A New Shade of Summer

by Nicole Deese

  “What is all that?”

  Her hand stilled.

  “I think we should probably discuss that with you at a different time, Davis.” Charles clapped me on my shoulder, and I shrugged his arm away. My days of being controlled by the Lockwoods were long over.

  “What were you discussing with my son when I came in?”

  Neither Vivian nor Charles dared to respond, so I swiped a brochure off the table myself. It took all of two seconds to answer my own question.

  “A better alternative for your creatively minded child,” I read aloud, flipping to the inside of the leaflet and scanning the stock photos of happy-faced teenagers, surrounded by canvases and pottery wheels. The school’s address was printed in bold at the bottom.

  California.

  “So this is why you came?”

  Vivian held her hand up like a stop sign. “Wait a minute, before you get upset, let us explain what—”

  “You’re trying to entice my son into attending some uppity private school?”

  Charles ruffled at the term. “That high school is nothing to scoff at, Davis. You’d be surprised at how pricey it is—thirty-five grand a year. But it would look pretty good on his college applications,” Charles said.

  “Unbelievable.” I tossed the brochures to the table, disgusted. “And what a convenient location, too.” A bitter laugh welled up in my throat. “It’s just like old times.”

  “Be careful,” Charles said, his expression darkening.

  But I’d been careful. I’d walked on a trail of emotional eggshells with them for too long. “What was it you accused me of when Stephanie told you she was pregnant? Sabotage. That’s the word you used.” As if I’d brainwashed their daughter to go against her doctor’s wishes. As if I’d forced her to give me a child before she died.

  Charles eased toward his wife, whose face had gone pale.

  “Please, let’s not have this conversation,” she begged.

  “Why not? Because you’d rather keep those days, those private discussions, locked away where all of the other family secrets are buried?” I cut my gaze to Charles. “Don’t think Stephanie didn’t tell me how you offered to take care of the situation behind my back. She told me everything.”

  Except, of course, that she’d stopped taking her contraceptives.

  Charles shifted, gripping the back of a chair. “Surely you can understand we were in shock, scared out of our wits about losing our only daughter.”

  I slapped my chest with an open palm, the sound reverberating in the tight space. “I was her husband! You don’t think I was scared? You don’t think I knew exactly what a pregnancy would mean for her? I’d never been more afraid in my life than when I saw those two blue lines. Yet instead of showing me an ounce of compassion, you looked at me as if I were your enemy, as if the pin she’d just pulled from that grenade wouldn’t affect anybody besides the two of you.”

  Vivian stared down at her hands, her body suddenly still. “There are many things we regret about that year, Davis. That conversation being high on our list.”

  “I would hope so, seeing as the same grandson you could hardly look at when he was born is the very child you’re conspiring for now.”

  “My anger has never been directed at Brandon.” Vivian gripped the table as if to keep herself upright. “It was toward her—my own daughter. I was furious! I simply couldn’t make sense of it—all the doctor appointments we went to together, all the medications I double-checked for her, all the routines we had in place to avoid any misstep in her health plan. And in a blink, all of it was undone.” Vivian’s gaze found mine. “I needed someone else to blame because I couldn’t blame her—not when she was the one dying.” A sob bubbled up her throat, and Charles heaved a sigh.

  “We were both angry,” he said.

  Warily, my gaze shifted between them, my own fury momentarily stalled. I’d never heard either of them admit to a single regret during that time period.

  “I realize her pregnancy wasn’t what any of us had planned, but she was a grown woman, with her own mind and her own will, and none of us can deny that the day she first held Brandon in her arms was the happiest day of her life. And if she were here right now, she would tell us that herself. She wouldn’t have traded him for anything.” My voice teetered dangerously close to breaking. “Brandon is the best gift she could have given us.”

  Vivian’s shoulders shook in silent upheavals.

  “And we love him so much,” Vivian finally said, her cheeks blotched and puffy. “But we can’t lose him, too. We won’t survive it, Davis.”

  “Lose him?” I stared at her in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  She glanced down again and plucked at the pearl button on her cardigan. “Don’t you understand? If you . . . if you remarry, your life will move on—new vows, new family, new obligations to uphold. And what are we left with? Nothing. There are no promises made to a widower’s in-laws at a wedding ceremony.”

  I closed my eyes at the intensity of Vivian’s fears coming to life. Had her insecurities driven her to talk to Callie? “Do you actually think I’d cut you out of our lives if I were to remarry?”

  As if vulnerability required physical exertion, she pushed the words out on a single breath. “I can’t possibly see where we’d fit inside a new family unit.”

  Despite my ongoing frustration with the Lockwoods, I knew Vivian well enough to know this rare display of sentiment wasn’t a ploy. “I would never marry a woman who didn’t understand the importance of your role in Brandon’s life.”

  On her exhale, her lips trembled, yet I couldn’t share in her relief.

  “But just so we’re clear on the subject,” I said. “You couldn’t have been more wrong about Callie. She was exactly the kind of woman who would have accepted this unique setup with open arms. She’s too secure to be jealous, and too gracious to be offended. Even though she had every right to be.” The past tense of my statement brought another wave of grief. Callie had chosen to walk away and move to a new town rather than allow herself to be loved.

  I cleared my throat and pointed again to the leaflets on the tabletop. “Now, I’d appreciate if you’d put those away and discourage all further conversations about a move to California.”

  “They didn’t encourage me, Dad.” Brandon’s voice at my back caused my pulse to jump. “Those brochures . . . they’re mine.”

  The size of the motor home shrank by a factor of five as I turned to see my son on the steps. “What?”

  “It was me.” His eyes flicked up to mine. “I sent away for information on the school last spring. I’ve kept the packet under my mattress.”

  “I don’t understand—you researched this school last spring?”

  Guiltily, he nodded. “Yes.”

  Charles cleared his throat behind me. “It might be best if the two of you had this conversation in private.”

  An unnerving sense of helplessness stole over me.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Vivian nod with what could only be construed as regret in her eyes.

  Whatever this was about . . . Brandon had shared it with his grandparents before he’d shared it with me.

  And that humbling reality had doused every last spark of fire I had left. Numbly, I followed Brandon into the house, my body going through the motions like a chronic sleepwalker.

  I’d wanted to believe that Brandon and I had finally reached a better understanding—the start of an open and honest place. But perhaps that had been just another case of wishful thinking. Like with Callie.

  After closing the front door behind us, I turned to see my son standing in the middle of the living room, Kosher sitting guard at his side.

  “What’s this about, Brandon?” I’d asked that question no less than a hundred times since spring in multiple forms: Why are you so angry? Why don’t you talk to me? What have I done wrong?

  But this time I was more afraid of his answer than I was of his silence.

  “I a
sked them to come.” He dug the toe of his sneaker into the floorboards. “After you told me you weren’t sending me there for a visit this summer, I called Oma and asked her to come. But I didn’t know when or if they would. She never told me.”

  He’d asked them to come? “Why?”

  He dropped onto the sofa cushion and popped his knuckles one after another. “Because I thought they could help convince you to let me move out there. With Oma and Papa. I’d already tried everything else.”

  “What do you mean everything else?”

  He lowered his head in acknowledgment. “I thought it would be easy—for you to let me go. Especially after my report card.”

  My brain worked to piece together the timeline—the attitudes, the grades, the suspension. “You were purposely trying to fail your classes?”

  A hard nod.

  And then another realization struck. “So that tagging stunt on the school fence—was that also a part of this plan?”

  He glanced up, but only long enough for me to feel the brunt of the truth he’d been hiding. How had everything gone so awry in a single evening?

  I slumped onto the hard edge of the coffee table near him and let his confession burrow deep. Brandon, my son, had premeditated his own escape route. Had he really been so desperate to get away from here? From me?

  “Help me understand this.”

  The pain in his gaze nearly slammed me backward.

  “I thought you didn’t care about me anymore.”

  He gave me no time to recalibrate before all the words he’d stored up over the last six months came out in one angry gush.

  “You left me out of everything. All your time was filled up with the clinic or talking to Shep about the restaurant. And you even had Grandma pick me up from the airport after my spring break trip to California!”

  Guilt struck my conscience when I realized what he was referring to. Not that I’d asked my mother to pick him up that afternoon but that I hadn’t taken him to our favorite ice-cream shop to debrief his trip together. The way I had every other time he came home from a trip to California. I hadn’t teased him about saving all the frozen marshmallow bits from his Rocky Road to eat in his last bite, or listened to his stories about the new places he’d seen and the people he’d met.

  Instead, when he arrived home, I’d been elbow deep in reviewing the cosigner paperwork for Shep’s loan. And in splitting my practice with Dr. Julie.

  “I’m sorry, Brandon. There’s been a lot going on over the last year.”

  His stare was as unflinching as his tone. “Not for me.”

  I bristled at his implication of boredom. “I offered to sign you up for at least a dozen different sports, and you turned down every one of them. And when Marie offered you a job after school cleaning the kennels—you turned that down, too.”

  “I didn’t want to play another sport or clean kennels at the clinic. I wanted things to go back to how they were before.”

  I blew out a labored breath. “I needed to make some big changes in my life.”

  “By cutting me out of it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Seemed that way to me.”

  I flexed my hands, furling and unfurling my fingers, thinking back through the order of events after Willa Hart told me she was engaged. The extra hours I worked. The projects I’d taken on. The weekends I filled with piles of paperwork—all to avoid the heartache of failures I didn’t want to face.

  Only a couple of hours ago I’d accused Callie of running away from her fears, of not trusting God to be her compass, when I’d done exactly the same thing.

  In my own home.

  To my own son.

  I looked at him now, at his growing, lanky legs, and his scruffy head of dark hair, knowing that before tonight I would have defended my parenting and told him I’d loved and supported him to the best of my ability. But I’d done a terrible job of giving him a voice into our future. I had simply expected him to comply with every decision I made for the two of us, no questions asked.

  Bowing my head low, I placed my hand on his knee and let the conviction break me fully. “I was wrong to ever make you feel like you were the problem I needed to solve. It was me, Brandon. Never you. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

  He set his hand on mine. “I forgive you.”

  I lifted my head and worked my jaw until I could find the next words—the harder words. “When you sent away for information on that high school . . . was it because of your love of art? Or because of your anger at me?”

  “A little of both.”

  “And what about now? Is that still what you want? To move away from here?”

  “No.” The tear-filled admission made my throat burn.

  I gripped his shoulder. “Listen to me, okay? I don’t ever want you to feel like leaving is your only option. Someday, when you’re older and can make your own decisions, moving might be the best thing for you, Son. But until then, I need you to know that there is nothing in this world more important to me than you. All of you. Even your art.”

  “My art?”

  I nodded.

  “Did Callie show you the finished mural—my signature?”

  “No.” And now she likely never would. “I’ll let you be the one to show me the mural. But I did see your robot at the laundromat.”

  He sat up straighter as if preparing for a lecture I was too exhausted to give.

  I held up a hand. “Yes, I know about it. And no, you shouldn’t have trespassed. But I do want you to keep painting—just not in any more abandoned buildings.”

  “You saw my robot?” He seemed to be sorting something out in his head.

  “Yes,” I said with a smile. “And I think he’s awesome. I like how strong you made him look, but also how human, too.” I put my fingers up to my eyebrows. “Oh, and those big bolts you use to make his expressions—pretty ingenious, really.”

  Brandon gave me a suspicious look, and I knew I’d just given myself away completely.

  “Okay, so I looked at your sketchbook one night,” I admitted.

  He quirked a half smile. “I actually have several sketchbooks full of him now.”

  “I hope that’s an invitation, because I’d love to see everything you’ve drawn. You’re incredibly talented, Brandon, and I’m not just saying that because I’m your dad.”

  As if suddenly bashful at the praise, he glanced away. “Callie’s told me that before, too.”

  “Well . . .” I looked down at our hands, not having anything to add to that particular topic at the moment.

  “Do you think you’ll marry her, Dad?”

  Barbed wire cut into my heart at his question. “I’m not sure that’s what she wants, buddy.”

  He seemed to consider this for a moment. “Collin said she never stays in the same town for longer than a few months, but I’m hoping she’ll stay in Lenox. We all are.”

  “She has a different kind of job than most people.” And a different kind of philosophy on life in general. “But whether she stays or goes, I want you and me to keep growing stronger. With no more secrets between us, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  I bumped his leg with mine and started to get up from the table to get him something to drink.

  “Dad?”

  I twisted back around.

  “You know my robot?” He shifted in his seat to meet my gaze. “I designed him after you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  CALLIE

  Though the sign in the giant window still read CLOSED, one peek through the glass told me Shep’s Place was only weeks away from being ready for its grand opening. He’d obviously been busy. The place hardly resembled the same restaurant I’d first visited over a month ago.

  The instant I crossed the threshold and smelled the bacon, my stomach growled. But the retro interior of the diner was just as alluring as whatever dish he was creating in the kitchen. Awed, I made my way to one of the sparkling ruby-red booths lining the outer edge
of the diner, the tap of my sandals drawing my gaze to the stamped concrete floor underfoot. An unexpected sadness shot through me at the thought of missing his opening night.

  “Perfect timing.” Shep rounded the corner wearing a tight cotton shirt that bunched over his biceps. In less than five seconds he crossed the room and gave me a hug that could have broken every bone in my body. He pulled away and gestured to the scroll in my hand. “Sorry about all the voice mails, but with opening night just around the corner, I think it’s time to make a decision on the sketches you’ve been working up.” He gave my shoulder a hard pat. “Not that I’d want to rush you, but let’s face it, scaffolding is a bit of an eyesore while people are eating.”

  Not quite ready to address the subject of the mural, I skimmed a hand over the shiny vinyl of the booth behind me. “What you’ve done here is beyond impressive, Shep. You should feel really proud.”

  “Can’t take all the credit.” He winked.

  No, of course he couldn’t. Without Davis investing in his dream and lending a hand all those Saturday mornings, this place would still be an unfinished dump.

  I worked a smile. “True.”

  “Come and see my new bar top. It was delivered yesterday.”

  I followed him around the center divider—a half wall—that separated the seating area into two sections. A knot formed in the base of my belly at the thought of such a perfect canvas remaining untouched by the artwork he wanted. I focused instead on the thick slab of redwood Shep gestured to.

  “She’s a beauty, right?”

  I gaped at the mirrorlike varnish and again found the smooth surface impossible not to touch. The intricate swirls and grooves snaking through the wood grain had all been filled with epoxy, creating a level bar top as inviting as it was unique. “It’s stunning. Where on earth did you find such a piece?” The slab had to be at least twenty feet long and four feet wide.

  “One of my brothers is a tree guy—that’s what we call him anyway.” Shep thumped the counter affectionately with his fist. “He had a job last fall after a huge storm, saved this piece for my restaurant. We only had to come up with the finishing cost.”