Home for the Summer

by Holly Chamberlin

  Bella looked from her mother to her grandmother and felt her heart swell with love and gratitude. “I’m sorry for everything,” she said. “I promise things will be calmer from now on. And I’ll apologize to Phil for not being able to go into work this afternoon.”

  Her grandmother smiled. “I’m sure he thoroughly understands that you were too upset to be dealing with fussy customers. It’s not every day a person comes across the victim of an overdose. Besides, Phil had his suspicions about Clara all along. He had a hunch something wasn’t right with her. As always, he was on target.”

  Bella’s mother got up from the table and put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “You must have been so scared when you found Clara this morning.”

  “I was,” Bella admitted. “But I was more—well, not angry exactly, but I felt determined that she wasn’t going to die. I just hope . . .”

  “What?” her mother asked gently.

  “I hope that I didn’t help save her life for nothing.” Bella shook her head. “What I mean is I hope she can get control of her life again—if she ever had control, and I guess I’ll never know that. I hope she can build something good and happy for herself. I don’t want to think that she’ll try to commit suicide again or that she’ll get totally obsessed with another guy like she was with her ex-boyfriend.” Bella shook her head. “She was stalking Marc. She even stole something important from him, a keepsake coin that had been in his family for generations.”

  “You helped give Clara a second chance. What she does with that chance now is not your concern. Let go of the worry, Bella.”

  “I’ll try,” Bella promised her grandmother.

  “You know,” her grandmother went on, “a few nights ago I had a very frightening dream. In the dream I was physically blinded to an unknown danger coming for someone close to me. I knew the dream wasn’t a message from Ariel. I convinced myself that it was the product of my own personal fears and concerns. I convinced myself that neither of you were in danger. And you weren’t, were you, at least not directly? It was Clara who needed saving. And because Clara was close to Bella, she was also close to me. We’re none of us truly alone.”

  “You know what,” Bella said after a moment. “Clara was close to me and I was close to her, but she was never my friend and I was never hers. I don’t know what we were to each other, but it wasn’t friends.”

  “I was just thinking,” her mother said suddenly. “There is one more thing Bella might be able to do to help Clara. Bella, did she tell you who sold her the heroin?”

  Bella shook her head. “No. I know she got a few prescription pills from some guy who hangs out at The Flipper. She said he was called Hades, but for all I know she was making that up.”

  Her mother sighed. “Is there any point in going to the police with only a nickname?”

  “And a ridiculous one at that! Still, would you be willing to tell the police the little you know of this guy?”

  “Sure, Grandma,” Bella said. “If it might help them catch the creep and keep someone else from overdosing.”

  “Good. The rest is up to Clara, but I wouldn’t count on her talking. That’s just my guess. Anyway, with heroin addiction being such a big problem these days the police probably have a long list of probable suspects. There’s a chance this Hades character is known to them.”

  “Hades.” Bella’s mother shook her head. “It’s almost funny. Almost.”

  Suddenly Bella’s stomach growled loudly and she laughed. “OMG, I am suddenly so hungry! I haven’t thought of food all day, but now I could totally raid the fridge.”

  Her grandmother got up from the table. “I’m on it. How about I grill some pork chops? There’s fresh corn on the cob and bread and salad, too.”

  “What about our blueberry ice cream?” Bella asked.

  Her mother cleared her throat. “Um,” she said, “I’m afraid I ate it all last night.”

  “Mom!” Bella laughed. “And you teased me for ordering strawberry shortcake at the lobster pound!”

  “What can I say? Around two in the morning I had a craving.”

  “A gal’s gotta do what a gal’s gotta do,” Bella’s grandmother added. “But don’t worry. We’ll go into the Cove after dinner and get ice-cream cones.”

  “My treat,” her mother said.

  Bella grinned. “You guys are awesome,” she said. And oh, how she meant it.

  Chapter 87

  Bella took a deep breath and knocked on her mother’s bedroom door. It was almost eleven o’clock, and though the day had been one of the most trying in her life, Bella just couldn’t sleep. Not when she still needed to make a very important confession.

  “Come in,” her mother called.

  Bella opened the door and peered around its edge. “Mom, do you have a few minutes?”

  “Of course.” Her mother put the book she had been reading—one of those cozy mysteries she routinely gobbled—next to her and patted the mattress. “Join me.”

  Bella crawled into the bed and settled against the pillows. Her grandmother always had the fluffiest pillows. Maybe she had bought them from Phil.

  “Look, Mom,” she began. “I’m going to tell you something and I need you not to freak out. Everything’s okay now, seriously.”

  Her mother’s eyes widened. “You know I’m freaking out, right?”

  “Sorry. The thing is that for a while this summer I was smoking pot.”

  “Oh, Bella . . .”

  “Clara got me into it,” Bella went on hurriedly. “I know, I know, it was seriously stupid, and I’m so over it. I swear, Mom. Never again. I just felt so . . .” Bella shook her head. “So like I just didn’t care about anything. But things have changed now. I care again, Mom. I care about you and Grandma and Phil and George and even about myself.” Bella scrunched up her face. “Are you angry?”

  Her mother sighed and reached for Bella’s hand. “Yes,” she said. “I’m angry with myself for not being able to help you before things got so bad. I’m so sorry, Bella. How could I not have known? I’ve let you down. I was so focused on my own mourning and on mending the relationship with my father . . . And yes, with getting to know Jack.”

  Bella shook her head. “Mom, you didn’t know because I kept it a secret. Don’t blame yourself for anything. I’m okay now; I promise.” Bella squeezed her mother’s hand. “There’s one more thing I want to tell you. Clara gave me a pill once, a prescription painkiller that Hades guy sold her. I took it from her because she kept insisting, but I flushed it down the toilet the minute I got home. I’m sorry. I can’t believe I didn’t stand up to her. I think I might have been a bit scared that she would hurt herself or even me if I didn’t go along with her.” Bella sighed. “And when I did finally work up the nerve to stand up to Clara look what happened.”

  “Clara’s overdosing is not your fault, Bella,” her mother insisted. “It’s not.”

  “I know,” Bella said. “If she really wanted to kill herself she would have found anything to use as an excuse, getting fired or someone on the street bumping into her. My walking away from our relationship just happened to be the excuse right in front of her. I think she was in a lot of pain way before I came along this summer.”

  Her mother looked at her closely. “Promise me you’ll never, ever again go anywhere near drugs, please.”

  “I promise, Mom. Believe me, the whole thing made me sick, literally.”

  “Or cigarettes,” her mother went on. “Don’t go near them, either. Or alcohol. Well, except for a nice crisp Sauvignon Blanc or a good, robust Cabernet—but only after you’re twenty-one!”

  Bella laughed. “Okay, okay, I get it! But Mom? Can we keep the pot stuff a secret from Grandma and the others? I feel so stupid about it.”

  “Of course. No one else need know.” Her mother smiled. “This has been an important summer for us, hasn’t it? I think we’ve both made progress in understanding that we live in a new world. Dad and Ariel are no longer with us in the old way a
nd there’s nothing we can do about that but accept it. I think that we both finally have. It’s you and me now, Bella, and we’ve got to stick together.”

  “You and me and Grandma and George and Phil,” Bella amended. “We can’t forget them.”

  Her mother smiled. “Yes. We’ve got a good family, don’t we?”

  “Yeah. I guess that sometimes you wind up with a family you never thought you’d have. People join. People leave. They die or they move on. Everything’s always changing and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

  “Right, and the point is to love everyone the best you can while you can.”

  “Even my grandfather?” Bella asked.

  Her mother nodded. “Even your grandfather. When he next calls I’ll tell him that I accept the apology he offered at the beginning of the summer. He told me that though he knew he didn’t deserve it, he hoped I would acknowledge that he means something to me. He does mean something to me. I do love him and I’ll tell him that, if only in memory of the first eleven years of my life when he was here for me. When he sang me songs and gave me piggyback rides and took me to country fairs.”

  “I’m glad,” Bella said. “You know, Mom, all along you were doing what I wasn’t able to do until now—healing. Moving on. Recovering. Letting go of the guilt for something neither of us could possibly have stopped from happening. You helped me, Mom, even if I couldn’t see that at first. You set the example.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, Bella. It’s what parents are supposed to do, be a good example for their kids, but believe me, sometimes it feels like an impossible task. Sometimes a parent just wants to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head and say, ‘Nope. Can’t do it.’ ”

  “So what makes you not hide under the covers?”

  “Love,” her mother said. “Plain and simple. And a sense of duty, I suppose.”

  “But not every parent can do that, can they?” Bella said. “Be there for their kid. My grandfather couldn’t and yet . . . Yet he has to love you. He wouldn’t have reached out to you this summer if on some level he wasn’t capable of loving you.”

  “Yes. People do the best they can do and it’s unfair to ask more of them.”

  Bella hesitated a moment and then decided to take the risk. “About you and Jack,” she said. “He’s pretty nice. I think he really likes you, I mean, in the important ways.”

  “And I really like him, too,” her mother admitted. “I didn’t expect to feel . . . Well, to feel anything for anyone ever again. I think maybe I could be genuinely happy someday.”

  “We deserve to be happy. Didn’t Grandma tell us that’s what Ariel wants for us? And Ariel never lied.” Bella laughed. “Do you remember the time Mrs. White from the pharmacy asked us what we thought of her new haircut and you said something like, ‘It’s very becoming,’ and I said, ‘It’s nice,’ and Ariel said what we were all really thinking, which was, ‘Your stylist did a terrible job. You should ask for your money back.’”

  Her mother put her hand to her heart. “I almost passed out on the spot! I thought we’d get thrown out of the store!”

  “And Ariel had no idea she had insulted Mrs. White. She thought she was being helpful!” Bella smiled. “You know, Mom, it was the right thing to do, us being here this summer.”

  Her mother nodded. “Your grandmother is smart. She knew that coming home to Yorktide would help all of us heal.”

  “Mom? Do you think Clara will be okay?”

  Her mother sighed. “I wish I could say yes and mean it, but I just don’t know. If she gets the help she needs then I think she stands a good chance of becoming a healthy young woman. At least, I hope that she does.”

  “I’m going to send good thoughts into the universe for Clara. It can’t hurt, right? You know, Clara’s despair sort of helped me to see myself from the outside. It helped me to realize that since the accident I’d been devaluing my life by letting grief and guilt win. But grief and the guilt weren’t getting me anywhere.”

  “Do you know the poem by John Donne that starts with the words ‘Death, be not proud’?” her mother asked.

  “Mom,” Bella said, with a roll of her eyes. “Be serious. Me? Poetry?”

  Her mother laughed. “Well, the opening lines go like this: ‘Death, be not proud, though some have called thee /Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so.’ And the final line is really wonderful—though I should be quoting the entire poem so you’d hear the triumph in the words. Problem is I don’t remember it all. Anyway, the final line goes like this: ‘Death, thou shalt die.’”

  Bella nodded. “That’s pretty good actually. Life wins in the end. You know, I was thinking about what Colleen told me about the importance of ‘self-care’ while you’re grieving. She said that the survivor tends to punish herself when what she should be doing is treating herself nicely. She said that grief is particularly difficult for teenagers because we’re caught between two worlds—a child’s world and an adult’s world. Our brains switch back and forth from a child’s way of thinking and an adult’s. Our emotions go back and forth, too, which makes getting past grief more of a challenge than it would be for a little kid or a real adult.”

  “As if teenagers don’t already have enough to deal with!”

  “Tell me about it!” Bella gave her mother another hug and climbed off the bed. “Oh, one more thing, Mom,” she said. “I found Ariel’s diary. I mean, I think it’s a diary. It’s locked, but I couldn’t find the key.”

  “Really? Are you tempted to open it?” her mother asked.

  “I was,” Bella admitted, “but I wasn’t tempted very hard. Whatever it is, it’s Ariel’s, not mine. I just wanted you to know we have it.”

  “I’m glad,” her mother said. “Together we’ll keep it safe.”

  “Good night, Mom.” Bella left her mother’s bedroom, quietly closed the door behind her, and walked back to her own room with a light heart. It was so much better to have told her mother everything rather than to walk around burdened by secrets. So, so much better.

  Chapter 88

  “So Clara is out of danger and her parents are on the way.”

  Jack, who was sitting across the table from Frieda at The Razor Clam, shook his head. “I read in the paper this morning about a girl being found unconscious due to an overdose, but I had no idea that Bella was the one who called for an ambulance. My God, Frieda, what an ordeal for her.”

  “I know,” Frieda agreed. “And what an ordeal for Clara. She was troubled and alone here in Yorktide. She was vulnerable. It was sheer luck that Bella was passing The Flipper at just the right time.”

  “It’s disgusting what’s going on in this country. So much waste of life. And it’s not only troubled and vulnerable youth who get snared. People of all ages and walks of life find themselves addicted to opiates.”

  “You know, when Bella called me to say that something bad had happened to Clara . . .” Frieda wiped a few tears from her eyes. “She was so brave, Jack. I feel sick about how close I came to losing another child. What if it had been Bella who had gotten started on heroin? What if it had been Bella who succumbed to a despair deep enough to tempt her to suicide?”

  Jack reached across the picnic table and took her hand. “Yes,” he said gently, “but it wasn’t Bella. Bella is still here with you, with us all.”

  “I know. I will focus on that, I promise. I feel . . . I feel as if we’re facing a brighter future now, me and Mom and Bella.”

  “I’m glad. And thank you for telling me what happened with Bella and that poor girl. Your sharing the story with me means a lot.”

  Frieda hesitated only a moment. She would seize the opportunity that seemed to have presented itself. “I realized something important about myself this summer,” she told Jack. “I suppose I always knew it on some level, but losing Aaron really brought the truth home to me. I’m not a person who is meant to walk through this world on her own. I’m a better person when I’m with a partner. I’m happiest when I�
�m half of a whole. I felt so guilty admitting this to myself after Aaron died. I felt as if I were betraying him by being who I am. But that’s nonsense, isn’t it? Aaron knew me. He knew I was a good partner, as was he. I know he wouldn’t want me to pretend I was someone other than who I am.” Frieda suddenly put her hands over her face. “I’m sorry, Jack. And I don’t mean to be putting any pressure on you to . . . I—” Frieda didn’t quite know how to go on.

  “It would help if I could see your face.”

  Frieda lowered her hands to see Jack smiling kindly. “I’m not feeling any pressure,” he said. “In fact, I’m feeling very good at this moment. Happy. And making a person feel happy and optimistic about his future is nothing for which to apologize.”

  And that’s what Jack’s helping me to feel, Frieda thought. Happy and optimistic about my future. “I believe in my feelings for you, Jack,” she told him. “I believe that they’re genuine and not a product of neediness or weakness.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “Now that we’ve got that settled, I have a very important question to ask. Are we too old to be ‘going steady’?”

  Frieda laughed. “I’m not sure anyone uses that term anymore, so yeah, we’re too old! But I’m okay with being your girl.”

  “My one and only girl.” Jack leaned across the picnic table and kissed Frieda on the lips. “I’ve been waiting to do that since seventh grade.”

  “You have not!”

  Jack shrugged. “Okay, maybe eighth grade.”

  “I hope it was worth the wait.”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Well worth the wait.”

  “Order number twenty-three!”

  “That’s us,” Jack said. “I’ll go.”

  Frieda smiled. “Just don’t eat all of my onion rings before you come back.”

  “Rats,” Jack said with a snap of his fingers. “Foiled again.”