Last Summer: A Novel

by Kerry Lonsdale

  “So there you were, married to a woman you would give the world to, and she despised the one thing you were passionate about. Your pursuit of the rush. Adrenaline is a powerful drug. I know. I got a taste of it when I ran marathons in my early twenties. Stephanie grew to despise you. Instead of adjusting your ways or meeting her halfway, you just kept working. As for your son—”

  “What about my son?” Nathan asks sharply.

  Ella knows she’s pushing him. Carson’s a sensitive topic, but she wants his reaction. That’s when she’ll get to the truth of the man he really is. She also wants him to share with her what Damien hasn’t. His grief.

  “I’m sure he wanted your attention. What would he do to get—”

  “Enough,” Nathan says in a guttural voice.

  She stops talking. Silence lingers between them. His hands are fists. Underneath the table, his leg jiggles. His gaze darts to the recorder.

  “Is that thing still on?”

  Ella looks at the device in her hand. Digital numbers climb. “Yes, why? You don’t want to hear what I have to say? Because I have a theory. You asked me up here so that I can write an article about your simple life. A life that doesn’t involve taking risks or living on an adrenaline high. You want to show Stephanie that you can be the man she needs. You think that if she reads my article and sees you here, like this, she’ll come back. Did I get that right?”

  Nathan doesn’t blink. Ella opens her mouth to continue, but before she can, Nathan snatches the recorder from her hand, turns it off, and slams it on the table.

  Ella stares stupidly at her empty hand.

  “No more questions.”

  “Isn’t that why I’m here?”

  “I didn’t invite you to interview me. I invited you to dinner.”

  He’s the one who encouraged her to continue her dictation, but she’s not going to mention that now. His eyes remain locked on hers, and with a sigh, she puts away the voice recorder. Nathan exhales.

  “Thank you,” he says, standing. “Now let’s eat. I don’t want to reheat our steaks.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “May I ask a personal question?” Nathan says.

  They’d eaten dinner and moved to the kitchen. Ella loads the utensils Nathan rinsed into the dishwasher. He didn’t want her help cleaning, but she insisted. It was the least she could do after the meal he’d cooked. She’d been famished from their hike. She polished off her rib eye and they consumed a French Burgundy. She probably shouldn’t have drunk that second glass and not just because she has to drive back to the hotel on a narrow, curvy road in the dark. Rather, she finds herself wanting to linger longer than professionally necessary.

  “Sure.” Ella drops the utensils into the dishwasher basket, mindful the fork tines face down.

  “It’s about Damien. What’s his take on your memory loss?”

  “I think he resents me,” she blurts before she can stop herself. She lets out a shaky laugh. It’s not lost on her that her answer is the same connection she drew between Nathan and Stephanie.

  Nathan’s brows fold. “He told you this?”

  “I sense it.” Damien wouldn’t be so unkind. “It’s the way he watches me. I feel like he’s trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. He gets—” She stops midsentence and flashes him a smile when she realizes what she was about to do. What she is doing. To distract herself from saying more, she realigns the glasses in the top rack. The last thing she should be doing while on assignment is complaining about her husband. To another man, no less. One she finds very attractive.

  But if she’s being honest, for the past few months she’s felt like a piece of coding Damien’s trying to insert in a software upgrade. How will she respond? Will she crash the whole system? Ruin his program?

  Nathan watches her, patient.

  “I’m not sad and hurt like him,” she offers up. “Hard to be when I can’t remember what I should be sad about. He thinks I got off easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think he believes I blocked my memories on purpose.”

  Nathan looks intrigued. “Can someone do that?”

  “Subconsciously, yes. I read up on it after all this, trying to figure out what’s going on. The mind will block memories, or parts of memories, even alter memories when the person can’t deal with tragedy. My understanding is that the more I talk about it and immerse myself in familiar surroundings and with familiar people, my memories should come back. The thing is, nothing about my being pregnant is familiar—my maternity clothes, the nursery I apparently painted, my medical reports from my routine checkups and the accident, even the bills we had to pay. They didn’t feel like mine.”

  “That must have been tough. I remember that about Carson. Paying the hospital bills and seeing his name printed there on the top. Knowing he’s gone and I’ll never see him again. There were all sorts of things I still had to do on his behalf. The worst was boxing up his clothes and favorite toys.” He pushes out a breath. Ella briefly touches his arm.

  “I thought that would be difficult for me, too, but it wasn’t,” she says, taking the platter he rinsed and fitting it into the lower rack. “Reading those reports didn’t feel any different than researching an assignment. Same with paying the bills. It was like they were for a distant relative. I mean, I cared, but the emotional attachment I should have with Simon just isn’t there.

  “Anyways.” She waves a hand, getting them back to Nathan’s original question. “Damien barely talks about the accident or my miscarriage, so that doesn’t help me either. Sometimes I think he wants to pretend it never happened.”

  Nathan makes a contemplative noise, a tremor deep in his throat.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t say anything.” He hands her a dish and she loads it into the washer.

  “You made a weird noise in the back of your throat.”

  He sighs and tosses the sponge into the sink, turning to her. “You’ve done what he wants to do. Forget.”

  Davie had told her something similar. She should be fortunate. Why does she want to remember something that would only bring heartache? Maybe Damien’s right. Does she really want her memories back?

  Yes, because she believes there’s a specific reason she’s forgotten, something she’s not supposed to remember. Damien’s complaint in the hospital keeps coming back to her.

  You weren’t supposed to forget Simon.

  Damien knows something. And he’s not talking. Rather, he wasn’t willing to talk until she told him about the Nathan Donovan assignment.

  “Do you wish you could forget so that it doesn’t hurt so much?” she asks.

  “No. But there are nights I can’t sleep, and I wish . . .” His voice trails off.

  “You wish it never happened and that you can forget it ever did,” she supplies.

  “Is that so terrible? To make myself believe I never had a son just so I can get through the day? Or have a decent night’s sleep? I sound like an asshole.”

  “No, you don’t. You sound human. The pain never goes away, Nathan. You have to function, so you learn to live with it or you bury it. Who knows, maybe everyone’s right. Maybe I should count my blessings and be grateful I can’t remember. I’ve lost people close to me and getting over their deaths wasn’t easy. I’m not sure I ever really have, actually.”

  “You’re thinking about Grace.”

  “What exactly did I tell you about her?” she asks, still surprised she’d been so open with him last summer. She isn’t sure how she feels about that. Uneasy? Yes. Concerned? Definitely. Because that would mean Nathan meant something to her.

  Nathan’s thumb lightly brushes the back of her hand where she grasps the edge of the counter. The gentle touch zings through her, making her all too aware of his nearness—the height of him and the breadth of his shoulders, the scent of fruit on his breath from the wine, and the faint smell of smoke from the barbecue clinging to the fibers of his shirt. She swallows roughly and forces hers
elf to look up at him, not at her hand, where she can feel the rough, calloused skin on his fingertip. Probably from chopping wood. How cliché, she thinks. But there’s a huge pile stacked against the house. Someone had to chop it.

  “You told me you lost her in high school and that you blame her father, but you also blame yourself. You didn’t tell me why, only that she committed suicide at your house.”

  Ella pulls away her hand. Whoa! She’d told him all that? With a quick glance at the oven clock, she rubs the area where he touched. “It’s late. I should go.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here if you don’t want to drive in the dark.”

  “Thanks, but I’m good.” She smiles stiffly, moving to the dining table.

  “I scared you off. I told you too much.” He follows her out of the kitchen.

  “No, it’s late.” But yes, he did scare her. She’s scared of how much she opened up to him. How easily she could grow to care for him. Again, it would seem.

  He nods solemnly and backs away, giving her space. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Ella packs up her belongings. She changed back into her turtleneck and skinny jeans earlier and left the hiking clothes folded on top of the boots in the bathroom. They don’t feel like her clothes and it doesn’t seem right to take them with her.

  “What you said about Stephanie earlier,” Nathan says when she shoulders her bag. He starts walking with her toward the door. “You were right. I wanted a marriage like my parents’. I knew the moment I met her we didn’t have anything in common. But I wanted her to see the world the way I did. A big adventure. She was a city girl who’d never worn a pair of trail shoes before we met. I thought I could teach her to love the outdoors.”

  “She resisted.”

  “She did, and I resented her for that. Couldn’t she at least have tried?”

  Ella senses the question is rhetorical and doesn’t comment. Maybe Stephanie did try, and he didn’t see it because he wasn’t there with her. She follows him into the cold night air.

  They reach her car. “Same time tomorrow?” she asks, tossing her bag into the back seat.

  “Eight a.m.”

  “All right, see you in the morning,” she says, covering a yawn as she settles into the driver’s seat and starts up the car. “Good night, Donovan.”

  “See you tomorrow, Skye.” He shuts the door and taps on the window. She eases it down. “Dress warm.”

  “Why? What are you planning?” Please not another long hike. While the scenery was gorgeous and the mountain air invigorating, they wasted several hours hiking. Yeah, they talked, and she dictated notes later from memory. But they covered too much literal ground rather than interview ground.

  He grins. “Not telling. Drive safe.” He claps the roof of the car and backs away, giving her room to turn around.

  “Make sure you leave enough time for our interview,” she yells out the window as she drives off. He’s only giving her one more day.

  At the hotel, Ella wants nothing more than to soak in a hot bath and collapse on the bed. But she has work to do—more notes to dictate from today and questions to outline for tomorrow. She also wants to check in with Damien. She’d silenced her phone so that it wouldn’t distract her when she dictated, and later, when they ate.

  Launching her phone, she notices notifications fill her screen. A voice mail from Davie, a text from Andrew—he secured funding for Come Over Rover. Boom! With a gazillion exclamation points. He follows up his text with another. Five bomb emojis. He wants her to tell Damien there is a market for “TinderPooch.”

  She rolls her eyes. He can text Damien himself.

  Speaking of her husband, there’s a missed call from him and three text messages.

  Long day ahead. Everything’s going to shit.

  Sorry.

  Talk tonight? I’ll fill you in.

  That must have been the missed call.

  She looks at the time on her phone. Nine thirty p.m., six thirty a.m. in London. He’s up, probably already at the office. She calls him and her call goes to voice mail.

  She leaves a message. “Hey, sorry I missed you. Call me when you have the chance. I’ll be up for a little longer. Love you.”

  But he doesn’t return her call, not while she wraps up her notes and takes a bath. By the time she turns off the lights and settles into bed, he still hasn’t called, so she tries to reach him again only to land in voice mail. This time she hangs up without leaving a message.

  Everything’s going to shit.

  She knows he’s talking about work, but she can’t help thinking it might have to do with them. Lying on her back with the covers pulled to her chest, Ella stares into the pitch-dark room. She tries not to dwell on the fact she and Nathan barely discussed their previous time together or that spending an entire day with him didn’t unblock her memories. But it did enlighten her.

  Until the other night, Damien had never asked her to turn down an assignment. He’d never requested her to cancel or reschedule an interview. Neither has she where his work is concerned.

  Rolling to her side, she clicks on the bedside lamp. Warm light bathes the room. Digging through her purse, Ella finds her wallet. Tucked in the pocket is the last note she received from Damien. Since the day they married, he always left her notes. There was no rhyme or reason to them other than to let her know he loves her and that she’s always on his mind. The notes don’t show up often, and there isn’t a pattern as to when they’ll appear. They show up with a new phone or a muffin he picked up for her on his run home. He’ll stick them on her mirror. Good morning, beautiful. And once, she found a folded scrap of paper with a pressed daisy inside the pocket of her coat. Missed running with you this morning. This reminded me of you. Ella had been out late the previous night on assignment and wanted to sleep in. Along the route Damien took was a Victorian home in Pacific Heights. Ella always remarked on the daisy bush in the home’s raised planter. It was full and flowering, the yellow daisies like small rays of sunshine.

  A week after Ella returned home from the hospital, she came across an envelope stuffed with notes from Damien. She found the envelope tucked in the back of her lingerie drawer. Damien had given her the notes throughout her pregnancy. Reading through them had been difficult and not because she didn’t recall them. Rather, Damien’s excitement and awe over Simon’s arrival was palpable. So was his love for her and their baby. It broke her heart reading them, and it made her question whether she really knew her husband. The man who wrote those notes about Simon was not the man she’d married. The man who didn’t want children.

  Ella unfolds the note in her hand, the most recent one from her husband. A lime-green sticky note he left on the steering wheel of the Range Rover he purchased for her in December after she’d totaled her other one. The note is one word. Simple yet powerful and so full of meaning. Stay. It’s what he asked of her the morning after they met. The first time she had stayed. She hadn’t even had to think about it. But this time . . .

  She presses the note to her forehead, closes her eyes, and whispers, “I’m sorry.”

  Because Nathan isn’t a new indie artist fresh on the music scene, someone she can easily reschedule or call another day. Damien flat out doesn’t want her spending time with Nathan. And when told she can’t do something, Ella typically does the opposite. Because she’s curious. It’s in her nature.

  After the looks Nathan sent her way and her own physical reaction toward him, it doesn’t take a college degree to add one plus one.

  She and Nathan have history. History Damien is well aware of and not sharing with her.

  Ditch the interview and come with me, Damien said.

  What does he know?

  CHAPTER 17

  The following morning, Ella wakes to the ghost of a man’s lips on her neck, the shadow of his hands on her ribs. The rough ends of his fingers gliding between her breasts, dipping into the concave of her belly, fluttering over her hips. The heat of him moving inside her. It doesn’t fe
el like a dream. More like a memory where everything is three-dimensional, from the texture of his skin to the sound of his breathing. To the taste of him.

  As for the man, he isn’t Damien.

  Ella’s eyes snap open.

  The time glows in red numbers from the nightstand clock: 7:05 a.m. Her body glows from the remnants of her dream, aching in a different way from the night before. Inappropriate thoughts of Nathan fill her mind. She blocks them, forces her thoughts to her husband. She glances at her phone with disappointment. Damien never called. She quickly sends off a text—Call me. I’m up.—and rises from the bed.

  After a shower and a quick stop at the café—still no text or call from Damien and still no answer when she tries calling him again—Ella arrives at Nathan’s at 8:10 a.m. She’s ten minutes late and he’s raring to go. He’s stowing a cooler in the rear cab of his Chevy Silverado when Ella pulls up alongside. Hitched to his truck is a trailer. Parked on the trailer is a two-seater snowmobile.

  Oh, hell no.

  Ella’s adventurous. But she’s on deadline. How does he expect her to conduct his interview when they’re flying over snowbanks? There’s also a part of her that feels like she’d be betraying Damien. They were supposed to go snowmobiling in Vail their first year together. She’d awoken the morning after Thanksgiving in a funk so Damien canceled. Instead, he spent the day with her reading beside the fire after she’d promised they’d go snowmobiling next time. There had yet to be a next time. They haven’t been back to Vail since.

  Nathan’s grinning as Ella eases down her window.

  “Morning,” he says.

  She eyes the trailer. “You aren’t serious.”

  “I’m one hundred percent serious when it comes to snowmobiling.”

  He wears gray snow pants and sturdy boots. He claps his hands together, his body visibly vibrating with excitement.