“Stop it.” Summer bristled. She hated when people spoke about her job, about the way she’d chosen to spend her life, like that. As if centuries long gone were somehow less significant than what happened in the here and now. Without understanding the past, she always explained to the doubters, people had no business living in the present. Everything linked together in a beautiful, complicated chain.
“Sorry. I just mean that the exhibits aren’t going to grow legs and walk away if you stay another week or two in Pine Point,” Rachael added. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
Rachael blew platinum blonde strands of hair from her eyes and handed over a plastic cup. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now, anyway.”
Summer sipped from the cup and gagged. “God, what is this?”
“Some punch Cat made. Why? Is it bad?”
She grimaced. “It’s awful.”
“Thanks a lot.” A deep male voice spoke behind her.
She turned and stared. “Catfish?”
A tall twenty-five-year-old with white-blond hair identical to Rachael’s grinned at her. “Hey, Summer. Welcome back.” He paused and the playful light in his eyes dimmed. “I’m sorry about your dad.”
She continued to gape at Rachael’s little brother. “What happened to you?”
Cat’s expression changed to puzzlement. “What do you mean?”
She waved a hand. “You’re so…tall. When did you get all grown up?” When she left Pine Point, Catfish Hunter had been a cocky ninth-grader with acne and a bad haircut. Now he stood on the porch step below her, a man who’d grown about six inches and filled out.
He laughed. “Sprouted up in college.”
“You look good.” Summer shaded her eyes and remembered something else. “Do you go by Nathan now?”
Cat made a face. “Nah. I’ll always be Cat. Nickname’s too hard to break.”
Rachael stole her brother’s baseball cap and mashed it down on her head. “Besides, he still smells like a catfish. Don’t you ever wear deodorant?”
Cat grabbed for the hat but his sister dashed inside the screen door and vanished. He shrugged. “Some things never change, huh?”
“I guess not.”
He stood there a moment longer. “You’re not staying long, are you? Here in Pine Point?”
Summer shook her head. “It’s not my—I don’t—” How did she answer? She wanted to ask how he could stay here after everything that had happened, but she supposed Donnie’s classmates had survived better than his eighteen-year-old sister with a father who didn’t want her around as a reminder.
Cat loped down the porch steps. “Coming to the lake?”
“Later.” She waved and watched him disappear behind the oak trees, still amazed at the boy who had shed his awkward teenage skin for the shell of an adult. He wears it well. Still, he hadn’t had much choice. When you lost your best friend at barely thirteen, the rough adolescent years that followed hardened you up a bit. Calloused you. Made you old before you really wanted to be.
Summer climbed the steps and let herself into the house. Inside the foyer sat the same smiling gnome doorstop. The same fruit-patterned wallpaper peeled in the corners of the kitchen. If she tried hard enough, she could almost smell the chicken casserole that Mrs. Hunter used to cook every Friday night. Summer leaned against the breakfast bar. Suddenly, she was twelve years old again, sleeping over at her best friend’s house, playing hide-and-seek in the woods, sharing a tub of ice cream with Rachael and talking about boys in the dark, musty attic. “Where is everyone?”
Rachael sat at the dining room table munching on potato chips. “Mom dragged Dad to a quilt show over in Silver Valley. Everyone else is down at the lake.”
“Oh.” Summer exchanged Cat’s punch for a diet soda.
“So what’s it look like? From the inside, I mean.” Rachael asked.
“What?”
“The McCready house. Your house.”
“Oh, God. I don’t know. It’s a mess.” She thought of the crumbling stairs, the broken windows, the cemetery gate visible from the second story.
Rachael straightened her brother’s cap and propped her chin in one hand. “Remember when we used to go by there after school and dare each other to look in the windows?”
“Sure.” Two skinny, knobby-kneed girls darted into Summer’s memory.
“We never did, right?”
“Nope. We always chickened out.”
“And now you own the place.”
“So?”
Rachael shook her head. “You finally get to look in the windows. Get over your fears.”
Anxiety dimmed the edges of her peripheral vision, and Summer’s face flushed. She didn’t answer.
“Summer Thompson?” The cop took her arm in his strong grasp. “Can you hear me? Can you tell me who else was in the car with you?”
She shuddered and drank the rest of her diet soda without stopping for a breath.
“Hey, you okay? You look weird.”
“Yeah. Just tired.” She didn’t want to admit that the past was starting to pop into the present every time she turned another corner.
Rachael glanced out the window. “Oh, the guys are coming back in on the boat. Come on. I want to introduce you to someone.” She pulled on Summer’s wrist and dragged her outside.
“I don’t really know if—”
“Don’t say anything. Just let me introduce you. You’ll like him. He’s cute.”
“Rach, I’m only here for a few more days.”
“And what?” Rachael parked both her hands on generous hips. “You can’t have any fun in the meantime? Come on.” She tugged on her arm again, and this time Summer didn’t protest.
The roar of the boat engine grew as it coasted into the dock. In the boat, three bare-chested men held beers and laughed. A few hundred feet away, Cat reached an arm to help moor it.
Here at the edge of the lake, the lawn met the water’s edge in a crooked dirt line. No beach, just some frizzled grass that merged with sandy pebbles and disappeared. From there Pine Point Lake took over, spreading one mile wide and three miles long, gorgeous and blue under the sun. The Hunters had their own dock, as did everyone who owned lakefront property. Two teams of laughing men and women played water volleyball nearby, and bikini-clad women sunned themselves on a raft moored a few feet away.
Summer shaded her eyes. How was it possible that this place still smelled exactly the same, like wind and water and suntan lotion? Put her anywhere in the world and pipe in this scent, and she’d be a teenager again, watching the sun beat down on Pine Point Lake. For a moment she froze, afraid that another memory would darken her mind. None did. She let out a breath of relief.
Rachael hopped from one foot to the other on the scalding wooden dock. “You guys ready to do some skiing?”
Two of the men in the boat glanced over. Sure, one mouthed over the engine’s steady throb. He opened a fresh can of beer and lifted it in Summer’s direction. Hi there.
Hi, she mouthed back. He was good-looking, a little portly but with muscular arms and a buzz cut that showed off his dimples. The second guy reached out a hand to help her in, and she took it. He looked familiar, and she guessed they’d probably gone to school together, maybe a few years apart. As he shoved some towels off a damp seat for her, she tried to recall the bright brown eyes and the laugh that started in his chest and moved down to his belly. George Hoskin’s little brother? Maybe—
But then the third occupant of the boat turned around to say hello, and her thoughts scattered.
Damian Knight. The same wavy hair glinted in the sun. The same blue eyes lit up when he saw her. He raised one hand in greeting, and Summer waved hers in return. Her legs turned to Jell-o and she reached for the side of the motorboat to steady herself.
So Damian
was one of Cat’s friends. The one Rachael meant to introduce her to? A smile crept onto her face. She’d almost forgotten how people’s lives wove themselves together in small towns, how everyone belonged to everyone else. Each person became a puzzle piece that locked together to make the town the living thing it was. No secrets here, and no strangers either.
“Hi again, Summer.”
Rachael’s eyes widened. “Again?”
“Damian’s working on the house with Mac.” And lives on the property I’m about to sell. Reality thudded against her heart.
“Oh, right. Forgot.” Rachael took her place behind the wheel, revved the boat’s engine and pulled the rope from the dock. The girls on the raft rolled over and waved as the boat passed. “So who’s skiing?”
Summer stumbled as they accelerated across the lake. She sank into the seat directly across from Damian and tried to read his expression. Was he irritated she’d come? Resentful that she owned the place he rented? Or shaken just a bit by their legs so close together, the way she was? She slipped her sunglasses into place and stared across the lake. She’d talk to him later, make him see that she was looking out for both their best interests. She didn’t think he’d mind moving. Renters knew houses might change hands over the years. Didn’t they?
Rachael offered her the skis twice, but Summer shook her head. She was content to watch the others skim across the water’s surface before they crashed into the waves and sucked in mouthfuls of Pine Point Lake. And she was more than content to watch the way Damian made them all look like amateurs as he cut in tight arcs across the boat’s wake on a single ski.
Rachael laughed as she spun the boat in circles, trying to make him fall, and Summer relaxed in slow degrees. She’d been right to come. Some part of her had missed this tradition of early summer on the lake. She’d missed her best friend smiling, the laughter ringing on the wind, the houses rushing by. She’d missed the way an afternoon on the water turned to a night filled with bonfires and drinking until everyone’s stomachs turned warm with alcohol and friendship and desire.
Summer ran her hands in the wake. After a while, Damian stretched out on the floor of the boat beside her, not speaking. Once he offered her a beer, and she took it. Their fingers brushed. Nothing touched but the space between them, yet the afternoon hummed with possibility.
* * * * *
“Race you to the water!” Rachael shouted and pulled off her bikini top.
“Oh, God.” Summer watched Rachael dart away and buried her face in her hands. Eight, eighteen, or twenty-eight, her best friend didn’t seem to have a problem taking off her clothes. Maybe that came from growing up on the water.
Dinner was over. Beer bottles lay scattered around the lawn. They’d barbequed over the open fire and toasted marshmallows as the sun and moon traded places in the sky. After dinner Summer had thought about driving back to the motel to work on some press releases, but two margaritas later she’d abandoned the notion.
A few others followed Rachael, and soon six or seven naked behinds bounced across the lawn and into the starlit lake. In another minute, the sounds of splashing and laughing echoed through the darkness. Summer smiled. True, some things never changed. There was something sensual about warm water splashing over bare skin. She’d tried skinny dipping a few times, but only on the cloudiest of nights, when Cat and his friends were far from the house. Tonight she had no intention of baring anything.
She sat on the bottom porch step and leaned back on her elbows. The bonfire smoldered close by and darkness wrapped her in comforting arms.
“Summer?”
She jumped.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Damian materialized from the driveway and sat beside her.
“Oh.” She let out a breath. “You didn’t. Not really.” She moved an inch or so away from him, distracted by the heat from his arm so close to hers.
“You’re not swimming?”
“I do my swimming with a suit. And I forgot mine.” Summer stuck her hands under her thighs. “What about you?”
He shrugged. “Not in the mood.” He studied her. “Make any decisions about the house?”
“Ah, well, I’m trying, you know, to make sure…” She couldn’t lie to him. Sadie had told her that selling the place with a rental contingency could take twice as long as without it. “I think you might end up having to move. I’m sorry.”
He dug in the dirt with a stick. “We’ve been there for almost three years.”
“Trying to make me feel guilty?”
His head snapped up. “No. Just saying.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I know it’s a lousy deal.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “You ever think about keeping it yourself?”
She kept her eyes on the grass. “Makes more sense to sell it. I mean, I guess my father bought it for me, but he made a mistake.” There’s no way I could live in Pine Point again.
She shifted on the step and wondered if the warmth on her cheeks bloomed from the fire or from something else.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” Damian said after a minute.
“Don’t be.” She closed her eyes. “He wasn’t…close to anyone. Didn’t want to be. He had cancer for a while, a couple of years at least. But he didn’t tell anyone until the end. He spent the last week in intensive care, over in Albany.” She paused. “So I heard.”
“You weren’t in touch with him?”
“My mom died when I was really young, and Dad and I…” She took a deep breath. “We didn’t talk after I left town.”
“After your brother died?
Ah, so he’d heard the story. “Yeah.”
Damian stretched out his legs. In the firelight, the blond hairs on his ankles glowed. “Can’t imagine going through something like that.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“How old was your brother?”
“A week past thirteen.”
He blew out a long breath. “Wow.” He didn’t ask anything else, and for that she was glad.
She reached down and picked up a twig, twisting it until it shredded. “That’s another reason I have to leave. It’s too hard to be here.”
“I’ll bet.”
But Damian didn’t know the worst of it, which was that now pieces of the night kept coming back when she least expected them to. She couldn’t guess when the next anxious moment might strike, or the next corner of the past might peel away before her eyes. She was headed for a nervous breakdown unless she got out of Pine Point, and quickly.
She glanced over. “What about you? You didn’t grow up around here.”
“Nope. Try a place called Poisonwood, ’bout a hundred miles west of Philadelphia.”
She wrinkled her nose. “There’s nothing west of Philadelphia but farmland.”
“Exactly. Which is why I think of Pine Point as a thriving metropolis.”
Summer laughed.
“Oh, come on. It has a movie theater, two grocery stores, a separate elementary and high school…classy place, I’m telling you.”
“Sure. Classy. So how’d you end up here?” It was a strange place to make a home if you hadn’t been born in Pine Point. Single twenty-somethings—especially those who looked as good as this guy did—didn’t exactly flock to its county seat.
His expression sobered. “Long story. Save it for another time, maybe?”
“Oh. Okay.” Summer rose and inched her way toward the fire.
After a minute, Damian came to stand beside her. “What is it you do, anyway?” He held his hands above the flames.
She studied his fingers and the way they threw shadows in the dark. She thought of how he’d touched her with them, feeling her wrist after she fell, and a lump of desire rose in her throat. “I—um—I’m the director of the Bay City Museum in San Francisco.”
“Mm�
��I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”
“Probably not. It’s pretty small. But it has a lot of great artifacts from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—the Gold Rush, railroads, stuff like that. Plus we display traveling exhibits from all over the country.”
Damian’s eyebrows lifted. “Sounds like a cool job.”
Her elbow brushed his, and electricity radiated up to her shoulder. “It is. I just love it. I could spend hours reading about the past—lost civilizations, cities and empires and the way one person, or one event, changed everything…”
“I know what you mean. Makes you wonder how different our lives would be if, say, just one thing had ended up different. If the South had won the Civil War. Or JFK had lived. Things like that.”
Summer stared at him. “Exactly.” The same crazy wonderings about the world kept her up many nights. She’d flip through the archives at work and think, What would the world be like if we were still a colony of the British Empire? Or she’d stare at a piece of needlework in its glass case and wonder about its creator. Who were you, really? Did you love? Did your heart ache at a sunrise? What was the world like, then?
A breeze lifted the hair at her neck, and she shivered. Faint shouts floated up from the lake. The flames burned lower.
“Course, present day has its moments too,” Damian said. “Tomorrow, next week, next year, all this is history too. Keeps shaping itself while we’re just passing through.”
“I know. But somehow it’s different when you’re living in the middle of it.”
He cocked his head, and Summer wondered if she’d said something wrong.
“You involved with someone back home?”
Her heart skipped inside her chest. “No. I mean, I was dating a guy a few months back, but—”
Damian caught her mouth with his before she could finish the sentence. She lost her breath as his hands wound themselves in her hair, and she staggered against him, tingles in her palms. He smelled like soap and sawdust and the faint spice of aftershave. She ran her hands along his biceps, iron beneath her fingertips. Something inside her wanted to peel away his T-shirt and feel skin against skin.
Summer's Song: Pine Point, Book 1 Page 5