The Light in Summer

by Mary McNear

  Neither of them said anything for a little while. And then Billy asked quietly, “Why hire someone to find him now? You could have done this years ago, Dad. After you found out I was pregnant, even.” She wasn’t angry at him, just curious about the timing.

  “I could have done this sooner. The truth is, I didn’t know if I wanted to. Honestly, at the time, and since then, too, I’ve often thought it might be simpler not to have him in your or Luke’s lives. Remember, after we got home from that vacation, I didn’t know anything about him, really. Except that he was young, rootless, and irresponsible.”

  “Hmm. Well, he wasn’t the only one who was irresponsible,” Billy felt compelled to say.

  “Maybe,” her dad allowed. “Still, he was older than you. And he was in a position of responsibility. It didn’t say much about his judgment . . . impregnating a teenage guest at the lodge where he worked.”

  “Dad, we’ve talked about this,” Billy said, feeling a little bit like eighteen again. “You know, the part about it taking two people to make a baby.”

  “So it does,” he said with a ghost of a smile. “Anyway, if I had mixed thoughts about finding him then, I didn’t now. I did it for you, Billy, to some extent. But mainly, I did it for Luke.”

  “So . . . you want me to show this to Luke?” she asked, glancing at the envelope. “Or do you think I should contact Wesley?” Billy asked, apprehensive again.

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted, and Billy realized suddenly how much all of this must have taken out of him. “No, I’m not suggesting that you do either of those things. Not now. Not when Luke is doing so well. And when, frankly, he hasn’t expressed that much interest in his father yet.”

  Billy nodded. That was true enough. Lately his curiosity about his dad had been on the wane. It had been a couple of years since Billy had fielded a question about him.

  “And there’s another thing we need to consider,” her dad said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen if and when you get in touch with Wesley. He might be angry or resentful. He might not want to have anything to do with you or Luke. Or he might feel very differently. You know, want to have some kind of custody of Luke. If you and Luke aren’t comfortable with that, and if it goes to court, it could be . . . it could be expensive and traumatic for both of you.

  “But here’s the thing, Billy,” he said, leaning forward, and there was a new urgency in his voice. “Luke is growing up; he’ll be a teenager soon. And if he starts asking questions about his dad, or he wants to start trying to find him, I think you’ll have to make a decision. Before Luke is an adult, you can make that decision for him. By the time he turns eighteen, though, I think he’ll have a right to this information, don’t you?”

  “I do,” Billy said, though her voice sounded uncertain, even to her. “It’s just . . . so complicated.” And there was a part of her, then, that wished there was no envelope, and therefore no eventual decision to make.

  “It is complicated, Billy. Most things outside Jane Austen novels are,” he said gently. “So take your time with it. Don’t make any snap decisions. You’ll do the right thing. You always do.”

  “Not always,” Billy said. “Trust me. I’ve made plenty of mistakes.”

  “Well, Luke wasn’t one of them. Your mother, you, and Luke,” he said, counting off his fingers, “are the three best things that ever happened to me.” He brushed something out of one of his eyes, and Billy was amazed to see that it was a tear.

  “Dad,” she said, giving him a hug. “You’re crying.” She didn’t know if she’d ever seen him cry before.

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m probably just allergic to all of the dyes in the Easter candy I’ve been eating.”

  “That’s got to be it,” Billy said, and now she was crying, too. “I mean, those bright pink marshmallow chicks have got to be toxic.” She hugged him harder. “I love you,” she said, and for a moment, she put aside the thought of what was in that envelope and concentrated on her dad instead. Did she know then, on some level, that he was sick again? Probably. Had she hugged him hard enough? Told him she loved him often enough? She hoped so. She’d had the opportunity to do both, many times, in the weeks ahead. But it was always that afternoon she remembered when she thought of the time she’d spent with him before he died. Here he was, an engineer who helped to build things, big things, and yet he was the gentlest of souls. He already knew how little time he had left in the world, and he’d spent it thinking about the ones he’d loved, whether that meant hiring a private investigator to track down his grandson’s father or wearing a yellow sweater he would have been very glad never to lay eyes on again.

  Billy watched now, on the porch, as an errant raindrop plopped onto the little glass-topped table beside her. Truth be told, she’d never opened that envelope. God knew she’d been curious about its contents—how could she not be? But in the end, she’d taken her dad’s advice and put it away unopened. Even now it was sitting in a safe deposit box at her bank, along with some savings bonds her father had bought for Luke when he was born and several pieces of jewelry that Billy’s grandmother had left to her in her will. The key to the safe deposit box was in the bottom drawer of her file cabinet. She’d thought at the time that this had been the right thing to do; she and Luke had both been doing well, and she hadn’t wanted to upset the balance of their lives.

  But that was over a year ago. And though she’d been unwilling, in that last year, to admit to herself that what she was actually doing was lying to Luke, she had to be honest with herself now. It was possible to have a secret that didn’t entail being untruthful to anyone. Yet most secrets required a degree of dishonesty. This one most certainly did. She would have to admit it to herself, at least, even if she wasn’t sure she was ready to admit it to Luke.

  Still, hadn’t she lied to protect Luke? After all, there was no telling what, exactly, Wesley might do if he was informed that he had a son. He might try to gain custody of Luke, thereby creating a disruptive and disturbing court battle that could be damaging to her son. And imagining this, a nightmare odyssey through the family court system, Billy was shaken. It was possible, wasn’t it? And wasn’t it also possible that, with the assistance of a good lawyer, he could win at least partial custody of Luke? That was unthinkable, though she thought about it anyway as she popped one of the last, and now soggy, french fries into her mouth. On the one hand, she reasoned, determined to be rational, it didn’t seem likely that a judge would grant Wesley custody. After all, she and Wesley had never been married. And she didn’t think that unmarried fathers, particularly if they were not named on the child’s birth certificate, were automatically entitled to custody rights. Plus, Wesley already had a wife and two daughters. Under those circumstances would he really want to wrestle custody of Luke away from her? Besides, Wesley had disappeared before she could tell him she was pregnant, and she had been irreproachable in her parenting and care of Luke. Hadn’t she? She’d worked hard at her job, but she’d been Luke’s mother first and foremost. And he’d been a happy, thriving kid . . . until recently, she realized. Until recently.

  And this reminded her of something: a woman, a coworker from St. Paul’s Main Library, whom Billy had been friendly with. She’d been a single mom, older than Billy by fifteen years, and her teenage son was getting into trouble with the law. The boy’s father, who lived an hour away, had sued, successfully, for full custody, arguing that she was unable to supervise their son. It was more complicated than that, and Billy hadn’t been privy to all the details, but her coworker had been devastated. Billy shook her head. There were countless unknowns involved in contacting Wesley.

  There was, of course, a flip side to this whole line of thought. It was possible that the opposite would be true, that Wesley wouldn’t want to have anything to do with his son. And if Luke were aware of this . . . well, he’d be crushed. What child wouldn’t be if they understood one of their parents had no interest in getting to know them? And she thought
about how Luke was changing now, faster than she’d anticipated. He was not only acting troubled but also getting into trouble. If he was floundering as a thirteen-year-old, how might his father’s rejection play out over his high school years? Might what was now a single skirmish with Officer Sawyer turn into a criminal record?

  And what if . . . what if Billy contacted Wesley on her own, without first telling Luke, and Wesley refused to meet Luke? Would she then have to keep this knowledge of Wesley’s whereabouts from Luke even when he was eighteen? Would it be incumbent upon her to keep it from him so that he wouldn’t have to suffer the pain of being rejected by his own father? And if she kept this rejection from Luke and he located his father through his own sleuthing later in life, and he found out that long ago she’d contacted Wesley, Luke would feel betrayed. It was a mess. All of it.

  Billy put her head in her hands. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—make any decisions tonight. “Come on, Murphy,” she said wearily, reaching down to pat him. “Let’s go to bed.” She stood up and collected Pride and Prejudice and the remnants of her dinner. The rain had stopped now, except for an occasional drip, and the smell of wet earth permeated the night. As she shouldered open the screen door, she reached her first resolution of the night. She would let Luke be her guide. And in the days and weeks and months ahead, she would listen to him very carefully.

  CHAPTER 14

  The next morning, a very hungover Cal turned into the driveway of the White Pines, a rustic Alpine-style resort built in the 1930s on twenty-five acres of waterfront property on one of the lake’s most scenic bays. Cal had been here before in summers past. It was the only place on Butternut Lake that was even remotely formal, and when he was growing up, his family had celebrated special occasions in its clubby dining room overlooking the water. Now, though, as he followed a winding gravel drive past the beachfront, the main lodge, and the guest cottages, he didn’t feel any nostalgia. He felt only the throbbing pain in his head that was the result of the five scotches he’d drunk the night before.

  Allie had given him a ride into town this morning to pick up his car, and during the drive, she’d asked him to stop by the White Pines. Her friend Caroline’s husband, Jack, had a contract to renovate the cottages there, and he’d told Allie that he’d like to hear Cal’s thoughts on the project. (According to Allie, Cal already had a measure of celebrity in Jack’s eyes. He wasn’t only Allie’s brother; he was also an award-winning architect.) Cal hadn’t really wanted to come, but it was better than sitting around the cabin all day feeling terrible.

  When he reached the resort’s last cottage, which was on a sandy point of land that jutted out into the bay, he parked next to a red pickup truck coated with dust. This was pretty, he thought of the wood-and-stone chalet-style cottage with water on three sides and northern pines towering above it. He followed the sound of hammering onto the front porch and called through the open door. “Hello?”

  The hammering stopped, and a moment later, Jack Keegan appeared. “Hey,” he said, pulling off a work glove and extending a hand for Cal to shake. “Thanks for coming over.”

  “Sure,” Cal said.

  “Do you have time for me to show you around?” Jack asked.

  Nothing but time, Cal thought. But to Jack he nodded and said, “Yeah, I’d love to see what you’re doing here.”

  Jack gestured for him to follow. Cal walked into the cottage, remembering now what he’d heard about Jack from Allie. Apparently at one time he’d been a drinker and a womanizer. When his daughter, Daisy, was three, he’d left her and Caroline and hadn’t returned to Butternut until Daisy was in college. Now, though, he was a changed man: clean and sober, and devoted to the wife he’d remarried two and a half years ago and the daughter he’d given away at her recent wedding. Cal had liked him when he’d met him at the reception. He liked him now, too, as he talked animatedly about the improvements he planned to make to the cottage.

  “Don’t get me wrong. This place is rock solid,” Jack said, reaching up and thumping on one of its rafters. “They literally don’t build them like this anymore. The foundation is still in perfect condition, and the framing is premium Douglas fir. The trouble is, we need to open the floor plan up. Otherwise it’s too dark, too claustrophobic. These non–load-bearing walls need to come down,” he said, tapping on a wall. “These windows”—here he stopped in front of a modest window that looked out on a slice of lake—“these windows have got to go. This whole wall should be glass,” he added of a wall facing the lake. “I mean, what’s the point of having a view if you can’t see it?”

  Cal agreed. Jack’s plans were solid. And, once executed, should improve on the natural beauty of the cottages. Cal noticed, though, that Jack didn’t seem to have anyone working with him. There was no way he could do this job alone.

  When Cal brought this up, Jack explained that he’d recently had to fire his full-time employee. “I met him at an AA meeting,” he said. “He’s a good guy. But after he showed up drunk, I had to let him go. Now he’s working with my sponsor, Walt. So we’ll see. I’ve got some new leads, though. Hopefully I won’t have to keep working weekends.”

  He and Jack talked for a little while about the project. Finally Jack said he had to get back to work. Cal asked if he could take another look around. He went out on the back porch. The cottage and the view of the lake could hardly have been prettier. They reminded him of the first construction site he’d ever worked on. He had just turned sixteen, and his dad, a builder, was renovating a cottage on Cedar Lake. The year before that summer, Cal and his dad hadn’t been getting along very well. Cal, who’d always excelled in math and science, stopped working hard in school. His real interests were girls and sports. He and his dad had numerous skirmishes about his grades, his drinking and going to parties, his running around with girls, and what his dad referred to as his “general lack of seriousness.” Adding to the tension between them was the fact that Cal showed virtually no interest in his dad’s business.

  That summer he turned sixteen, Cal was crazy about a girl named Victoria. They’d been going out for six months, and he wanted to buy her a piece of expensive jewelry for her birthday in August. She’d dropped more than a few hints about a bracelet on sale at the mall; Cal could still remember the three tiny rubies set in a braided gold band. Victoria was what Cal’s mom referred to as “high-maintenance.” He didn’t dare tell her that he was saving up to buy a ruby bracelet for Victoria. His mom would have thought it a frivolous expense. Besides, she already disapproved of Victoria’s focus on money and status.

  In June, Cal had gotten a summer job lifeguarding at a country club in St. Paul. And though the view from his lifeguard stand was great, the pay was not. So when he overheard his dad telling his mom that one of his workers had quit, Cal said half-jokingly that he’d be interested in the job. His dad, not one for joking, had leveled a stern look at him. “If you’re really interested, I’ll hire you. The pay is much better than you’re making at the country club. But it’s hard work. And you won’t get any preferential treatment just because you’re my son.”

  If it hadn’t been for Victoria, Cal probably wouldn’t have taken the job. He knew his dad was serious about making him work hard. And he wondered what the point was of sweating on a construction site if he could spend the summer watching girls in bikinis. But he took the job; he had that bracelet to think about. As it turned out, Cal was right—his dad was demanding—but he was also surprisingly patient, and he took the time to teach him how to do the work correctly. Cal discovered something about himself he hadn’t known. He loved the whole process of building—putting up a wall, laying a new floor, installing a window. More than that, he was fascinated by the possibility of designing spaces for people to live in. Of course, he was still years away from being able to do that. But the idea of it began to take shape that summer.

  By early August, Cal had saved enough money to buy the bracelet and then some. The problem was, he was so tired by the time he got home from t
he construction site that he’d canceled more than a few dates with Victoria. When he tried to tell her about the work he was doing, she looked hopelessly bored. Or worse, sulky. In retrospect, maybe it was asking too much of her to care about the challenges of installing an eyebrow dormer, or creating an interior archway, or building bookshelves under a stairwell. These things fascinated Cal. They were what had transformed a small, dark cottage into a charming summer retreat.

  In any case, the day before Cal was planning to buy the bracelet, Victoria called and told him she wanted to break up. Peter Marshall, a senior at their high school, was going to be her new boyfriend. Peter’s family had plenty of money, she explained. He didn’t need a summer job.

  The summer was a turning point for Cal. Though he’d lost the girl, he’d gained a sense of direction. That fall he worked hard and pulled his grades up. He spent hours looking at buildings online. He continued working with his father, and by his senior year, he’d applied to colleges that offered undergraduate architectural courses. His dad, with whom he’d had an antagonistic relationship before, gained a new respect for Cal’s work ethic and drive.

  Now Cal looked out over the lake and prodded the porch railing, which was wobbly. That would have to be replaced, he thought. And for some reason, an image of Billy last night flashed into his mind. She’d been flustered after she’d asked him if he was married. Was Billy interested in him? He’d thought so, but then again, the large quantity of scotch he’d drunk at the Corner Bar had probably clouded his judgment. He’d need to see her again, this time sober, if he wanted to find out.