All Our Summers

by Holly Chamberlin

  In the morning, Carol wrote her sister a note of congratulations. But she couldn’t help wonder why Bonnie hadn’t herself written with the news of her romance. Maybe Bonnie had planned to tell Carol once things between herself and Ken were more settled. Whatever the case, Bonnie would soon know that her sister was absolutely thrilled for her and sure that Bonnie and Ken Elgort made a lovely couple.

  Carol sighed and took a sip of the wine. It was now warm. Maybe she should just go back to New York, give up this naïve scheme of embracing her family before it was too late. Besides, she didn’t even like Ferndean House. She was tempted to tear the whole thing down and start afresh, build something contemporary.

  Of course, that could only happen if Bonnie relinquished her hold on the house.

  And then what? Carol frowned. She would still be stuck in Yorktide, albeit in a sleek new home, with a resurrected stone maze or decorative feature or whatever it once had been. Poor Bonnie. The look on her face when Carol had mentioned incorporating an Eastern influence on the property! Why had she said that? She had no such idea in mind at all.

  Carol picked up her fork and speared a bit of avocado from the salad. The avocado was already going brown, but she popped it into her mouth anyway. And she decided that she would stay on in Yorktide, at least until the end of the summer. She was not a quitter. If New York City hadn’t beaten her as an innocent nineteen-year-old, then Yorktide and its residents could not beat her as a seasoned sixty-five-year-old.

  Sixty-five. She was officially old.

  But not as old as Bill Elliott, editor-in-chief of the local rag. Why, oh why had she agreed to do that stupid interview! And Mr. Elliott had been a bit of a flirt; if he persisted in that sort of thing, she would firmly but tactfully shut him down. The very last thing she needed was to be the subject of the paper’s next headline: INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED INTERIOR DESIGNER SET TO MARRY ANCIENT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF SMALL-TOWN NEWSPAPER.

  It was not to be borne.

  Chapter 55

  Nicola walked along the corridor that led from the administrative offices of Pine Hill to the wing of the building where those who qualified for Independent Living status made their homes. The walls were lined with colorful prints of flowers and famous landmarks. The floor was kept meticulously clean and free of impediment. The windows were always sparklingly clear.

  Automatically, Nicola felt for the card in the back pocket of her chinos. It was still there. A hefty gift certificate to The Bookworm, the independent book shop in town. The gift from her mother was welcome; Nicola loved to read and didn’t have a lot of spare income to spend on books.

  But why the gift? Why delivered through the mail and not in person? The answer seemed obvious. Her mother was trying to make amends for years of neglect but had been afraid Nicola would refuse to accept the gift if she presented it to her in person. And maybe her mother had a good reason for fearing another face-to-face meeting. Nicola hadn’t exactly welcomed her mother with open arms this summer. Truth be told, Nicola routinely displayed more loving behavior to the residents of Pine Hill than she did to Carol Ascher.

  Nicola turned a corner and knocked on the door to #33. Hermione Wolcott invited her to enter. Her apartment was furnished with several pieces of art she had brought with her from her previous home; there was a stunning nineteenth-century landscape from a member of the Hudson River School over the couch and an abstract Modernist sculpture on the sideboard. Hermione herself had a definite personal style, one Nicola didn’t know how to define, though her mother probably would. Today Hermione was wearing a dark, slim-fitting pantsuit with a white blouse buttoned to the neck, large gold hoop earrings, and three gold rings, one of which was set with a bright green emerald. Her lips were perfectly painted red. Nicola knew only a bit about Hermione’s life before her coming to Pine Hill; she often thought she would like to know more. But that was up to Hermione.

  “Have a seat,” Hermione offered. “I see the Chronicle has printed an article about your mother.”

  Nicola nodded. “Yes, I heard.”

  “You mean you haven’t seen it yet?”

  “No,” Nicola said. “I’m sure I’ll see it around later.”

  “Here.” Hermione leaned forward and took a folded newspaper from the coffee table. “Take my copy. You must be so proud of her.”

  Nicola accepted the newspaper and smiled noncommittally.

  “She’s made a great success of her life.”

  Had she? Nicola wasn’t so sure about that. “Yes,” she said.

  “But you’re not close, are you?” Hermione said. “You and your mother.”

  “How did you know that?” Nicola blurted.

  Hermione laughed. “I may be old, but I’m not stupid. If you two were close you’d have read the article and be bragging about her.”

  Nicola felt her cheeks flame. “It’s just that we haven’t lived together in a long time. Not since I was fifteen. I was sent to Yorktide to live with my aunt and uncle.”

  Hermione nodded. “Yes, I heard that. Small-town gossip. Anyway, I’m sure your mother had a good reason for sending you to your relatives.”

  “How can you be sure?” Nicola asked, more sharply than she had intended.

  “People don’t usually do that sort of thing for no reason. At the very least, the reason must have seemed good to your mother at the time. And you’ve flourished. Your mother’s choice seems to have been the right one for you.”

  “I guess,” Nicola said after a moment. “Yes, I mean, I’m pretty happy, actually. Mostly.”

  “No one is ever entirely happy, not if they’re honest.” Hermione shrugged. “What does it even mean to be happy? Has anyone ever really figured that one out?”

  Suddenly, Nicola remembered something she had said to Sophie recently. Something like, life was rarely the way you wanted it to be, but it was often pretty good anyway.

  “I had a daughter,” Hermione said suddenly.

  Nicola startled. “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  Hermione’s posture looked exceptionally straight at that moment. When she spoke again, her voice was clear but low. “Not many people here do. Maybe you’re the first to know. I can’t remember everything I’ve said since I moved in. She died a very long time ago. When she was only thirty.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Nicola said feelingly. “Had she been ill?”

  “Cancer.”

  “What was her name?” Nicola asked. She realized she felt close to tears.

  “Her name was Grace. We were very close. In a way, I suppose we were each other’s best friend. Her death was the worst thing that ever happened to me. For a while I really didn’t think I’d survive it.” Hermione smiled briefly. “But here I am, forty years later.”

  “Do you . . . How often do you . . . I’m sorry,” Nicola said, swallowing hard.

  “How often do I think of her? Every day. All the time.” Hermione looked at Nicola shrewdly. “You lost your uncle last year, didn’t you?”

  Nicola nodded. She must not cry on the job.

  “Remembering never ends,” Hermione went on, “but it does shift forms. Don’t worry about the shape it takes at any given moment. Your uncle is always with you. That’s a constant.”

  “Thank you,” Nicola said.

  “For what?”

  “For talking to me about . . . about everything.”

  “Not at all,” Hermione said briskly. “Now, what was it that brought you to see me this morning?”

  When Nicola had completed her routine weekly assessment of Ms. Wolcott, she said her farewells and headed back to her shared office. She wondered why Hermione had chosen to tell her about her daughter, today of all days. As Nicola sank into the chair at her desk, it struck her how very often she found herself the recipient of care from the very people she was meant to serve.

  She hadn’t thanked her mother for the gift certificate to The Bookworm. She would. Soon.

  Chapter 56

  Scott was sitting across from Julie at th
e kitchen table. He was mending a tear in one of his flannel work shirts. Julie vaguely remembered the last time she had bought him a new flannel shirt. It had to have been four or five years earlier. For his birthday. Back when her husband had loved her.

  Sophie was leaning against the counter, legs and arms crossed. She was wearing a T-shirt that said CUTE AF. Julie hadn’t seen it before. She didn’t know what the message meant. But she didn’t care enough to ask.

  “Did you see the cool article about Grandma’s sister?” Sophie asked, nodding at the day’s paper on the kitchen table.

  “What’s cool about it?” Julie asked.

  Sophie shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that I want to be rich and famous like Aunt Carol one day.”

  “Being rich and famous doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re happy,” Scott said mildly.

  Sophie laughed. “Like you would know?”

  Julie knew she should scold Sophie for talking so rudely to her father, but she said nothing.

  “I can use my imagination,” Scott said evenly. “And my common sense.”

  “I didn’t think you had any common sense,” Sophie retorted with a smirk.

  Scott flinched. “Sophie, you can’t talk to me that way.”

  “What way?”

  “As if I don’t deserve your respect.”

  Sophie stood away from the counter. “You don’t. Not anymore.” And then she stomped out of the room. A moment later, a door slammed.

  That was getting old, Julie thought. Slamming doors. Been done to death.

  Scott shoved his needle into the shirt he was mending and pushed the work away. “What is becoming of this family?” he muttered.

  Julie didn’t respond.

  “Julie?” he said, more loudly. “Do you hear me? Do you even care?”

  “Don’t talk to me about caring,” she said flatly.

  “Right. Okay. I’m the one who didn’t care, I’m the one responsible for this whole mess. I get it. It’s all my fault. I accept that. But now what? You either have to forgive me or . . . or tell me to go. You have to do or to say something. You have to come back from wherever it is you’re hiding.”

  “Hiding?” Julie laughed. She wasn’t amused. But still, she laughed.

  “From wherever it is you are now. Julie, you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to help Sophie.”

  I’ve got, Julie thought, to help myself.

  Scott got up from his seat and stood there, hands hanging at his sides. Julie knew he was expecting a response; at least, he was hoping for one. But she had none to give. After a long moment, he turned and left the room.

  Julie pushed the newspaper aside. She knew her mother resented the fact that Carol was being feted by the town she had left behind so long ago. For her part, Julie didn’t really care if Carol Ascher made a splash or not. Her aunt’s popularity didn’t change anything about Julie’s life, for better or for worse.

  It certainly didn’t affect the fact that the second of Sara’s summer workshops was coming up. Julie was determined not to embarrass herself again in front of her colleagues. She simply had to muster the energy and the focus to read the materials she was supposed to read, to come up with the three discussion questions she was supposed to suggest, and to be ready to smile, chat, and be all-around presentable.

  The first step is always the most difficult. Start small. One day at a time. All annoyingly familiar and perhaps overused clichés of so-called wisdom. Nevertheless, Julie got up from the kitchen table and headed for her office, where those materials awaited her attention.

  If she had any attention to give them.

  Chapter 57

  Bonnie sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the day’s edition of the Yorktide Chronicle before her. Bill Elliott’s article was a puff piece, laudatory but empty. Not like the article about Carol Ascher that had run in the Chronicle the year Nicola was seventeen. Bonnie would never forget the opening line.

  Everyone in Yorktide knew from day one that Carol Ascher would grow up to be somebody.

  It seemed that Carol had been awarded a respected prize by an important architecture firm. Bonnie had forgotten the details. She had wondered how the Yorktide Chronicle had learned of this accomplishment. Maybe the story had been picked up from a larger paper and reworked by a local reporter with an emphasis on the pride Yorktide took in its prize-winning former resident.

  When Nicola saw the paper that evening she had scanned the article with a frown. “Who did she have to pay to get the award I wonder?” she said, tossing the paper onto the kitchen table.

  It had occurred to Bonnie to ask Nicola why, when her life was going so nicely, she still carried so much antipathy toward her mother. But she hadn’t. She should have talked to her niece about the importance of being kinder toward Carol. But she never did. It had been in Bonnie’s best interest to ensure Nicola’s loyalty to her and her alone.

  When Ken had finished reading the paper after dinner—“Well, Carol seems to have done it again. Good for her.”—Bonnie put it in the recycling bin, along with the junk mail, the empty cans of dog food, and the flattened pasta boxes.

  And now there was this latest article. It was enough to make Bonnie want to scream.

  “Oh, Ken,” she murmured. How she missed him!

  It was not long after Carol’s departure from Yorktide that Ken began to pay Bonnie small attentions. When he ran into her at the pharmacy in town one afternoon, the one with the old-fashioned soda fountain, he treated her to a dish of ice cream with caramel sauce. When he caught sight of her pushing her bicycle along a steep section of road that ran from the heart of town to Ferndean House, he lifted the bicycle (it had a flat tire) into the bed of his truck and gave her a lift home. At the annual Yorktide Christmas Dance, held at the high school, Ken asked Bonnie three times to dance. And each time, as Ken whirled her around the other couples, Bonnie noticed her parents’ expressions of approval.

  Not once did Bonnie feel guilty for her friendship with her sister’s former boyfriend. And Ken rarely mentioned Carol after telling Bonnie, without fuss or drama, that it had been he who had broken up with Carol and not the other way around. “Just so you know,” he had said. “Just so you don’t believe what everyone is saying. It was easier for Carol this way. And it doesn’t bother me.”

  It didn’t bother Bonnie, either. Much.

  When Bonnie turned seventeen, Ken asked her out on a real date. He picked her up at Ferndean House one Saturday evening and they went to a movie in Portsmouth. They shared a tub of popcorn and a box of Raisinets. From that point on, Bonnie Ascher and Ken Elgort were considered an official couple by the good people of Yorktide.

  A few months later, Shirley Ascher wrote to her older daughter in New York City, telling her of the relationship and predicting an engagement before long. She was right. Just weeks later, Ken proposed with his grandmother’s modest but very pretty engagement ring. Bonnie said yes.

  When Bonnie was eighteen, she and Ken married. Ken was twenty-two. For the first six months of their marriage they lived at Ferndean House while Ken and his father and uncle finished the cottage they were building for the next generation of Elgorts. The day she and Ken moved into 329 Rosehip Lane was one of the happiest days of Bonnie’s life. To share a home all alone with her husband was a dream come true. If it was a humble dream, no matter.

  Bonnie and Ken were two birds of a feather. Homebodies. Ambitious only for a marriage and a family. And content to live out their lives in Yorktide.

  Bonnie glanced again at the Chronicle. Contentment did not mean cowardice. Bonnie had wanted to stay in the town in which she had been born because she loved everything about Yorktide. She was happy. She always had been. How many people could say that and mean it? Sure, there had been difficult times, but above and beyond the challenges of daily life, Bonnie had felt sure that she was right where she was meant to be.

  Tears sprang to Bonnie’s eyes and roughly, she wiped them away. She had work to do. Laun
dry. Return a book to the library. And there were the bags of mulch she needed to drop off at Ferndean.

  She didn’t want to see Carol, though. Maybe she would just leave the bags on the porch, like she had meant to do with the box of garden gnomes....

  Bonnie rose from her seat. Maybe she would ring the bell instead.

  Chapter 58

  “Darn!”

  The glass slipped from Carol’s hand and landed with a thud in the kitchen sink. At least it hadn’t broken. The way Carol felt at the moment she was sure to accidentally lacerate herself on the shards.

  She refilled the glass with cold water and took a deep drink.

  Her eczema was flaring. She felt sluggish. Her conscience was bothering her. She had lied to Bonnie about the breakup with Ken. What was wrong with her these days?

  Carol turned to leave the kitchen. Her eye was caught by a photograph of Shirley Ascher held to the front of the fridge with a magnet. It had been taken about a year or two after Ronald’s death. Shirley had already become ill. Her hair was pathetically thin. Her clothes hung off her bony frame.

  Carol looked away. She would never forget the last time she had spoken to her mother face-to-face. Bonnie had begged her to come home. “Mom’s dying,” she said. “You need to say goodbye.”

  Carol had come. The visit was emotionally challenging in ways for which she had not been prepared.

  Shirley Ascher was lucid; Bonnie had led Carol to expect her mother’s mind to be wandering. But maybe being with her older daughter, whom she hadn’t seen in almost a year, had somehow, if momentarily, invigorated Shirley. Whatever the case, the story her mother had told her that day had made Carol realize that in many ways her mother was a complete stranger to her and always had been.

  Carol was startled by the ringing of the doorbell. She put a hand to her heart, took a deep breath, and went to answer it.