENDS WE KEEP
TUSCAN HOLIDAY
ONE WEEK IN DECEMBER
THE FAMILY BEACH HOUSE
SUMMER FRIENDS
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
Summer Friends
Holly Chamberlin
KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
Epilogue
A READING GROUP GUIDE: SUMMER FRIENDS
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Copyright Page
As always, for Stephen.
And this time, also for Ruth.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to John Scognamiglio for his generous supply of patience and support. Thanks also to fellow writer Brenda Buchanan for a much-needed kick start—twice. Welcome to Mitzi. This is in memory of Lucy Sutherland.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prologue
1971
It was late August, the end of summer, at least, the end of summer for nine-year-old Delphine Crandall and almost-nine-year-old Maggie Weldon. Both would be starting the fourth grade in about a week, Delphine at the local public grammar school five miles from her home in Ogunquit, Maine, and Maggie at Blair Academy, a private grammar school in Concord, Massachusetts, where her family lived. It was the end of the summer, but it also felt like the end of the world. It was bad enough having to go back to school, but it was far worse to be parting from each other for what would be a whole ten months. In other words, forever.
The girls were hanging out in the backyard of the Lilac House, the expensive and recently renovated home Maggie’s parents had rented for the summer. There was a giant swing set, metal monkey bars, and a slide. Two banana-seated girls’ bikes lay on the grass; each had a plastic basket in front and streamers from the ends of the looped handlebars. The new pink bike was Maggie’s. The old red bike had once belonged to Delphine’s ten-year-old sister, Jackie, but it belonged to her now.
Delphine, who was swinging ever higher, legs pumping furiously, wore a faded red T-shirt that, like her bike, had once belonged to Jackie. Across the front were the words—also now faded—“Red Sox Rule.” Her jean shorts had been cut down from full-length jeans that had badly frayed at the knees. Her sneakers, caked in mud from a morning’s romp around the edges of the pond in the woods behind her house, had once been white, back when her mother had bought them at a resale shop in Wells. Her hair, which was thick and the brown of glossy chestnuts, hung in a messy braid down her back, fastened near the end by a rubber band that had once held together a bunch of scallions. Her eyes were as dark and luminous as her hair. Her skin was deeply tanned. Since school had let out she had grown an amazing three inches and was now as tall as Jackie, which meant no more hand-me-down pants. Secretly, Delphine hoped she would grow to be really tall someday. But given the fact that both of her parents were well under six feet, she doubted that she would.
Maggie was on the swing next to Delphine. She was too hot to move and was sitting as still as possible. The neck of her pale pink T-shirt was embroidered in darker pink thread. Her white shorts, which she hated but which her mother made her wear, came almost to the knee and, worse, had a crisp pleat right down the middle of each leg. Her sneakers were white, coated only that morning with that liquid paint-like stuff that came in a bottle with a picture of a nurse on the front. The coating was her mother’s idea, too. Maggie’s hair, which was the color of jonquils, was neatly drawn into a ponytail and held in place by a wooly purple ribbon. Her skin, almost white during the winter, was now a pale gold. Her large, almost navy blue eyes were currently distorted by the thick lenses of a pair of tortoiseshell-framed glasses she had gotten right after school had let out for the summer. She was still embarrassed by them, though her parents and even Mr. and Mrs. Crandall had assured her that she still looked pretty.
Maggie was tall for her age, taller than Delphine, who, even though she had sprouted, was never going to be a towering Weldon. Maggie’s mother bragged about being “model tall” at five feet ten inches, and Maggie’s dad was six feet two inches. Peter, her thirteen-year-old brother, was already the tallest kid in his class, though he was terrible at basketball, something Maggie found very funny. She was bad at basketball, too, but it didn’t matter for girls to be bad at sports. Not at Maggie’s school, at least.
Around her left wrist, each girl wore a macramé bracelet. Earlier in the summer, Dephine’s sister had taught them how to make them, and if the bracelets weren’t as perfect as the ones Jackie turned out, Maggie and Delphine thought they were beautiful. Delphine’s was already dirty and a bit frayed. Maggie’s looked as fresh as the day Delphine had given it to her. Still, when it got dirty, which it would, Maggie would not let her mother coat it with that white paint stuff she used on her sneakers. That would be so embarrassing.
“Are you sure these glasses don’t make me look like a dork?” Maggie asked for what Delphine thought was the bazillionth time.
Delphine began to slow her swinging. “I’m sure,” she said. “Why would I want to be friends with a dork?”
“Ha, ha, very funny. I just hope the kids at school won’t laugh at me.”
“If anyone laughs at you—which they won’t—tell them your best friend in the world will come down from Maine and beat them up.” Her feet dragged in the sand below the swing and she came to a stop.
“No!” Maggie looked genuinely shocked. “You wouldn’t really beat someone up, would you?”
Delphine grinned. “Try me. I beat up Joey, once.”
“Liar. Your brother’s, like, huge compared to you.”
“Well, I bet I could beat him up. He makes me mad enough.”
“Because he’s a boy and boys stink,” Maggie said emphatically. “And they’re stupid.”
“Mostly,” Delphine said with a shrug. “My dad’s okay, though. And your dad is pretty nice.”
“Yeah, but my brother is gross.”
“Maybe boys get nicer as they get older. Like, really ol
d, like our dads. Well, anyway,” Delphine said, “remember you’re leaving in like an hour. We have to do a swear about being best friends. We have to do a pinky swear.”
“What’s that?” Maggie asked.
Delphine laughed. “Come on! Everyone knows what a pinky swear is.”
“Well, I don’t. We don’t do pinky swears in my school.”
Delphine rolled her eyes dramatically. It made her feel slightly dizzy. Maybe it was all that swinging. And it was really hot. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Stick out your pinky. Now I link my pinky with yours and we swear whatever we’re swearing and then we pull our pinkies apart.”
The girls linked pinkies and Maggie said, “Me first. I swear I will be your best friend forever and ever.”
“Me too,” Delphine said.
“No, you have to say all the words.”
“Okay. I swear I will be your best friend forever and ever.”
“Pinky swear.”
The girls pulled their pinkies apart, and Maggie said, “Ow.”
Delphine leapt off her swing and stood with her hands on her hips. “So, write to me the minute you get home later, okay?”
“Okay. And you write to me the minute I leave, okay?”
“Okay.” Delphine considered. “But I won’t have much to say. Maybe I should wait till just before I go to bed tonight. Maybe Joey will do something stupid at dinner. The other night he laughed so hard at something Jackie said milk came out of his nose and all over the table. It was gross. Also kind of funny, though.”
“I guess it’s okay if you wait.”
Delphine suddenly looked doubtful. “You’re sure your parents promised you could come back to Ogunquit next year?”
“Yeah. Mom said Dad already gave the guy who owns the house some money. So it’s all set.”
“Cool. I’m thirsty. Does your mom still have stuff in the ’fidgerator?”
“Refrigerator,” Maggie corrected. “I think so.”
Maggie got up from her swing, and with their arms around each other’s waists the girls trooped into the Lilac House for lemonade.
1
Where the past exists, the future may flourish.
—Peter Ackroyd
2011
Maggie Weldon Wilkes steered her Lexus IS C 10 convertible around a slow-moving station wagon decorated with three bikes and a canoe. The Lexus had been a present to herself for a very successful bonus season. Retractable hardtop, cruise control, even a backup camera—this particular car was more of an indulgence than a necessity.
She reached for her iPhone on the seat beside her. She knew it was dangerous to text while driving—everybody knew that, especially after Oprah had made a deservedly big deal out of it—but Maggie did it anyway, occasionally. It gave her a bit of a thrill to do something possibly illegal and definitely reckless, though she could barely admit that to herself. Besides, it wasn’t like she reached for her phone on a busy New York City street. Like right now, mid-morning on a Friday, there were only a few cars within sight and what was the harm in typing out a brief, abbreviated note to her husband? Nothing. Not much. Except that in spite of wearing bifocal contact lenses she couldn’t quite see what she was doing.
“In ME,” she managed, the intelligence of habit overcoming the limitations of vision. “How r u?” She put her phone back on the passenger seat and realized that she hadn’t actually heard Gregory’s voice in days. They had tweeted and texted and e-mailed but not actually spoken, not even on voice mail. This, however, was par for the course with the Wilkeses and not to be taken as a sign of marital distress or discord. Maggie reassured herself on this point with some frequency. She and Gregory were a highly successful career couple whose jobs took them out of each other’s sight, not out of each other’s minds. Maybe they weren’t as close as they once had been, but . . . It was what it was.
So, she was on her way to spend a few weeks in Ogunquit, that “beautiful place by the sea.” She had been so happy there, mostly, of course, because of Delphine Crandall, but also because of the sheer beauty of the area. Maggie still remembered the slightly punky smell of the wildflowers that grew in profusion along the road to the Lilac House, the place her parents had rented for all those years. She could hear in her mind the absurdly loud chirping of the teeny peepers in the pond in the woods behind the Crandalls’ house. She remembered the softness of the summer evening air. She remembered how she and Delphine and sometimes their siblings would go down to the beach at a superhigh tide, when the water would come all the way up to the parking lot. She remembered being both frightened and excited by the cold Atlantic rushing around her feet. She remembered the swing set behind the Lilac House and the new kittens at Delphine’s family’s farm. She remembered the joy.
Now, after almost three hours on the road Maggie was finally getting close to her destination. So much had changed since she had last driven this far north. Traffic was definitely worse than it once had been, especially now along Route 1 in Wells. There were just way too many people, period. She didn’t recognize half of the restaurants along the road, though she was pleased to see that the rickety old clam shack that Delphine’s family had taken them to once a summer was still open. There was a whole new crop of summer cottage developments sprawled on either side of the road. Some of the cottages were unbelievably tiny; it was hard to imagine even a family of three being comfortable in them. Then again, kids could be comfortable anywhere, especially with the beach within sight. Still, Maggie could not imagine herself tolerating such tight quarters, not now, not as a forty-eight-year-old. She had become used to a degree of luxury. A high degree of luxury, in all honesty. Her hair color was professionally maintained at an award-winning salon on Newbury Street. She had a manicure and pedicure once every two weeks. Around her left wrist she wore a Rolex, another gift to herself after a particularly good year at the office. Around her neck, on a white gold chain, she wore a two-carat diamond set in platinum. That was from Gregory, an anniversary gift she thought, or maybe a birthday gift. She couldn’t really remember. He had given her so many expensive presents. He was very good about that sort of thing. For their wedding, though he could barely afford them at the time, he had given her diamond stud earrings.
Thinking about those earrings, Maggie realized that the last time she had seen Delphine had been at the wedding, and that was over twenty years ago. Maggie had invited her with a guest, but she had come alone, and had only accepted the invitation after ascertaining that Robert Evans, her former fiancé, wouldn’t be there. He had been invited, also with a guest, but would be on an assignment in Thailand. It would have been ridiculous to turn down a major journalistic gig for the sake of a friend’s wedding. Besides, Robert and Maggie had really only been friends because of Delphine. Once Delphine had gone back home to Ogunquit after breaking up with Robert, Maggie’s friendship with him had steadily waned. She hadn’t heard from him in over fifteen years, though she could see his face, hear his name, and read his words all over the media. You’d have to be living in a cave not to be aware of Robert Evans.
Maggie adjusted the air-conditioning a bit and thought of the pale blue velvet box carefully tucked between layers of clothing in her suitcase. Inside the box was an aquamarine pendant on a gold chain. Aquamarine was Delphine’s birthstone; her birthday was March 23. The necklace should have been hers. And it would have been if Maggie had asked Delphine to be her maid of honor. But she hadn’t. The necklace had been in that pale blue velvet box, in the back of Maggie’s lingerie drawer, for close to twenty-four years.
She was crossing into Ogunquit now and traffic was still at a crawl. Every other minute it came to a complete stop for pedestrians crossing the road, many of whom ignored the official crosswalks and dashed out at random. Maggie frowned. She did not care for traffic jams or for pedestrians who didn’t follow the rules. Well, she supposed nobody did. As she waited for a family, which included a baby in a stroller and three small children, to organize themselves across the road, her min
d wandered.
Delphine Crandall. There had been long periods of Maggie’s life in which she hadn’t thought about Delphine at all. Like when business school had overwhelmed her, and when she was starting her career, and then when the children had come along. There had been other long periods when she thought of Delphine occasionally, randomly, and without much emotion. Like when her daughters did or said something that reminded her of her own childhood self, or when Robert Evans’s face popped up on the TV screen. Once in a very great while Delphine would make an appearance in a dream, and mostly those dreams were somehow disturbing, though Maggie could never remember them clearly when she woke. Some details lingered—something about being forced to leave boxes of books behind, an eviction, someone crying, dirty floors. None of it made any sense.
But in the past two years or so, Maggie had found herself thinking more and more often of her old friend. Specific memories were coming back to her with a vividness that was startling. The time when they were about ten when they had stumbled on a teenage couple kissing behind a shack in Perkins Cove and had run away giggling and shrieking. The time when they were about sixteen and had snuck out one night to go to the only dance club in town, even though their parents had forbidden them. The time in college when Delphine had woken in the middle of the night with a raging fever and Maggie had bundled her into a cab and then to the emergency room. The time when Maggie had thought she was pregnant. She had been too frightened and ashamed to buy an at-home pregnancy kit, so Delphine had bought it for her, and had sat holding her hand while they waited for the result.
And the feelings, too, they were coming back, rather, memories of how it had felt to be so comfortable with someone, so loved and appreciated. She had begun to think of Delphine Crandall with a longing that seemed more than mere nostalgia. It was a longing that finally became too real to ignore.
Summer Friends Page 1