Summer's End (27 page)

Phoebe knew that all of this was true. She knew it. But she couldn't bear hearing what was going to come next.

“It's time for us to get a place of our own.”

“Somewhere else?” She could hardly breathe.

“Yes. I don't care where. It can still be in Minnesota if you want. The place is full of lakes. Let's find a new one and build our own cabin, one that's exactly right for the six of us and not worry about anyone else.”

“And not come back here?”

“Not like this, not for a month. Maybe a week. That's what most people do, Phoebe. They don't spend a whole month with their families.”

“But the kids—”

“The kids will be fine. Cousins and grandparents are important, but they need to understand that their mom and dad and brothers and sisters are first.”

Are first
…Phoebe felt sick. She agreed with Giles. But had she lived by it? Or had her mother always been too important to her? Not just since her death, but always? Had that kept her and Giles from starting their own family traditions?

She couldn't protest, not now. Not ever. There was nothing to do. This was going to happen. She could only sit here, her back against a birch tree, her palms pressing into the moss. She wanted to shriek apologies.
I've been
wrong, all wrong
. Tears were smarting in her eyes. Guilt was biting at her, and fear too. This was going to happen.

She was going to lose the lake.

She loved Giles. She loved him with all her heart. She respected him more than anyone else on earth. And she was going to have to give up the lake for him.

 

The whole time on the dock Hal had not said a word. Gwen tried to imagine what would have happened if John, her first husband, had been here. He would have taken over. He would have barked at Maggie, sent her to her room. He would have dismissed Joyce, refused to listen to her excuses. The two of them would have forgotten their guilt, letting it sink beneath their anger of him, and everyone else would have felt useless, unable to act.

Gwen further suspected that if Eleanor, Hal's first wife, had been here, she too would have taken over, meting out justice as she saw fit.

Sometimes it was better to let things play out.

She took Thomas up to the main cabin and settled him down for his morning nap. She finished up the breakfast dishes, and when Hal came up, he said he would stay with the sleeping boy. She went to the new cabin. She knocked lightly and went in.

She hadn't been in this cabin since everyone arrived. She had forgotten how light it was, how bright the view from the plate-glass windows. The bank in front of this cabin was rocky; there were fewer trees, and so you could see the lake from inside the cabin. The main cabin, where she and Hal stayed, had a more wooded site and little windows; all you could see through them was branches and pine needles.

The living arrangements here made no sense. This should be the cabin where everyone ate and cooked.

Ian, Maggie, and Joyce were all here, and they were all reading. Ian was at the table looking through a catalogue. Maggie and Joyce each had a murder mystery. It was as if they were all alcoholics, desperately fumbling for a drink in the face of stress.

What would this family be like if you took away their books. It might make them face things. It would force them to spend time together. Gwen now understood why it was so important to them to come to a place where there were no phones, no televisions or newspapers. They didn't believe they could be a family when there were outside distractions. They didn't trust themselves to pay attention to each other when there was a morning paper to read or phone calls to return.

Ian looked up at her, and Gwen thought she saw a plea in his eyes.
We're stuck. We don't know what to say to each other. We don't know what to do first. Help us
.

She spoke. “Maggie, you need to make two apologies, and I expect you to do them before lunch.”

Maggie started to protest. Gwen ignored her. “You must first apologize to Giles. At this point in your life you can't possibly understand what you have done to him, but you must still apologize. Second, you must apologize to everyone, from Claire and Emily on up to your grandfather, for being so disruptive and spoiling everyone's morning.”

“Isn't anyone going to apologize to
me?
”

Gwen supposed she shouldn't be surprised by that. How unfair it was to allow a child to be this self-centered. “No,” she said firmly, “no one is going to apologize to you.”

“This isn't any of your business, Gwen,” Joyce said.

“How you choose to raise your children is not my business. But the peace of the family table is my concern, and we aren't going to pretend that this didn't happen.”

“I'm not going to apologize.” Maggie slammed her book to the floor. “I don't give a fuck about your stupid family table. If anyone cared about this stupid shit about the fucking family—”

“Maggie—” Ian's voice was stern, shocked.

“Oh, for God's sake, Dad. Don't you be such a hypocrite. You and Mom have done nothing but complain about Gwen. Every time her back is turned you whine and complain. Now all of a sudden you—”

“Maggie! Now you must apologize to Gwen.”

What a family. Maggie had destroyed Giles's boat, and everyone was up here reading. Say what Gwen knew to be the truth, and they were at last ordering the girl to apologize.

“What's all this crap about apologies?” Maggie stormed. “It's not going to change anything. What was so goddamn important about Giles's boat anyway? Let him buy another. You guys have always said that they aren't using any of Gran's money like we are. Let them start.”

Gwen had no idea what she would do if a child of hers spoke like that. Was it too late for Maggie? She honestly didn't know.

But she had done what she could. She had set down her rule. The rest was up to Giles and Joyce.

“I meant what I said,” Gwen spoke softly, firmly. “You will not sit down to eat with the rest of the family until you have apologized.”

“Like I'm supposed to care about that. So I don't get to eat with the ankle biters and Miss Goody-Goody. My heart is broken.”

Gwen turned, walked out. She let the screen fall shut behind her. She went back to the main cabin, put together a snack, and bicycled it down to the kids at the sand pit. Nick and three of the kids were playing “Mother, May I?” The cereal box, milk carton, and used bowls were neatly piled at the side of the road.

“Where's Ellie and Emily?” Gwen asked.

“They're in the ladies' room, I believe.” Nick made a bit of a face.

Apparently this wasn't a simple pee in the woods. “Do you have toilet paper?”

“Ellie has her fanny pack, and if I know her, she has an itty-bitty but fully usable chemical toilet in it.”

It was odd, wonderful, to hear Nick speak so positively about someone. “She's a good kid, isn't she?”

“She does step up and do her share.” He looked down at his feet, then looked back up at her. “How come Val and Barb never do their share? Why do they dump everything on you all the time?”

“Because I let them,” Gwen answered. “I probably shouldn't. But habits are hard to break. Barbara's my little sister; Valerie is her child. But don't feel guilty because you are one of the things that have gotten dumped. You've been a joy this summer.”

Nick ducked his head. “I don't know about that.” Then he looked off into the woods. “That really was shitty, what Maggie did, wasn't it?”

Gwen nodded. “Yes, it was.”

“I sort of feel like maybe it was my fault.”

Phoebe had told her what had apparently happened on the canoe trip. Gwen shook her head. “No, Nick, whatever you did, you can't possibly think of it as your fault. Maggie's spent her whole life getting her way. That's not
your doing. And”—Gwen wasn't quite sure how to put this—“word on the street is that you didn't do anything.” That was Jack's position; he was maintaining that Nick hadn't had sex with Maggie, although he didn't seem to have any reason for thinking that.

Nick grinned, and for a moment Gwen thought of Jack, how naughty and gorgeous he had always looked at this age. “That's the bitch of it. I can't help thinking that all of this wouldn't have happened if I had.”

Gwen was not about to endorse that position. “I doubt that, but let's not look backward.”

Ellie and Emily reappeared. Emily was having “tummy problems,” Ellie reported, and would like to go back to the cabins. “Is that okay?” she asked Gwen.

“Of course.” Five-year-old Emily with her routine stomach complaint had just as much right to her parents' attention as did Maggie. But she wasn't going to get it.

Gwen took the bike back to the cabins and asked Hal to go pick Emily up in the car. Thomas was awake. She picked him up and went along the path to the other cabins. Ian came out to meet her. “Maggie and Joyce are packing,” he said. “They're going home.”

“Oh, Ian,” she sighed. “Is that really necessary?”

“Joyce seems to think so. All morning Maggie's been insisting how much she hates it here. She really doesn't, she's just horrified by what happened. She's painted herself in a corner, and I think we ought to help her get out of the corner, even if it means walking over wet paint and having to do the work all over again, but Joyce doesn't. I think you were right to tell her to apologize, that would have been a good first step, but Joyce can't see that.”

“Are you all going or only the two of them?”

“Joyce thinks we all should leave, but I'm not going to
give Maggie the power to drag Scott and Emily around. So I'm hoping it's all right if the three of us stay.”

“Of course it is. You know that.” Then Gwen remembered why she had come. “Emily's not feeling well. I think it's a very routine little case of diarrhea, but this isn't the most comfortable place in the world to have the runs. Maybe Joyce will want to stay at least until she feels better.”

“I'll tell her,” Ian said. “But I don't know that it will make any difference.”

It didn't. Although she was only five, Emily knew her job, she knew her place in the family. “I'm okay, Mommy. If you and Maggie need to go somewhere, that's fine. It's okay. Ellie's here.”

Her soft little voice broke Gwen's heart. Children shouldn't have to be that good.

Amy offered to help Jack with Giles's boat, and together they towed it over to the Rim, pulling it up on the beach. It could dry out there, and then they could burn it. Jack took a sledgehammer with him and, raising it high over his head, smashed the boat into smaller pieces so it would dry faster. He didn't want to use the chain saw. Noise traveled across the water, he said, and Giles would be able to hear.

Amy lined the broken pieces along the beach, separating them so they would dry more quickly. Even smashed and splintered, you could tell that the pieces had once been a boat. Many of the pieces still curved with the boat's graceful arch, and the varnish on the finished surfaces shone in the sunlight.

Of all people, Giles did not deserve this. Amy longed to do something, but what? There was no wealthy philanthropist she could call, no friendly reporter, no generous rink manager. Being famous wasn't any help.

Giles didn't ask what they had done with the boat, but Hal did. “The Rim?” He hadn't expected that answer. “You do know that is private property, don't you?”

Jack glanced at Amy. She understood. He was asking if
they should tell her father.
The Rim is mine, Dad. I bought it a couple of years ago to keep those developers from building a resort
.

But before she could speak, before she could decide whether or not to speak, her father waved his hand. “Oh, I can't imagine it matters in the least. Whoever owns it never comes up. So let's just pretend to ourselves that they would understand.”

“And we'll have it out of there in a couple of days,” Jack added.

The rest of the day was quiet. When Ian returned from the airport, he said that he was going to move out to the bunkhouse to be with Scott and Emily. “So why don't you have your kids move back into the new cabin with you?” he suggested to Phoebe and Giles.

“We would appreciate that,” Giles said quietly.

But it was too little, too late. In the late afternoon Amy sat on the porch of the main cabin with Hal and Gwen. Phoebe came outside, and standing with her back to the wooden-framed screen door, she told them that she and Giles would be looking for a cabin site of their own.

“At another lake?” Amy couldn't help herself. Phoebe at another lake?

Her sister nodded.

Phoebe was leaving the lake. Phoebe was not coming back here. Amy heard her father take a sharp breath.

“Oh, Phoebe—” Amy stepped forward, but Phoebe held up her hand, stopping her. She didn't want sympathy. She didn't want to cry.

But Phoebe loved the lake; she needed the lake. How could she be thinking about going someplace else?

“We'll still come visit.” Phoebe was trying to keep her voice cheerful. “It's not like you're rid of us.”

Visit. That's what Amy had done all this years, visit. Stop in for a couple of days, get what bed was left over, not have any say in the plans, the improvements. That's what you do when you visit.

And that had been all right for Amy. She was used to it. She didn't expect to have a voice. But Phoebe…Phoebe wouldn't be able to stand it. She was used to being heard. She had earned that, she deserved it. She worked so hard, she was so responsible, that she was entitled to be consulted.

Now she was going to visit.

You should cry. This is sad. Maybe you are doing the right thing, but it is still hard. You should cry
.

Why did I let you stop me? Why didn't I go ahead and put my arms around you? You are my sister. You need comforting. Why didn't I do it?

Standing, Hal came across the porch and put his arms around Phoebe. She drew back, she stayed stiff, but she couldn't push Hal away. He was her father.

Hal smoothed a hand over her hair as if she were a child. In a moment Phoebe leaned against him. Her neck bent, her shoulders hunched forward. “I never thought I'd”—her voice was muffled against his shoulder—“be the first one to stop coming, that I'd be the one to end our summers together.”

The first one to stop coming
. How like Phoebe that was, to be judging herself, to be worrying how her actions would affect everyone else.

Amy felt a touch on her arm. It was Gwen, motioning for her to come down off the porch, to leave Phoebe and Hal alone.

“This is really sad,” Amy said as soon as they were on the other side of the cabin. “I can't imagine Phoebe with-
out the lake. And then her feeling like she's breaking up the family somehow…” Amy shook her head.

“She'd probably rather blame herself for causing changes than put the blame where it truly belongs.”

Amy didn't understand. Gwen couldn't be talking about Joyce or Maggie. Phoebe wouldn't have minded blaming them.

“She doesn't want to blame your mother,” Gwen explained. “It seems harsh to blame the dead since so few of them choose to die, but if your mother hadn't died, your family would not have changed.”

That was probably true. Her mother had made the decisions; there had been no room for the others to act. If Mother were alive, Joyce and Maggie wouldn't have left. If Mother were alive, Giles and Phoebe wouldn't be getting a place of their own. If Mother were alive, Amy would have never met Jack.

She felt a shiver of guilt.

Gwen was still speaking. “And Phoebe doesn't want to be mad at your mother.”

“No, I'm sure she doesn't.”

Gwen tilted her head back and looked up the trees. “When John—my husband—died, I faced his death in stages. First, I admitted that he was dead on a normal weekday, and I could accept that because I was secretly counting on the fact that he'd be back for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It took me awhile to accept the completeness of it all, that he was really gone. I suspect that the lake was the one last place Phoebe has still been trying to keep your mother alive. Now she's having to face that she truly is dead, that she won't ever come back.”

So Phoebe was losing the lake and Mother.

Amy had prepared herself for losing the Olympics. She
had known precisely what to do when she started to lose…that's why she had won. But how could Phoebe have prepared herself for this?

“Getting a new cabin may be the only way for Phoebe to move on. As long as she keeps coming here, she'll feel like your mother's daughter,” Gwen continued. “But it does seem like a shame that they'll have to go so far. It's too bad there's no sites left on the lake.”

So much of the other side of the lake was marshy that every possible cabin site was built on. Very few cabins ever came up for sale. When the original owners got too old, someone in the family or a friend or a neighbor usually wanted the place.

Of course, there was still one site.

Amy spoke carefully. “I thought Giles wanted the six of them to start all over.”

“Yes, but if they were on the other side of the lake, they would still have the privacy that he's looking for. They couldn't be running over here every two seconds to eat breakfast with everyone, but Phoebe wouldn't feel that she was the one to break up the family summers.” Gwen shook her head. “It really is too bad there's not some place on this lake.”

But there was. And it was the loveliest site on the entire lake. With a beach so Giles would not have to climb down the steps. With a hundred acres so they could built whatever they wanted to build.

Yes, the road cut back into the forest to avoid the marsh, making the distance three times as long as it really was, but that would give Giles the sense that this was their own place, their own cabin. And if Jack was right, they could lay dock sections across the marsh so that the kids could run back and forth.

It was perfect. The Rim would be perfect for Phoebe and Giles, and it was Amy's. It was hers to give to them. A flood of joy gushed though her.

She wanted to dash back out to the porch.
Phoebe, Phoebe, I've got it. I solved your problem. Me, Amy the Afterthought. I'm going to fix everything
.

Phoebe and Giles's children were moving their things out of the bunkhouse, dashing along the path carrying clothes, stuffed animals, and sleeping bags. They were shouting, laughing, this morning's anguish forgotten. They did love the lake.

And Amy would make sure that they didn't lose it. This wasn't like hanging up the towels in the sauna; this was important. She had to tell someone. But not Phoebe, not yet. She was still on the porch with their father, perhaps still crying, still mourning the loss, not just of the lake but of their mother.

I can't bring Mother back. But I can let you keep the lake
.

She would tell Jack. That's what she would do. Until she could tell Phoebe, she would tell Jack.

He was more than someone to have fun with. He was someone she could share her thoughts with. This was new, this was wonderful. She didn't have to be alone in her family ever again, not with him a part of it.

She found him in the big garage. A long pole was propped up along three sawhorses, and he was sanding it, the sandpaper curved in his hand. He had the broad double door raised to make the most of the evening light.

He looked up. “Did you talk to your sister?”

So he already knew. “Yes.” She held up her hand, stopping him from saying something sympathetic or sorrowful. There was no need for sympathy or sorrow. Amy was going
to fix everything. “I have the most wonderful idea. What about if Phoebe and Giles built a place on the Rim?”

Jack was good at new ideas. He didn't need time to think. He would drop his sandpaper and stretch and smile. He would agree with her. He would think that this was perfect.

“Wouldn't it be exactly right?” she continued. “It's so beautiful there. They would have their own beach, so Giles wouldn't have to climb steps. They could be off by themselves, but still close enough to see the rest of us. Don't you think it's great? Isn't it perfect?”

Jack spoke slowly. “You'd give them the Rim?”

“Give, sell…I don't care. Wouldn't it solve everything?”

“But I thought you bought it, hoping that someday you'd have a place of your own on it.”

Amy waved her hand. “That was just the smallest part of it.” She had him. Why did she need her own cabin as long as she had him? “I really bought it to keep those developers out. And Phoebe needs it much more than I ever would.”

“That's probably true,” Jack conceded. “But how are you going to approach this with them? They don't even know that you own it.”

What was wrong with him? Why wasn't he excited about this? Couldn't he see that this was perfect? “You don't think this is such a good idea, do you?”

He nodded. “There is something that doesn't sit right with me.”

“What? What on earth could be wrong? I just don't see the problem.”

“I think I would have trouble accepting such a generous gift from my sister.”

“But this is different. This is the lake.”

He shrugged. “Would you give the whole tract or just the part on the lake?”

“I don't know.” She didn't care. “I could talk to Pam and David—they're the people who handle the money—if that would make you feel better.”

“My feelings aren't the issue here, but I do think you ought to slow down and think a bit before you do anything.” He was looking serious; then suddenly his expression cleared, and, just as she knew he would, he dropped his sandpaper and smiled. “Do you hear me? Telling someone else to slow down and think? That's what people are always saying to me.”

“And do you ever listen to them?”

“Rarely,” he admitted.

“Then I'll show you that I'm better than you, because I will listen to you. I will go slow, I will talk to David and Pam,” she promised. “But I'll still end up doing the same thing.”

“It's a generous thing to do.” He pulled off his leather work glove and lifted his hand to smooth a lock of her hair off her forehead. “It's crazy, but it is generous.”

“It's no crazier than something you would do.” How good it was to be standing this close to him.

“True,” he admitted. “But remember, even though you're crazy and I'm crazier, Giles and Phoebe are not.” His hand was on her shoulder now.

She slipped her arms around him. “Maybe they need to be a little crazy sometimes.”

And he would have agreed, she knew he would have, except that he was kissing her, his mouth warm on hers, his tongue—

Then it all happened so fast—footsteps, shadows in the broad door opening, all happening so fast that neither of them could move. Then came the gasps, Gwen's and Holly's voice calling out his name, and Phoebe's calling out hers.