The Summer Invitation

by Charlotte Silver

  “Everybody was,” I said.

  “Yes, I guess so. But Mom met him through Aunt Theo, in fact. The two of them had stayed friends. But it was Theo, Clover said, who took care of Mom and me when I was born. Theo bought me all these fancy French baby clothes, remember.”

  I remembered. I remembered them because after Mom moved to San Francisco and married Dad and I was born, she dressed me in Valentine’s French baby clothes. She still has some of those clothes, even now.

  “You know,” Valentine went on. “Mom told me she still dreams of that apartment sometimes.”

  “What apartment?”

  “The apartment in Paris. Laurent’s. It must have been the same one where he painted Aunt Theo, I think. She says it was very beautiful, the most beautiful apartment she was ever inside of in all her life. She says it was rose-colored. Rose,” repeated Valentine with a sigh, to give emphasis to the image.

  And I saw in my imagination a rose-colored Parisian apartment. It was as if I had been there before, in another life, and that made sense because my mother had.

  I didn’t feel hurt or angry that Val had known more than I did. No, the main thing I felt was: curious.

  “Who knows? Maybe he’ll invite me to stay in that apartment in Paris someday…” Valentine was saying now.

  Life is so rich, I thought to myself. It was so rich that you missed out on things even when you thought you were so good at paying attention. For some reason after I had this thought, I wanted to go back to Val’s dorm room and start writing down a new story. There were so many stories I wanted to tell and I was excited about all of them.

  I’m happy, I thought, and told myself to try to remember this moment before it was gone. This is what Clover meant.

  Then all of a sudden, there we were standing in the park just in front of the Washington Square Arch, near the same spot where we used to go and have picnics sometimes, when a man stopped us and asked Valentine: “Excuse me. Are you a ballerina?”

  I didn’t blame him for thinking it. Val was wearing a black cashmere pullover and pony-skin slippers, and then there’s something about the way she stands these days. She’s grown into her legs and she’s not as jumpy, not as expressive, as before.

  Val paused. What she said surprised me: “I was.”

  The man said: “Oh. Thought so. Are you dancing in anything now?”

  Then Val laughed lightly and said: “No. I meant I was a ballerina years, years ago.”

  “When?” the man said. He leaned toward her; I think it was her air of slight sadness that captured him.

  “One summer,” said Val. “One beautiful summer.”

  And heads held high we both walked on, through the Arch, into that rich and marvelous New York City light.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Charlotte Silver

  Published by Roaring Brook Press

  Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  macteenbooks.com

  All rights reserved

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Silver, Charlotte.

  The summer invitation / Charlotte Silver. — First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: When Franny and her older sister Valentine are summoned by their aunt Theodora from foggy San Francisco to sunny New York City for one summer, they unearth secrets about Aunt Theo’s romantic past and even have a few romantic adventures of their own.

  ISBN 978-1-59643-829-3 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-59643-830-9 (e-book)

  [1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction. 4. Summer—Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S585654Su 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013044976

  eISBN 9781596438309

  First hardcover edition, 2014

  eBook edition, May 2014