The Book of Summer

by Michelle Gable

  “I have to say, you weren’t so enamored with the lilacs and bayberries when Cissy dragged you back here to finish up high school with all of us barbaric islanders.”

  “Yes, poor me.” Bess rolls her eyes. “Don’t let my teenage surliness fool you. It’s what I wanted.”

  “Uh, I thought it wasn’t your choice? If I recall, you were kicked out of boarding school.”

  “Was I?” she says with a jokey shrug. “I don’t quite remember it that way. Well, it’s been real, but I’ll let you go.”

  Bess pushes off from the counter, as if she needs the extra momentum to get out of that house.

  “Thanks, Evan,” she says. “For not being a total jerk about this. Okay. See you later.”

  She turns to go.

  “We had fun, didn’t we?” Evan calls from where he stands, fixed against the cupboards.

  Bess pauses and then peers over her shoulder.

  “We did,” she says. “On the other hand, Nantucket can screw with your memories.”

  “Listen, do you have anywhere to be?”

  “Me?” Bess spins back around to face him. “Right now? This morning?”

  “This very minute.”

  “Aside from dragging my mother from her home? The answer is no, I have exactly nowhere else to be.”

  Well, she has somewhere to be, but it would involve a flight to California.

  “Wanna come to my jobsite?” He tilts his head toward the door. “I have a construction gig down the way.”

  “You want me to visit your work?” Bess scrunches her forehead. “Doesn’t that seem a little…?”

  “Calm down, Danielle Steele. I’m not going to put the moves on you. I may be dense about a lot of things, but I never make the same mistake twice.”

  “Gosh thanks,” Bess mumbles. “You’ve made me positively weak-kneed.”

  “Do you want to go or not? I think it’s a place you’d like to see.”

  “Sure. Like I said, I don’t have anything else to do, other than stare off a cliff and reflect on my own mortality.”

  “Perfect.” Evan claps a hand on her shoulder. “Trust me, you’ll get a kick out of this. And it should stir up a few memories.”

  “Oh Lord. Memories. Well, make sure they’re only the good ones. The bad ones I plan to leave out on the bluff.”

  13

  Monday Morning

  They stand on a concrete slab beneath the outline of a not-quite-a-house.

  “This place is supposed to ring a bell?” Bess says, and knocks on a frame. “A house so new it’s not even built yet?”

  Though Bess pretends otherwise, she understands exactly where they are.

  This plot of land once contained a fishing shack called Hussey House, a chunk of abandoned heaven that served as center stage for all manner of teen naughtiness. Hussey was one of Nantucket’s original founders, but whether the family ever owned the property or the name simply seemed fitting for the stuff kids got up to there, Bess never knew.

  “Elisabeth Codman,” Evan says. “You don’t recognize it? Damn. That hurts. I thought I’d left at least some kind of mark on your formative years.”

  Some kind of mark. That’s one way to put it.

  “Fine,” Bess says, and walks to the edge of the foundation. “I remembered it on sight. How could I not? Codfish Park. You bastardized my last name as a result. Lizzy Codfish. What a gal.”

  She grips the sides of a doorway and leans out over a twelve-foot retaining wall.

  “Be careful,” Evan says. “You’re a couple stories off the ground. We built up the pad to keep the house out of the flood zone. Can’t screw with Mother Nature on an island outpost like this.”

  “Ha! You don’t say.”

  Bess pushes herself back into the home, gaze still fixed on the beach across the road. With that view, and Evan’s voice behind her, the years crash back onto her with the force of a nor’easter. Bess closes her eyes and pictures the people and the parties. She can smell the driftwood bonfires; see their flames dancing in purple and in gold. And Bess can still feel Evan, his arms wrapped around her waist.

  Bess’s eyes begin to sting.

  “Are you okay…?”

  “It’s so sad,” she says, quickly. “That Hussey House is gone like all the other shacks. Soon there won’t be any left. I hate seeing the new places scattered around, like pockmarks, so overt with their cedar shingles not yet turned to gray.”

  Evan nods.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I know it’s your job.…”

  “It is my job,” he says. “And thank God for people who need more than one home. But I hear you. It used to be that this island was a place for escape. Now it’s a place to be seen and it’s losing more character by the day. Sconset started so modestly—a cluster of huts for the fishermen. They weren’t even homes, really, just shelters to protect against the weather while the men caught their cod and bluefish. They had no floors. No kitchens. At least until the wives came for a visit and decided to stay for good.”

  “Really?” Bess turns back toward him. “I never knew Sconset was a down-and-gritty, boys-only kind of place.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You’re an off-islander. Feed me,” he says in a first-rate Cookie Monster voice.

  Bess thinks that he must have kids. He’s not married, she knows that much. Or, at least, he doesn’t wear a ring, a detail Bess hadn’t realized she’d noticed.

  “‘Feed me’? I don’t recall demanding food.”

  As soon as she says it, Bess’s stomach growls as if it’s pulverizing gravel. That body of hers, betraying her once again.

  “What happened after that?” Bess sputters, pressing into her stomach to shut it up. “With the fishermen and their shacks?”

  “Well, like I said, the women showed up and complicated everything,” Evan says with a wink. “As expected.”

  “Or, they made life inhabitable.” Bess winks back. “As expected. Well, don’t tell Cissy I didn’t know that tidbit. I’ve worked hard to become the second-favorite child. She’d demote me in a blink.”

  “Aw, don’t fret. You can’t be expected to know Nantucket’s rich history. You’re an off-islander, here to rape and pillage.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Bess rolls her eyes. “Lest you forget, I graduated from Nantucket High, same as you. And there was never a shack on our land, so my ancestors didn’t contribute to the degradation of fair Sconset.”

  “Obviously there wasn’t a shack on your property. Locals aren’t dumb enough to build on that bluff.”

  “Wow! That hurt!” Bess says, though he’s not wrong. “At least buy me a drink if you’re going to fuc—Never mind.”

  She shakes her head and snickers to herself.

  “Come on, you have to finish the joke. Buy you a drink if I’m going to, what?”

  “You know what.”

  “Rhymes with ‘duck’?”

  “You were right about the memories.” Bess shakes her head again, laughing, trying to move on. “Suddenly I’m back in high school getting teased and harassed by you. I’m curious. Did the Husseys ever actually own this land? Or is it something some doofus concocted because it seemed apt?”

  “It really was in a Hussey’s hands. Back in the 1800s, Ebenezer Hussey bought the place for thirty pounds of cod.”

  “I’d sell Cliff House for less if I had any faith in my ability to get Cissy out of it.”

  Bess exhales and sits on a nearby stack of wood. She is suddenly dead tired, bone-dragging spent. Cod or no cod, her head feels like it’s swimming with it.

  “Are you okay?” Evan asks. “You look a little peaked.”

  “I’m peaked all right.” Bess braces herself against both knees. “It’s been a helluva few months.”

  “Oh yeah? Anything specific?”

  “I’m getting divorced.”

  “I heard something along those lines.”

  “That’s why I feel like total shit,” she says. “One of the reasons anyway.”

&n
bsp; Evan’s head moves to some imperceptible degree. Bess studies him for a solid twenty seconds, waiting. He gives her nothing, which is exactly what Bess would predict. Evan f’ing Mayhew. Aged sixteen years but hasn’t changed a day.

  “Any day it should be finalized,” Bess goes on, suddenly hot and sticky beneath her arms. “We’re just squabbling over investments and furniture now. I’m letting him keep the house. Seems easier that way.”

  Still, Evan doesn’t say anything.

  “I know what you’re thinking!” she chirps, returning to her schoolgirl self, desperate with the need to fill every gap in conversation. “What fool would let this fox out of his clutches?! Look at me!”

  Bess gestures toward her sweatpants, her braless tee. She should’ve gotten a boob job back when Brandon suggested it. She’d been indignant at the time—she’s a doctor, for the love of God!—but the man had a point. Her breasts, they are not so great.

  “Bess…” Evan says, and reaches for her hand. “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re sorry? Question mark?”

  “If you need me to be sorry, that’s what I am.”

  “You should write for Hallmark with that level of inherent sympathy. How compassionate.”

  She is thoroughly vexed but the comment is so Evan. The very worst of him, as a matter of fact.

  “Lizzy C.”

  Bess lurches. Lizzy C. His old nickname for her; he was the only person to ever use it. She wishes he’d knock it off.

  “I didn’t mean—” Evan starts.

  “Thanks but don’t bother with the ‘sorry’s. It’s really for the best and I don’t have a shred of regret. About the divorce, anyway.”

  “That’s what I suspected, which is why…” Evan shakes his head. “Here’s the deal. What’s his name? Your ex? Brian?”

  “Brandon. You don’t remember his name?”

  Then again, why would he?

  “Brandon,” Evan repeats. “Yep, sounds like a douchebag all right. Listen, I don’t know much about him. Or you anymore, for that matter. But as for Brandon, I only met him twice. Once at your wedding, and once when you trotted him out to some party at the Yacht Club.”

  “Did I really bring him only twice?” Bess says, trying to remember.

  Though they never made it to Sconset during their four-year marriage, they had dated for two years before that and met further back still, when they were both at Stanford, Bess for medical school and Brandon for business. No, it must’ve been more than twice.

  “Are you sure?” Bess asks, mostly to herself. “Twice?”

  “I can’t be sure. It’s not like you kept me apprised of your comings and goings. Plus, I was in Costa Rica for a while. You could’ve visited a hundred times in those years.”

  “Probably not a hundred.”

  Costa Rica. Bess feels a kick to the gut.

  “Look, maybe I’m wrong,” Evan says. “Even if I was around, you’d hardly want to introduce Mr. Fancy-pants to your random townie ex-boyfriend. Best to keep the locals on the down low.”

  “Please,” Bess says, and lets her eyes skip away. “I told him plenty about you. Plen-ty.”

  Evan doesn’t really think that, does he?

  Evan doesn’t truly believe that he is some boyfriend from the closet of the unmentionable and denied? Bess has those types from college, to be sure, but her only remorse about Evan is in how it ended. Or didn’t end. Or whatever it was that happened.

  Bess chose Boston College for undergrad because it was closest to home, and therefore closest to him. She thought they had some unspoken agreement, but then Evan left. He went to Costa Rica for a summer, which turned into six years once he found a native to shack up with. The woman was Latin and glorious and sent a ripple of envy through every male who’d been bred on the island. Son of a gun, Evan Mayhew leapfrogged them all.

  When Evan showed up at Bess’s wedding, she wasn’t sure if he’d come on a plane or from across the street.

  “Oh no, he’s been back for years,” some now nameless and faceless Nantucketer told Bess as they waited for refills of wine.

  “What happened?” Bess asked whoever it was.

  Meanwhile, where was Brandon, Bess’s new husband? Who the hell knew. The important question was: Why did Evan leave Costa Rica and did he bring the girl?

  “Dunno,” the person replied.

  “I have to admit,” Bess says now, at the construction site, the wind stirring up the sawdust around them. “When discussing high school boyfriends with the girls on my freshman hall, ‘random townie’ ranked as the best by far.”

  “Well, duh. Especially once they learned you were serenaded at prom.”

  “Ah, yes. In front of the whole school. Actually that almost disqualified you.”

  “Hey,” Evan says, pretending to be outraged. “That was the most romantic thing I’ve ever done!”

  “How sad for you. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.” Bess puts a solemn hand to her chest. “‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ is very romantic. I’ve grown awfully tired of hearing it at weddings though. I mean, come up with an original first dance song already.”

  “Cut me some slack. I was an eighteen-year-old kid. That was my way of showing affection.”

  “And it was very cute,” Bess says. “Initially. But after the song ended, you and the rest of the baseball team broke into the ‘Macarena.’ So forgive me if I wasn’t swooning.”

  Evan laughs.

  “Okay,” he says. “You have me there. The ‘Macarena’ is terrible. Well, I can tell you one thing. That Brandon douchebag never sang ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ to anyone.”

  “Safe assumption. So that’s why you didn’t like him? He was deficient in Coolio appreciation?”

  “Yes. That. Also because, from the moment I met him, I knew he wasn’t good enough for you.”

  “Brandon?” Bess is puzzled. “Seriously? He’s an asshole once you get to know him, but on the surface…”

  Brandon wasn’t all bad. Not in theory, anyway. Bess has standards. She fell in love with something. There was his over-the-top-gentlemanly stuff, for one. He made the bed the first time he slept over. While Bess showered, he snuck out and bought not only breakfast but a week’s worth of groceries. Never mind the chores; there were the notes he left in Bess’s purse. Once a week, at least.

  You looked beautiful this morning.

  I couldn’t sleep. I kept looking over to make sure you were still there.

  Don’t make plans tonight. I have a surprise.

  He always kissed her before leaving for work. And if he somehow forgot, Brandon would drive all the way back to right this grievous wrong. Sometimes he came back anyway, ten, twenty minutes having passed.

  “But you said good-bye!” Bess might’ve laughed.

  “I needed another kiss. And I love that look on your face, the surprise when you were sure I’d already gone.”

  Brandon could be so loving. So protective. So overly concerned with Bess’s whereabouts. At least a half dozen times he showed up at the hospital because Bess wasn’t home and he was worried. Admittedly, that was a bit creepy in hindsight, but Bess was too swept up to question it.

  “On the surface, what?” Evan asks, and lifts a brow. “Listen, he’s pretty and all. If you’re into that kind of thing. But I remember thinking, whoa, that guy does not deserve to be here. He shouldn’t even be at the game.”

  “But why? That’s not what you…” Bess starts, trying to shake off the confusion. “Okay. So in your grand total of two times meeting Brandon, what, exactly, didn’t you care for? And P.S., you could’ve mentioned something.”

  “He has jerk hair,” Evan spits out.

  “Jerk hair.”

  “It was too styled. Plus, he had this vibe … like he’s a shyster or something.”

  “A shyster?” Bess chuckles. “That makes him sound far cleverer than he really is, like his dickishness is intentional and not simply part of his DNA.” Bess mulls this over. “Although, I did once bust him G
oogling ‘romantic gestures.’ Now I can’t decide if that’s sweet or ‘psycho to the extreme,’ which was my cousin’s take.”

  Evan laughs in return.

  “I don’t know if it’s psycho,” he says. “But it’s not normal. Did you ever recognize any of the alleged ‘romantic’ moves?”

  “Oh yeah, all the time.” Bess sighs. “I should’ve listened to Cissy. Never trust a guy who didn’t play a team sport.”

  “Not a jock, huh? Well, between that and him being a techie type…”

  “You remember he’s a techie type?”

  “I have this mental picture of him hunched over a computer, all pale and sickly and wheezing on an inhaler. It’s a pretty awesome visual.”

  “As much as I like the concept,” Bess says, “Brandon is not pale or sickly. He plays golf and racquetball and his lung capacity seems to be in excellent shape.”

  “Because of golf? Can you even break a sweat doing that?”

  “You can. There’s also his proliferate sex life.”

  Evan flinches, and so does Bess.

  “Crap,” she groans. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

  Dear God, how far over the line has she just leapt? This is the problem with Evan Mayhew. It always has been. He’s either poking at Bess, or making her feel way too much at home.

  “Ugh,” she says with another groan. “Forget it. Let’s never speak of this again.”

  “A little hard to forget,” Evan responds, slowly. “As for the sex, you must not be talking about yourself as you sound pretty pissed off for someone getting a lot of action.”

  “Well, we had sex sometimes. We were married after all.”

  “But the bastard had a girlfriend,” Evan finishes for her. “What an asshole.”

  “Oh, I don’t know that he had a girlfriend per se.”

  “Then why…”

  “I was referring to the prostitutes.”

  And bam, just like that, a second admission slips out. A bigger one this time. Bess smacks a hand over her mouth, though it is far too late. But, really, her mistake is no surprise. When it comes to Evan, she is guaranteed to overstep, overexplain, over-Bess or “Bess up” in some irreparable way.

  14