Home for the Summer

by Holly Chamberlin

Bella smiled even as she felt tears flowing from her eyes. The best thing possible had happened. Kerri had given her another chance. And while Bella felt optimistic about the future of their relationship, the experiences of the past year and a half had taught her a very important lesson about living with uncertainty. Pessimism wasn’t a great choice; optimism, tempered with a dash of realism, was a great choice.

  Hurriedly Bella typed a reply.

  Can’t wait! B. xx

  Then she went to the dresser and withdrew Ariel’s diary from the bottom drawer. She held the little book against her heart for a moment and felt her sister right there with her. “Thank you, Ariel,” she whispered. “Thank you for always believing in me.”

  Things really were going to be okay, Bella thought, returning the diary to its home. Not everything, but some things, maybe a lot of things. Amazingly, Bella believed that.

  Chapter 84

  “OMG,” Bella said, “I almost passed out, I swear!”

  Phil shrugged. “I had no idea who this person was, but Bella knew immediately.”

  “That’s because you don’t watch reality TV,” Bella told him. “If you did you would have recognized Tricia MacAdams as the winner of last season’s Dance ’Til You Drop. She was awesome. And she was so totally nice in person! She gave me her autograph!”

  “And Bella managed to sell her a very expensive occasional table,” Phil added.

  “It was nothing. I like selling stuff. I think I have a talent for it, right, Phil?”

  “You’re a natural,” he affirmed.

  Ruby smiled across the table at her granddaughter. She felt that a bit of a miracle had been worked these past weeks. Bella was so much more her old happy and optimistic self than she had been at the start of the summer. Ruby looked with gratitude at the others gathered this evening at the Yorktide Lobster Pound. Frieda and Jack. Phil, her oldest and dearest friend. And, most important at that moment, George.

  Just then two waiters arrived and placed on the table before the group platters of cooked lobsters with plastic picks and metal crackers, two buckets of steamers, a plate of corn on the cob, little containers of coleslaw, three large orders of French fries, and enough clarified butter to satisfy even the most rabid proponent of full fat.

  “Who’s better than us?” Jack said, shaking his head. “Look at this bounty. I feel almost guilty sitting at this table. Almost.”

  “So, Mom,” Frieda said. “What’s the occasion? Why did you ask us all here tonight? Not that we need an excuse to eat al fresco when we have another long New England winter to look forward to.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Phil said.

  “Well,” Ruby began, “we asked everyone to be here this evening because we have an announcement.” She looked to George, who sat beside her, and he took her hand in his. “We’ve decided to get married. More specifically, I’ve accepted George’s proposal.”

  “Hurrah!” Bella cried. “That’s awesome, Grandma!”

  Jack raised his beer. “To the happy couple!”

  Phil wiped his eyes with his napkin, then cleared his throat. “And about time, too!”

  Frieda, sitting on her mother’s other side, put her arm around Ruby’s shoulders and squeezed. “Oh, Mom, that’s fantastic news! Congratulations to you both!”

  “Thank you, Frieda,” George said. “Thank you, everyone. I’m a very lucky man. And a very happy one.”

  “Jack!” Frieda laughed. “What are you doing?”

  And there was Jack Tennant, college administrator, with a straw stuck on to each of his canine teeth. “What?” he said, the straws bouncing ridiculously. “I can’t help it. When I’m around straws I have to play with them.”

  “That’s okay,” Bella said reassuringly. “My father was kind of goofy, too.”

  Jack removed his walrus tusks. “Yeah?” he said.

  “Yeah. Ariel and I used to toss Goldfish crackers at him and he’d tried to catch them in his mouth. He’d keep his hands clasped behind his back so he wouldn’t cheat. It was so funny. Remember, Mom?”

  “I remember finding stray Goldfish in the most unlikely places, like at the back of one of the drawers of the credenza.”

  “But it was funny, wasn’t it?” Bella pressed. “When Dad was dancing around with his mouth open.”

  “Yes,” Frieda said, smiling. “It was hilarious actually.”

  “I have an announcement, too,” Phil said. “It’s not as exciting as Ruby and George’s, but it’s big enough. I’m finally planning a long trip to Italy, something Tony and I used to talk about doing. We wanted to wander aimlessly through narrow twisty streets, gaze at gorgeous old churches, pluck ripe figs from trees, and drink Campari while sitting by a fountain in a beautiful old piazza. I don’t even like Campari, but the thought of drinking it in Italy appeals.” Phil looked to Frieda and smiled. “Especially after a long winter in Maine!”

  “This is huge,” Ruby said. “Phil, how did you manage to keep this a secret?” And then she shuddered. “Campari tastes like medicine to me, but it is a beautiful color. Isn’t it one of those herbal liqueurs first made by medieval monks?”

  George pulled his iPhone out of his pocket. Ruby groaned. “You are so addicted to that phone!”

  “You’re worse than I am!” Bella said.

  “Yes, I’m addicted, and yes, I am probably worse than you are, and nope,” George said. “No medieval monks. Says here on the official website that the formula started to come about around 1860.”

  “Let’s eat,” Phil said. “I’m starved. We can talk wedding and vacation plans later.”

  And they did eat, until every last fry had been consumed and the table was littered with empty shells, denuded corncobs, and a few remaining shreds of coleslaw.

  “I propose a toast,” Ruby said when the waiters had removed the evidence of their feast. She raised her plastic cup of wine. “To those gone ahead.” To Aaron, Ariel, and Tony, Ruby added silently.

  Frieda nodded. “And to those here at this table.”

  “Hear, hear!” Phil boomed.

  “And to those still to come!” Bella added.

  Ruby looked carefully at her granddaughter. “You’re not suggesting that George and I . . .”

  Bella laughed. “No! I meant me. I meant that someday I might have kids.”

  “Someday in the distant future,” Ruby corrected. “After college. Maybe after graduate school. And a few years into your career. And not before you’re thirty.”

  Frieda nodded. “What your grandmother said.”

  “First of all, me in grad school? Not likely. But yeah,” Bella said, “in the distant future I might have kids.”

  Ruby glanced lovingly at her daughter. We give birth to our children with such hope, she thought. With so many dreams. We take such a risk when we choose to love. But it’s all worth it.

  “Does anyone dare have dessert?” Jack asked.

  “I dare,” Bella said. “They have a fantastic strawberry shortcake here. I remember it from last time. They make the biscuits by hand. Yum!”

  Jack grinned. “Split it with you?”

  Bella smiled. “Sure.”

  “We’re going to have to carry you two to the cars,” George said. “Just saying.”

  “Food coma,” Bella said. “The best kind!”

  Ruby felt her heart swell with happiness. The moment was as near perfect as one might hope to experience. The one thing that might just make it totally perfect, she thought, was the presence of Frieda’s father. But she believed that Steve was with them in spirit. And that would have to be good enough.

  Chapter 85

  The next morning Bella woke in a good mood. In fact, she felt happier than she had in ages, definitely since before the accident that had turned her world upside down. She hurriedly showered and dressed and made her way to the kitchen. On the table was a note from her mother and grandmother telling her they had gone to visit one of Ruby’s colleagues whose daughter had just had her first baby. Be back by lu
nchtime, her mother had written in her very upright script. Love, us. Bella ate a carton of yogurt and drank a glass of juice. She wasn’t due at Phil’s until one, so she decided to take advantage of a sunny morning and get out on her bike.

  About fifteen minutes after leaving her grandmother’s house Bella found herself cycling down Deering Way, thoroughly enjoying the fresh air and thinking about what she was going to have for lunch. She was hardly conscious of the fact that she was approaching The Flipper; when it suddenly came in sight she was surprised. A moment later she was even more surprised to see Clara’s car sitting at an odd angle at the back of the lot reserved for employees, half on to the grass and dirt behind. Stranger still, the driver’s door was open.

  Bella brought her bike to a stop just outside the restaurant. Something was wrong. There might be a totally rational reason for Clara’s car being parked so badly, but there was no rational reason for the door being left open. Yorktide wasn’t a high-crime town, but still, people didn’t go around leaving the doors of their vehicles open.

  Bella got off her bike and propped it against the building. Slowly she walked to Clara’s car and peered inside. Clara’s handbag sat on the front passenger seat. Bella turned away from the car and scanned the parking lot. Nothing. Nobody. Until . . . Bella’s heart leaped into her mouth. Sticking out from behind the giant green Dumpster was a pair of legs.

  Bella ran toward the Dumpster and as she rounded its corner she saw that the prone figure was Clara. She was lying on her back in a pair of dirty jeans and a hoodie. One sneaker was missing. There was a hypodermic needle at her side. Bella pulled her phone from her pocket and pressed 911. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She cursed herself for not knowing CPR, but maybe CPR wasn’t what was required in this situation. She just didn’t know.

  “My friend,” she said when the dispatcher answered. “I think she’s overdosed. She’s . . . I think it’s heroin. She’s behind The Flipper on Deering Way. Please, hurry!”

  The dispatcher spoke in a calm and matter-of-fact manner. “Listen to me,” she said. “Please stay on the line. How long has she been down?”

  “I don’t know! I just found her.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Eighteen,” Bella replied. “Please, hurry!”

  “Listen to me,” the dispatcher said. “Is she breathing?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “I want you to put your ear to her mouth, okay?”

  “Okay.” Bella dropped to her knees and leaned close to Clara’s face. Her skin was an awful shade of grayish white.

  “Do you hear or feel her breathing?” the dispatcher asked.

  Bella willed her mind empty of all thoughts but that moment in time. She willed her senses to focus on nothing but Clara. And then she could feel against her cheek the faintest of breath. “Yes!” Bella cried into the phone. “Yes, I do!”

  “Is she responsive?”

  “Clara!” Bella cried. “Can you hear me?”

  “No,” she told the dispatcher. “No, she’s not responding to me.”

  “Okay. Please stay with me, all right? EMS is on the way.”

  “Please hurry!” One hand gripping the phone against her ear, Bella reached with the other for Clara’s. It was limp and bony; the skin was dry and flaky. Had no one else seen what was happening to Clara? Had her boss and her shift manager really been so blind to her erratic behavior; had they not investigated the times she failed to show up for work? Had her housemates been so absorbed in their own lives they hadn’t noticed that the young woman in the back bedroom was becoming a ghost of her former self? Had they only cared about the money she owed them?

  “Is there any change in your friend?” the dispatcher asked. “Is she still breathing?”

  Again Bella placed her ear close to Clara’s mouth. “Yes,” she said. “She’s still breathing. Can she hear me? Do you think she can hear me?”

  “I can’t say for sure,” the dispatcher told Bella, “but why don’t you talk to her.”

  Bella bent over again and whispered urgently in Clara’s ear, “You can’t die, Clara. I won’t let you die!” And as Bella continued to kneel by Clara’s side she remembered those three men who had pulled her father and sister from the wreck before the car had exploded, those three men who had waited with them until the ambulance arrived. Here she was watching over someone in an extremely vulnerable state, someone whose life was temporarily in her keeping. It was a duty she could perform for Clara’s parents, who had to love her no matter what Clara claimed.

  It seemed like hours, but of course it was only minutes before an ambulance came screeching into view. As it came to a halt a yard or so away from the Dumpster Bella finally released Clara’s hand and got to her feet. “They’re here!” she told the dispatcher. “Oh, thank you!”

  “You did a good job,” the dispatcher replied. “Now let the paramedics take over.”

  Bella ended the call. “It’s heroin, I think,” she said to the first paramedic, already on his knees at Clara’s side.

  “Step back please,” a second paramedic asked, and Bella did, her hands clasped tightly together to stop them from shaking. She watched in awe as the team worked with astonishing speed and authority. When Clara was safely strapped to a stretcher, an oxygen mask firmly over her mouth and nose, and the rear doors of the ambulance had been closed and secured, Bella approached the third paramedic. “Will she be okay?” she asked. “She won’t die, will she?”

  The young woman smiled kindly. “I can’t promise you anything. I’m sorry. But she looks pretty stable at this point.”

  “Can I ride in the ambulance with her?”

  “Afraid not. But don’t worry. Your friend is in good hands.” The paramedic climbed into the driver’s seat and Bella watched as the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot, siren blaring, lights flashing. When she could no longer see and could barely hear the vehicle she took her phone out of her pocket.

  “Mom,” she said, her voice trembling, tears beginning to choke her. “I’m okay, but something bad has happened to Clara. I need you to come and get me. Please, Mom. Hurry.”

  Chapter 86

  “When? Okay. Uh-huh.”

  Bella sat at the kitchen table while her grandmother was on the phone with a friend from the hospital. Her mother, sitting next to her, was stirring a cup of tea, her face a mask of worry and sympathy. Neither of them had spoken much on the way home from The Flipper.

  How quickly life can change, Bella thought, taking a sip of the water in her glass. Only the night before she and her family and friends had been celebrating new beginnings and warmly remembering loved ones who had gone before. And then, only hours later, Bella had found herself kneeling at the side of someone in serious danger of losing her life. That life had been saved, but it would never be the same as it had been. And maybe that was a good thing. As long as the overdose had caused no lasting physical damage.

  “Thanks, Joe. I owe you one.”

  “What’s happening?” Bella asked as her grandmother hung up the receiver of the landline, sighed, and sank into a chair at the table. “Did your friend in the ER have any news?”

  “Joe said that Clara is going to be fine. Her parents are on the way. It was a good thing you came upon her when you did, Bella. And it’s a good thing paramedics carry those overdose kits.”

  “What’s an overdose kit?”

  “I read about it online,” Bella told her mother. “It’s called a ‘save shot.’ You give it to someone who’s overdosed on heroin or Percocet or oxycodone.”

  “Its official name is Narcan,” her grandmother added. “It’s an opiate antidote and it’s quite literally a lifesaver.”

  Bella shook her head. “I know I found her in time, but I still feel guilty. I knew Clara was in trouble. And I knew she’d started to use heroin. I didn’t want to get her in trouble so I kept her secret.”

  “Oh, Bella.” Her mother sighed.

  “I know it was stupid, Mom,” Bella s
aid forcefully. “I should have come to one of you. Look, all I was doing was trying to help Clara, but I realized that I had failed. I realized that I couldn’t take her neediness any longer. I couldn’t take watching her wasting away and not listening to me when I tried to talk sense to her. So yesterday I told her that I couldn’t spend time with her. I told her she was dragging me down with her. She was angry at first, but by the time I left the cottage she had promised she would call her parents and tell them she needed to come home. She swore. And I believed her.”

  “She might have half believed herself, Bella,” her grandmother said gently. “That’s the thing about addictive drugs. They make you a liar all around. Don’t feel bad about not doing more for Clara. You did plenty.”

  “Thanks, Grandma. But there’s something else.” Bella took a deep breath before going on. “Not too long ago Clara told me she wanted to take her own life. She found out that the guy she’d been seeing for four years, the one who dumped her just before graduation, was seeing someone else. And . . .” Bella hesitated again; she knew that what she was about to say would frighten her family even more than what she had already told them. “She thought we should make a suicide pact. She said that neither of us had anything to live for.”

  Her mother gasped and Bella reached for her hands. “Mom, I didn’t consider it for a second!” she cried. “I was horrified! I’ve never wanted to kill myself; you have to believe me!”

  “The thought of suggesting that someone you supposedly care for end her life . . . It’s disgraceful. And yet if Clara is truly sick we can’t blame her entirely. Don’t worry, Bella. We believe that you wanted nothing to do with her scheme.”

  “Thanks, Grandma. I tried to convince her that life is wonderful even when bad things happen. I told her that I really believed there were good things to come for us both. Finally, she swore to me she wouldn’t try to hurt herself. I believed her then, too, but she was lying.”

  “We don’t know for sure the overdose was a suicide attempt,” her grandmother pointed out. “We may never know if Clara doesn’t want to talk. But Bella, it would have been a good idea for you to tell one of us that Clara was contemplating suicide. Generally when a person threatens such a desperate act there’s something to the threat.”