One Distant Summer

by Serena Clarke

  He carried her inside, set her down gently on the big sofa, and stepped back as she started to come to. She was a mess. One side of her face was scarlet, and although her front was a regular color, he could see that the entire back of her body was sunburned. Well, he’d tried to tell her. But he winced in sympathy as she rolled to her side, revealing the angry redness. That had to really, really hurt.

  She looked up at him then, confusion and pain in her blue eyes. “Liam? What happened?”

  “You must have passed out. In the alley.”

  She groaned. “Oh yeah.” Then she sucked in her breath. “Oh God, it hurts. Everything. And my head…” She squeezed her eyes closed, and pressed a hand to her forehead.

  “You probably have sun stroke.”

  “Do you…” Then she stopped, her face suddenly taking on an urgent expression. “Oh no.” She struggled to her feet, her hand over her mouth, and swayed precariously. “Bathroom...”

  He nodded, and helped her to the guest bathroom in the hallway. Thankfully, she shooed him away and slammed the door, leaving him standing on the other side. He wasn’t enough of a gentleman to want to help with that, unless he had to. But he hovered around, trying not to listen. After a few minutes, he called out, “Are you okay?”

  “Ungh.”

  Was that a yes or a no? He’d assume yes. “Okay, then.” He retreated to the safety of the living room.

  Ten minutes later, she emerged, gingerly hanging onto the door frame. “I’m really sorry,” she whispered. “I’ll go now. Did you bring my…?” She gestured to her bikini, and he looked, then tore his eyes away.

  “Oh, right. Yeah, I got it.”

  “Thanks.”

  He could feel the heat in her skin as he helped get the cover-up over her head. When his fingers brushed the back of her arm, she flinched away. “Ow!”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  There was some half-hearted debate about whether he should walk her back to Nana Mac’s place, which was settled by her still-wobbly knees as she tried to leave without him. So he walked with her down his own path, along to number ten, and up to the front door. She rummaged in the beach bag and found the key, and got the door open.

  “Thank you.” She took one step inside.

  “You’re welcome.” He cleared his throat. “We should really talk about—”

  She stepped right in, her hand over her mouth again. “Sorry, I—”

  And the door shut.

  He was left standing on the porch, uncomfortably exposed in the bright sunshine after his weeks of being a recluse inside number twelve. He turned and headed for home, only encountering a flock of boys on skateboards on the way back. They barely gave him a glance as they passed, joking and hassling each other as they headed off on some mission. The noise they made seemed to hang in the air after they’d gone.

  Back inside, with the doors closed again against the heat and the cicadas, the quiet felt…wrong. He remembered how the house used to resonate with exactly that kind of boy noise, day in and day out, overlaid with music from the stereo or their guitars. Their amps must have been the menace of the neighborhood, but he didn’t recall anyone ever complaining, not even Nana Mac right next door, or Mrs. Marsh over the road.

  He looked at Ethan’s electric acoustic guitar, resting on its stand in the corner. For a moment his fingers tingled, tempted by the elegant instrument…but it was Ethan’s, always would be. Unlike the girl next door.

  He took another cold beer from the fridge, sat back at the table, and opened the laptop. A hefty dose of PHP and CDATA and WYSIWYG should erase the image of her in that bikini, the memory of how she felt in his arms, skin hot, sand in her hair, a grown woman, so different from that teenage summer…and yet so familiar.

  The nagging suspicion he’d avoided for years rose again, but this time, he was listening. He looked back to the guitar.

  WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get.

  Not always.

  He entered a name into Google, and hit enter.

  Chapter Seven

  Riley Dawson grimaced, her sweetly round face full of sympathy as she looked at Jacinda lying incapacitated on the sofa. “Oh my God. You poor thing.”

  Jacinda made a small, tragic sound. “It’s so sore.”

  “It must be.”

  She tried to hold herself still as she continued recounting her disaster. “It gets even more glamorous. After he brought me inside I was all shaky, and my heart was racing…and then I threw up in his bathroom.”

  Riley put her hands to her face. “No.”

  “Yes. So embarrassing.” She stuck out her tongue. “And now I’m getting more and more stiff, like my skin’s a size too small.”

  “Horrible! Have you had plenty to drink? You need to rehydrate.”

  “I don’t know…I had a bit of water.” She waved a finger toward a glass on the coffee table, unable to bear moving any more of her body.

  “Right, I’ll get you a refill.” Riley stood up and went over to the open-plan kitchen, full of purpose. “I’m glad I stopped by. I came to invite you to dessert night at Clarion Call, but I don’t suppose you’ll be up to it.” Back with the tall glass of water, she paused. “Have you looked in the mirror?”

  “Ugh, no.” All she’d done was shut the door—kind of in Liam’s face, now she thought of it, but she was afraid she’d throw up again—grab a glass of water, and collapse on the couch. Velvet had tried to snuggle in, but even the cat’s soft fur had felt like sandpaper against her scorched skin.

  “Stay hydrated.” Riley put the glass down where Jacinda could reach it, and sat in an old wingback chair. Velvet took advantage of the available lap, and climbed up, her growing belly making her less agile. “Foof, you’re heavy, Velvet. When is she due?”

  “Any time now, I think,” Jacinda said.

  “Oh, you’re a beautiful girl,” she crooned, tickling Velvet under the chin. “Yes, you are. When are you going to show us your babies? When oh when?”

  Jacinda carefully adjusted her position on the couch. “Would you like to have one of her kittens?”

  Riley smiled. “Maybe. I’d love a black cat like her. But I suppose their coloring will depend on who the dad is.” Then she looked at Jacinda. “You know, you’re kind of multicolored. I read that color blocking is a trend this season, but maybe not like this.” She stroked Velvet, obviously trying not to laugh.

  Jacinda put a hand on each cheek. One felt more or less normal, but the other—the one that had been exposed to the sun—was scalding hot. She groaned. “I’m such an idiot. This is going to peel, right?”

  “Probably.” She screwed up her nose. “I hope not, though. It was lucky Liam found you.”

  Jacinda squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think about how she’d woken in his house, wearing only her bikini, all sandy and disheveled and…vomity. She wasn’t convinced that counted as lucky. “I guess.”

  “I didn’t even know he was here. No one does, or I’m sure I would have heard. Did you talk to him?”

  “Kind of…” She thought back to their conversation over the gate. “I think we sort of had a disagreement.”

  Riley frowned. “Why would you have a disagreement?”

  “It’s…I don’t know, really.”

  That wasn’t completely true. He’d seemed mad at her right off—which she could understand. Okay, she’d left in a hurry, that summer. But after her last talk with Ethan, and what happened after that, her only choice was to leave. Go back to her mom, who, for all her faults, was still the only person she wanted to retreat to. At seventeen, that was all she knew to do. Nana Mac had been here, as much a mother as a grandmother…but staying wasn’t an option. She couldn’t deal with what had happened, with Ethan right next door.

  The sharp nugget of what she probably should have done was still lodged in her conscience. If there were things she’d never told Ethan in person, that she should have…well. What did he care anyway? He’d made that clear. And she didn’t want to
go into it all with Riley.

  “I guess there were some things that happened that summer,” she said.

  Riley nodded. “I remember. You know, I always wondered if Liam secretly liked you himself. But Ethan was such a babe.” She sighed in wistful reminiscence. “I wouldn’t have stepped on your territory, though! Not that he would ever have looked at me.”

  “Well, I never thought he’d look at me, either. And I don’t think Liam felt that way.”

  He’d always been in the background, but she’d never gotten any kind of vibe from him. She’d probably been too caught up in Ethan to notice anyone else, anyway.

  “And, for the record, you’re super cute yourself,” she added. With her cherubic face, trim and curvy figure, and sunshiny disposition, Riley was the definition of cute.

  She blushed. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments. But thank you.” She sighed again. “It’s just so wrong that Ethan’s not here.”

  With Liam next door, it did feel like a whole portion of that summer was missing. But it was the portion she didn’t want to face. “When I saw Liam, I wondered if Ethan might be here too. I guess he’s still in Australia? Do you know where they moved to, exactly? Sydney, or…?”

  Riley looked at her, an unreadable expression clouding her face. “They moved to the Sunshine Coast. Just up and left everything here. Mrs. Ward has only been back that one time, when her sister was sick. I think Liam was staying with them over there, but Ethan…”

  She hesitated, and the weight of things unspoken gathered around them.

  In the silence, Jacinda could feel her heartbeat in her chest.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  “Ethan what?”

  “You don’t know?” Her voice was practically a whisper.

  Jacinda shook her head, her own voice stuck in her throat as she waited.

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to say it.” Riley’s eyes brimmed with tears. “He died.”

  * * *

  Jacinda stood in the shower and let the water run over her burned back, the physical pain a proxy for the pain in her heart. The tears that should have run down her face were arrested by shock, waiting unshed as her brain tried to make sense of something that made no sense at all.

  Riley had been beside herself over having to break the news—Jacinda had to comfort her more than the other way around. She’d been reluctant to leave, but finally said she had to go back to Clarion Call to help Caro get ready for dessert night. It had become a weekly institution in Sweet Breeze Bay, apparently, even attracting customers from the Other Side and farther afield. Before she left, she’d taken Jacinda’s number, sent a text so that Jacinda had hers, and made her promise to text or call if she felt unwell again. Then, with final instructions to shower and moisturize, and keep drinking water, she tore herself away.

  On autopilot, Jacinda followed her instructions and made her way gingerly upstairs to the bathroom. She winced as she reached behind her back to undo her bikini top, but forced herself to keep going. All the years she’d spent being mad at him, justifying her resentment and her actions…he’d been dead. And—at the next thought, her heart clenched even more—his family. His lovely mom, his gruff policeman dad, and Liam, who’d admired and emulated his big brother, even as he grew up in his shadow. All that time, they’d been dealing with their own terrible loss.

  And what had happened? That was the one thing Riley couldn’t tell her, because she didn’t know. No one knew. In a tiny place like Sweet Breeze Bay, something like that should be impossible to keep hidden. And yet, no one knew exactly how Ethan had died. Was there something more to it, even worse than the fact of his death?

  Despite herself, her mind went there.

  Had he done it himself?

  And…was it her fault?

  She turned and let the water run over her face, holding her breath as she tried to wash away the thought. No. For starters, he was Ethan Ward, home town hero. Sure, she’d made something of herself since then, but it was ridiculous to even imagine that someone as unspectacular as the teenage her could have affected him enough to do anything so tragic.

  She turned out of the water and exhaled a huge breath. The water on her back was a thousand tiny needles, and she was grateful for the pain. Standing in the steam, she pressed a hand against her belly—flat, unstretched—and let herself remember.

  That summer night. A bonfire on the beach. The Sweet Breeze Bay teenagers laughing, drinking, flirting. Riley and the younger ones alternately giggling and playing it cool, the older kids, just finished their last year of high school, cruising on their inherent superiority. Liam and his two friends hanging around in the background, the three slightly geeky musketeers, as always.

  And the song. Oh, that song. When Ethan sang it to her, there in the firelight, he didn’t care who else was listening. She remembered Liam playing harmony, the other kids quietening down, the crackle of the flames, the rush and retreat of the waves…but above all, she remembered Ethan watching her as he sang. And the words—the kind of tender, heartfelt words no one had ever aimed her way—well, they soaked right into her soul, left her heart bare naked. And when he finished, and leaned on his guitar with that look in his eye, and gave her a grin…she knew there was nothing she wouldn’t do.

  He’d been drinking more as the summer went on, and that night was no exception. She’d had plenty too, the kind of over-sweet mixer she couldn’t stomach now. After the song, he finished the last of the bourbon the guys had been handing around, and grabbed her up.

  “Come on, American girl.” He was a Tom Petty fan, just like her.

  He dropped the empty bottle in the sand, and pulled a blanket from around someone’s shoulders. They made a token protest, but this was Ethan. He had the run of the place.

  She followed him away from the warmth of the fire, her hand in his. In the half dark, she stumbled a little on the uneven sand, but he held her hand tightly, and soon they were deep in the trees, hidden way up under the base of the mountain.

  “Take it easy, baby,” he murmured as he kissed her, a new intensity to his mouth and hands. “Make it last all night,” he breathed, as he lowered her to the blanket spread under the moon-dappled foliage.

  Yeah, she was his American girl.

  She’d always wondered what the first time would be like. She’d left it later than most girls she knew at high school (apart from Hannah, who was waiting for the one). It turned out that the first time was blurry and hurried, her feet cold, leaves in her hair, rocks in her back through the blanket. He was half apologetic afterward about the speed of it all, but he was so tipsy-charming and handsome, she pushed aside the scary fact that they hadn’t used any protection, and kissed him into silence. He liked her best.

  And the subsequent times were all kinds of eye-opening. They’d stolen three more chances, all at Nana Mac’s place while she was out at her quilting group, or poker game, or salsa dancing class. Three times of closing the blinds, undressing in the dimly shuttered light, watching his expression change as her breasts came free from her bra, his hands and mouth doing things that left her breathless, the hot afternoon air getting even more heated in the little attic room.

  But it was that first time—her star-struck, unprotected first time—that made the baby.

  Where was the luck in that?

  More than just a line on a pregnancy test, the baby was the real result of that one night, making her physically nauseous even as she felt heartsick about her poor judgment. A month after that moment on the mountain, with the start of the school year drawing near, she had to face it. She gathered her courage and told Nana Mac, who was pragmatic, unflustered, and just sympathetic enough as they went to the doctor on the Other Side to have it confirmed.

  But then, she had to tell Ethan. He’d be leaving before long, heading to college in Sydney. What would they do?

  She met him at the beach, took the deepest breath of her life, and blurted it out. And he went into insta-shock. Now, she could understand it bet
ter—the well-charted path to success that he’d taken for granted was suddenly, horrifyingly, impeded by a massive hurdle. A Jacinda-shaped hurdle, that would soon become a Jacinda-and-baby-shaped hurdle. At the time, though, all she felt was the rejection, the instant stepping back, the immediate distance that scared the hell out of her. Straight away, she knew she couldn’t stay.

  But what happened next—was that luck, or bad luck?

  Three days later, only the night before her flight home to the States, the spotting started. Then the cramps. And then the bleeding, red and heavy and final, as she clutched her belly and cried for her mistake, and her loss. Thank God her grandmother had been there.

  The next day, despite Nana Mac’s protests, she got on the plane with a backpack stuffed full of sanitary pads, and left without a word to anyone. Not even Ethan. He hadn’t wanted to know about the baby anyway, her teenage self said. After she’d told him, she’d waited, hoping, but he hadn’t even come to see her. He’d be pleased she was gone.

  And now they’d never have the chance to see the truth from each other’s side.

  She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. A brief glance at her reflection was enough. Riley was right—she was multicolored, with wedges of red on her face, neck and arms. The entire back of her body was the same shade, the only white the outline of her bikini. She carefully blotted herself dry with a towel, then searched in the cabinet for after-sun lotion. Finding a green bottle of aloe balm, she applied it to all the parts she could reach without tearing apart. All the while, she thought about Ethan. And the guilt crept back in. She should have told him she’d lost the baby.

  All these years, she’d had no idea about Ethan’s death, and yet she’d never been able to shake the experiences of that summer. A total of four times. That was all. She’d done it countless times since then, with plenty of guys. Okay, there was the baby, Ethan’s blunt let-down, then the conflicted sadness and relief of the loss. But it was long over, done with. It wasn’t like she was still in love with him, beyond the knee-wobbling, butterfly rush of her teenage crush. This wasn’t one of those slept-together-in-high-school-never-got-over-him stories.