The Summer House: A gorgeous feel good romance that will have you hooked

by Jenny Hale

  The rain began to fall on Callie’s windshield: First one big drop, then two, then a few more as if the clouds were holding on for dear life, their grasp slipping. Then suddenly a sheeting rain came pouring down, making it difficult to see. Thunder clapped loudly as Callie clicked her windshield wipers on high and turned on the headlights. The rain was coming at a slant and nearly clouding her view completely. She put on her flashers and slowed down, both hands on the wheel.

  Worried she’d miss the next turn since she’d never taken this route before and visibility was low, she decided to pull off for a minute and let the worst of it pass. Callie looked over at the items in her front seat. What am I doing? she thought.

  Her mind went to Luke. He’d had no say in this matter so far. Did he even have an inkling about any of it? He’d told her how difficult things had been with his father, Edward—surely this would damage that beyond repair. Maybe she should just leave the lockbox on the doorstep and forget she ever knew a thing. Yes. That was probably best. If Frederick wanted to be in Luke’s life that was his choice to make, not Callie’s.

  She was almost there, the rain was already letting up, and yet she sat paralyzed. But then she remembered Alice’s words in the journal: He allows his heart to lead him, he’s too honest, and he jumps before he realizes the consequences. Callie checked for traffic and then pulled off, the air thick with humidity.

  She made the last few turns and pulled up outside a small house. It was a brick rancher with a minimal but tidy amount of landscaping. She pulled into the paved drive and parked behind a white sedan. The rain had tapered off to a continuous drizzle. It clouded her windshield as she deliberated one last time. Then, with a deep breath, she gathered the items in the passenger seat and got out of the car, jogging up to the front door and setting the lockbox on the stoop. She placed the journal on top of it, nerves making her stomach uneasy.

  The door opened and she jumped, facing a tall man with dark hair graying at the sides, his bright blue eyes inquisitive as he smiled at her with a familiar smile. She’d seen it so many times on Luke’s face; this confirmed her suspicions completely. She tried to control her breathing as the panic welled up again.

  “Are you Frederick McFarlin?” she asked, although she already knew the answer just by looking at him.

  “Yes.” His smile faded to a look of trepidation as he focused on the lockbox at her side. Then, as if snapping out of it, he came back up to her face, producing another smile.

  “I’m Callie Weaver—”

  “Please. Come in.”

  “Oh no, it’s fine. Don’t let me trouble you.”

  “It’s no trouble. Let me make you a drink to thank you for coming all this way.”

  “I shouldn’t—I have to be getting back to the house.”

  “Oh.” His face fell a little. “You sure? It’s really no trouble.”

  Callie knew she should leave, but his kind eyes made her relent and she picked up the lockbox and journal, and followed him in. She didn’t know why, but she’d expected an artist’s studio or something. The décor was eclectic—he had wooden artwork displayed above the sofa, pieces of driftwood carved into waves and fish; there were photos of waterfalls and an aerial one of a shoreline. She walked over to a painting but, judging by what she’d seen of his drawings, it didn’t look like one of his—she couldn’t really tell, though.

  “How about that drink? Would you like coffee? Or water, tea…”

  “A glass of water would be nice,” she said.

  Frederick left the room and Callie looked around, hoping to find some evidence of his life that could give her answers. He had a few framed photos on the wall but they were of places—maybe locations he’d visited. There was a magazine rack in the corner filled with books. The mantle on the small, brick fireplace was empty.

  He returned, set a glass of iced water on the coffee table, and sat back down in the recliner, next to the box. “So, you’ve bought my sister’s place.”

  Callie perched on the sofa opposite him. “I’ve admired it since I was a little girl.”

  “You going to open it back up again?” He ran his hands back and forth along the arms of the chair and Callie wondered if it was a nervous gesture.

  She nodded. “We plan to. My best friend Olivia Dixon owns it with me. Did you ever meet her? Gladys Dixon’s granddaughter.”

  “Gladys Dixon?” He was settling into the conversation now, his shoulders falling a little, and Callie could feel her own body relax in response.

  “She’s lived across the street from Alice for thirty years.”

  He smiled. “Oh, Gladys! She’s a nice lady. I wasn’t around the house a lot in those days.” His gaze rested on the lockbox.

  “Oh, well, I think you’d love what we’ve done with the place. We’ve cleaned it all up. We’re putting porches on all the back rooms, repainting everything. I’d like to get a mural painted in the front room. I haven’t arranged to have anyone come out but I have someone in mind.”

  He seemed so absorbed by the lockbox, Callie wasn’t sure if he’d even heard her. He leaned forward and ran his hand over the lid. “It’s open!”

  She set her glass down. “Yes—I’m so sorry. Olivia’s son, Wyatt, jimmied it open and I didn’t have the key to lock it again.”

  Frederick put the box on the table and stared at the closed lid. “Did you look inside?”

  Callie squirmed. “I know I shouldn’t have… Frederick, I’m so sorry. It was none of my business.” Her head pounded. What was she supposed to do now? Tell him she knew Luke? Run away?

  Frederick slowly eased the lid open and pulled out the drawings on top. He studied the horses, sketched in perfectly haphazard scribbles, and slid his finger under the edge of the paper, revealing a sketch of just the fingers of a woman’s hand on the next sheet. But he didn’t turn the page.

  Callie could feel her heart rising into her throat. “Are these your drawings?”

  He blinked rapidly. “Yes.” He looked away.

  “Do you still draw?”

  “No.”

  Callie cleared her throat. “I should go. I’m sorry.”

  He looked up. “Please...” His eyes were wide.

  It would be best to go right now, before things got even more complicated, but she couldn’t leave him like this—he looked so sad. She lowered herself again. “Why don’t you draw anymore?” she asked boldly.

  He didn’t say anything. She reached out to get her water, hoping that her hand wouldn’t shake when she held it. She took a sip to buy herself time. What was she supposed to do? Wasn’t it dishonest of her to sit and pretend she didn’t know what was going on? And this man, he wasn’t a father who didn’t care. He was broken by his loss.

  She mustered up her energy and said, “It’s just… I know an artist, and I was so impressed by him that I feel it would be a great loss if he ever stopped painting.” She leaned forward for emphasis. “He painted the horses in Corolla for me. He took me there because he said his mother used to take him as a child.” When she said that, Frederick looked as though he’d been punched in the gut, the color draining out of his face.

  “Luke?”

  She nodded.

  Without taking his eyes off her, Frederick turned to the next sketch. He pulled his eyes away finally and his gaze fell onto the page with the woman. He was quiet as his eyes moved over the drawing. Callie allowed the silence. She sipped her water and watched, waiting for the response that was causing him great emotion to produce.

  He cleared his throat. “This was my last drawing.” He tilted his head back as if to catch the tears that brimmed in his eyes. He blinked them away. “When I’d finished it, I walked up to the woman in the picture. So as not to worry Luke, I simply said, ‘It’s a beautiful day.’ She smiled at me. She’d brought Luke there to play so I could see him. And her.” He closed his eyes as if the memory were able to calm him. “I asked her…” He opened his eyes again and looked back at Callie, his shaking hands on his knee
s. “If she thought there would be more beautiful days like this one in the future. I remember, she pursed her lips and said, simply, ‘I don’t think so.’ She was never going to tell him. She assured me of that. It was the last time I drew her and her son.”

  “Your son.”

  Frederick hung his head and without warning, he started to sob. Callie didn’t know what to do. She got up, set down her water, and put her arms around him. His back heaved as he cried, and her heart broke for this man. She grabbed a tissue from a box that was on the small table next to them and handed it to him. “He has your smile,” she said, but it only made him cry more.

  Luke had said his mother used to take him to that beach—as in more than once. Had she changed her mind and gone back? Had she been waiting for Frederick and he’d never shown up again? Callie sat down on the floor in front of him to try to get him to look at her. “You love him. Why didn’t you ever tell him?” She could feel her own tears rising and she knew that it was because those were the questions she’d had for her own father.

  “It’s complicated,” he said, sitting up and trying unsuccessfully to get himself together.

  She reached over and got her water, pushing her own emotion back down where it had come from. “I meant to give you the box and leave. But I feel like I have to tell you—I already know half your story. I wanted to find out where you were and I thought there might be some clue in your sister’s journal, so I read it. I had no idea, at first, that it was about someone I knew.’’

  Frederick looked unsure, but at the same time he seemed as if he’d held this burden all by himself for so many years that he was dying to let someone else help him deal with it.

  “It might not change anything, but you wouldn’t have to endure it all alone. I know you didn’t tell Alice a lot—she wrote about that in her journal.”

  “That’s because she judged me. She was angry with me for giving him up so easily, but she didn’t know that I cried myself to sleep every single night. I never married or had kids. I didn’t have any will to after losing him and Lillian, because I knew that I had a son and I wasn’t allowed to be in his life.”

  “Said who?”

  “Lillian.”

  “Why was she the only one with a say in this matter?”

  “I was the quintessential starving artist. I had nothing to offer. She’d been unfaithful to her husband, and knowledge of that would’ve caused a messy divorce. She’d have lost everything. But that aside, she told me she regretted it. She felt terribly guilty, and said she would spend the rest of her life being the perfect wife to make it up to him. We agreed to keep it quiet and Luke would have a wonderful life, a life grander than anything I could’ve offered. He went to top schools, he had the best upbringing money could buy. And now look at him.”

  She sat there, letting this information sink in. But at the same time, she felt like Luke should know.

  “You said he paints?” Frederick asked, interest on his face.

  She nodded. “He’s amazing.”

  He put his fingers to his lips and lifted his eyes up toward the ceiling, all that pain welling up again. The anguish seemed so great that all she wanted to do was help him. She thought about Luke and his passion for art, how he lit up whenever he talked about painting, how thrilled he was as he painted the horses for her. She couldn’t imagine the pain that must have caused Frederick to put a halt to that kind of passion.

  “So he painted for you? The horses?” he asked, pulling her out of her thoughts. He had life behind those aging eyes all of a sudden.

  She nodded.

  “I painted them for Lillian.” He stretched his wrinkled fingers out and inspected them as if he’d still see the paint under his nails all these years later. “I wonder what she did with the painting.” His mouth turned down, uncertainty showing.

  What had she done with it? Had she hidden it somewhere, thrown it out, or was it on display to remind her…?

  “I sometimes think about painting again,” he said. “It’s a delicate thing though, creativity. Art is a manifestation of our feelings, our soul, and my expression was of love and happiness. Without those two things, I couldn’t do it anymore. After she and Luke had left my life, I stared at a blank canvas for days, paint dripping from my brush onto my boots, and nothing would come from my hand. So I stopped.”

  Callie eyed the lockbox sitting on the floor. “Did you keep all those articles in there? Or did Alice?”

  Frederick looked up and rubbed the scruff on his face with his dry hands, making a scraping sound.

  He shook his head as if it didn’t matter. “I clipped all those, yes. I miss the Outer Banks so much. I miss my art. And I miss seeing Luke. I wish I could be strong enough to be near him, but the older we both get, the harder it becomes because there are so many lost years between us.” The tears started brimming again, his nose red, his cheeks flushed. He looked away, his lip beginning to quiver. All those years were welling up to the surface and spilling over, and it was breaking Callie’s heart to watch it. He’d held himself away from his home, from Luke, from Alice, from his passion…

  “Would you paint the mural for me at The Beachcomber?” she heard herself ask, the final word coming out before she snapped her mouth shut. What was she saying? She shouldn’t have said it, but she knew why she had: He could come back to the place he loved and be with boy he’d lost. If it could only be that easy…

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just couldn’t.”

  Callie nodded, feeling like a complete idiot for even asking. How would she have explained herself to Luke if Frederick had been there and it had all come out? How would she have ever answered to the fact that she had actually invited him there? She was so relieved he’d said no.

  After she left and all the way home, flashes of her conversation with Frederick filled her mind, like rapid-fire clips, making her second-guess everything she’d said and done. She shouldn’t have interfered. She might ruin Luke’s life, not to mention Lillian’s, if this got out. Could it? Hopefully not. She promised herself she’d never utter a word of it. She wouldn’t tell Olivia anything, which was causing her anxiety because she told her best friend everything. But with Olivia’s ties to Aiden, she just couldn’t risk it. She worried about how she’d ever face Luke again. How could she look at him, knowing what she knew, and not tell him? The more she drove, the more upset she became, the thoughts eating away at her, making her wish she’d never found that box and journal.

  “So, did you meet him?” Olivia said as she poured them both a glass of wine and peered out the window into the darkness to try to see if there were any changes in the weather. The radio was spitting out the latest report; the storm was gaining speed instead of losing steam as they’d hoped.

  Callie only realized just then that Aiden was there. She focused on the large, circular clock they’d put up over the table, her heartbeats winning in the race against the second hand. He’d just come in to get settled and was looking on, drinking his own glass of wine. She smiled at him, trying to keep her thoughts to herself. Had Olivia told him about the box and all the articles about the Sullivans? Olivia was whistling—actually whistling—while making their dinner: lemon chicken casserole with her famous bread crumble.

  “So?” Olivia looked over her shoulder. “Did you meet Frederick?” she asked again.

  “Yes,” Callie said.

  “And what was all that stuff he had in the box?”

  Callie smiled nervously. “Turns out the contents of the lockbox were nothing too important.” She felt terrible telling her friend that, but she knew that with Aiden there, she couldn’t risk telling Olivia the truth, even if she wanted to.

  “Did he say anything about his son?”

  Callie wished she’d never mentioned what she’d read to Olivia, but in her curiosity the other day, she had.

  Aiden was watching her from behind his glass, completely oblivious to the reaction going on in her body. Her shoulders were pinching, heat sliding up her n
eck.

  “No, I didn’t think it was my business,” she said calmly.

  She gazed out the window at the things left by the workers who had finished hours ago. Because of the vaulted ceilings, they’d hired painters for the family room. More furniture was also coming—she’d gotten the call for the delivery—and Aiden’s guys were finishing the small back expansion and the porches.

  “Luke called,” Olivia said. “He couldn’t get you on your phone, so he called Aiden to see if you were here.”

  Any attempt Callie had made to get the prior conversation out of her mind dissolved in that one word: Luke. He was going to ask her where she had been. Had Olivia told him? This was all getting too crazy. She needed to take a step away from it, give it time. Suddenly aware that Olivia was watching her, she checked her phone. Two missed calls. His number.

  “Call him back,” Olivia said. “He seemed like he wanted to tell you something.”

  “Okay,” Callie said, pushing a smile to her lips.

  “Go out with me tomorrow,” Luke said. His voice was light and carefree like it had always been. “I want to see you.”

  Callie lay on her back, sprawled on her air mattress, her hair fanned out over her pillow. She wanted to see him too, but she was so afraid she’d tell him something she shouldn’t. She was worried she’d let something slip. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got a ton of work on the cottage.”

  “It’ll all still be there when we get back,” he urged. “What’s a couple of hours?”

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”