Read Summer's Song: Pine Point, Book 1 Online

Authors: Allie Boniface

Tags: #summer;small town;New York;Adirondacks;stalker;ex-husband;flashbacks;amnesia;repressed memory;accident;inheritance;carpenter;renovation;Victorian;museum curator;guitar;songwriting;sweet;sensual

Summer's Song: Pine Point, Book 1 (5 page)

BOOK: Summer's Song: Pine Point, Book 1
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She hadn’t known love could make her feel like this, like a helium balloon filled up to bursting. She adored him. And yes, she wanted to celebrate with him. God, more than anything. She wanted him to run his hands over her, to peel her clothes off the way he had last weekend when his parents were at the shore. But they had to take Donnie home first, or—

The other car came out of nowhere. Blinding lights. Grinding brakes. A snapping motion that engaged the airbag and bloodied her face. Tree limbs scratching at her arms and face. And the screaming, high-pitched and panicked in the dark.

“Summer? Summer?”

Something cold stiffened her spine. The voice came from somewhere over her shoulder, and she would have tried to see where, except she couldn’t move her arms and she couldn’t find her legs and all she could hear was her little brother looking for her—

Summer sucked in air and tried to stop her heart from leaping out of her chest.

“Why is this happening?” Her head dropped onto the steering wheel, and this time she gave in to the tears.

Stupid question
. She knew the answer. Everyone in the town knew. Three miles from this spot, ten years ago, her world had shattered. Her brother—gone. The life she’d known—fractured. She’d spent a decade trying to piece herself together again, but being back in Pine Point was stirring her up in ways she’d never dreamed possible. Summer pressed her lips together to try to keep her weeping at bay. She tried to recall her brother, the other driver, what had happened when the cops arrived. She couldn’t. She only remembered the blinding beam of a flashlight moving over the car. Sirens. Gabe’s hand in hers.

And a lot of questions she couldn’t answer.

Chapter Five

Summer eased her car into the last open space on the Hunter lawn, wondering again why she’d agreed to come to Rachael’s lake party. She had no time for this. She had less than a week before she left Pine Point, and if she could work a small miracle, she’d be gone even earlier. No more dizzy spells or memories of the accident since the other night at the motel, thank goodness, and that one she was chalking up to fatigue. Still, fear laced the hours now.

“Summer!” Rachael Hunter waved from the front porch of the ivy-covered house.

Summer climbed from her car and looked toward the oak that hid the water.
I climbed that tree
.
I sat in the branches and spied on Cat and his friends until the sun went down.
How many days had she spent here, basking in the warmth of Rachael and her family? How many times had she fled the emptiness of her own home, left her father sitting alone while she tried to find a place to feel normal? And why hadn’t she come back at least once in all the years since to visit her most loyal childhood friend?
Because I couldn’t cope. Not even with seeing Rachael.
Suddenly she felt much older than twenty-eight. She palmed the car keys and locked the doors before she remembered she was in the middle of farmland, not downtown San Francisco.

“God, ten years, Summer. Look at you! I can’t believe you’re really here!” Rachael met her halfway and flung her arms around her best friend.

“Me either.”

Rachael gave her a long look up and down. “You look good. Too thin, but good. How long are you staying?”

“Only a few more days.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I have a ton of work at the museum.”

“C’mon…you haven’t been back here since high school. Can’t you take some more time off? You’re still running that museum, right? You’re not dealing with anything that’s going anywhere.”

“Stop it.” Summer bristled. She hated when people spoke about her job, about the way she’d chosen to spend her life, like that. As if centuries long gone were somehow less significant than what happened in the here and now. Without understanding the past, she always explained to the doubters, people had no business living in the present. Everything linked together in a beautiful, complicated chain.

“Sorry. I just mean that the exhibits aren’t going to grow legs and walk away if you stay another week or two in Pine Point,” Rachael added. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too.”

Rachael blew platinum blonde strands of hair from her eyes and handed over a plastic cup. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now, anyway.”

Summer sipped from the cup and gagged. “God, what is this?”

“Some punch Cat made. Why? Is it bad?”

She grimaced. “It’s awful.”

“Thanks a lot.” A deep male voice spoke behind her.

She turned and stared. “Catfish?”

A tall twenty-five-year-old with white-blond hair identical to Rachael’s grinned at her. “Hey, Summer. Welcome back.” He paused and the playful light in his eyes dimmed. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

She continued to gape at Rachael’s little brother. “What happened to you?”

Cat’s expression changed to puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

She waved a hand. “You’re so…tall. When did you get all grown up?” When she left Pine Point, Catfish Hunter had been a cocky ninth-grader with acne and a bad haircut. Now he stood on the porch step below her, a man who’d grown about six inches and filled out.

He laughed. “Sprouted up in college.”

“You look good.” Summer shaded her eyes and remembered something else. “Do you go by Nathan now?”

Cat made a face. “Nah. I’ll always be Cat. Nickname’s too hard to break.”

Rachael stole her brother’s baseball cap and mashed it down on her head. “Besides, he still smells like a catfish. Don’t you ever wear deodorant?”

Cat grabbed for the hat but his sister dashed inside the screen door and vanished. He shrugged. “Some things never change, huh?”

“I guess not.”

He stood there a moment longer. “You’re not staying long, are you? Here in Pine Point?”

Summer shook her head. “It’s not my—I don’t—” How did she answer? She wanted to ask how
he
could stay here after everything that had happened, but she supposed Donnie’s classmates had survived better than his eighteen-year-old sister with a father who didn’t want her around as a reminder.

Cat loped down the porch steps. “Coming to the lake?”

“Later.” She waved and watched him disappear behind the oak trees, still amazed at the boy who had shed his awkward teenage skin for the shell of an adult.
He wears it well
. Still, he hadn’t had much choice. When you lost your best friend at barely thirteen, the rough adolescent years that followed hardened you up a bit. Calloused you. Made you old before you really wanted to be.

Summer climbed the steps and let herself into the house. Inside the foyer sat the same smiling gnome doorstop. The same fruit-patterned wallpaper peeled in the corners of the kitchen. If she tried hard enough, she could almost smell the chicken casserole that Mrs. Hunter used to cook every Friday night. Summer leaned against the breakfast bar. Suddenly, she was twelve years old again, sleeping over at her best friend’s house, playing hide-and-seek in the woods, sharing a tub of ice cream with Rachael and talking about boys in the dark, musty attic. “Where is everyone?”

Rachael sat at the dining room table munching on potato chips. “Mom dragged Dad to a quilt show over in Silver Valley. Everyone else is down at the lake.”

“Oh.” Summer exchanged Cat’s punch for a diet soda.

“So what’s it look like? From the inside, I mean.” Rachael asked.

“What?”

“The McCready house.
Your
house.”

“Oh, God. I don’t know. It’s a mess.” She thought of the crumbling stairs, the broken windows, the cemetery gate visible from the second story.

Rachael straightened her brother’s cap and propped her chin in one hand. “Remember when we used to go by there after school and dare each other to look in the windows?”

“Sure.” Two skinny, knobby-kneed girls darted into Summer’s memory.

“We never did, right?”

“Nope. We always chickened out.”

“And now you own the place.”

“So?”

Rachael shook her head. “You finally get to look in the windows. Get over your fears.”

Anxiety dimmed the edges of her peripheral vision, and Summer’s face flushed. She didn’t answer.

“Summer Thompson?” The cop took her arm in his strong grasp. “Can you hear me? Can you tell me who else was in the car with you?”

She shuddered and drank the rest of her diet soda without stopping for a breath.

“Hey, you okay? You look weird.”

“Yeah. Just tired.” She didn’t want to admit that the past was starting to pop into the present every time she turned another corner.

Rachael glanced out the window. “Oh, the guys are coming back in on the boat. Come on. I want to introduce you to someone.” She pulled on Summer’s wrist and dragged her outside.

“I don’t really know if—”

“Don’t say anything. Just let me introduce you. You’ll like him. He’s cute.”

“Rach, I’m only here for a few more days.”

“And what?” Rachael parked both her hands on generous hips. “You can’t have any fun in the meantime? Come on.” She tugged on her arm again, and this time Summer didn’t protest.

The roar of the boat engine grew as it coasted into the dock. In the boat, three bare-chested men held beers and laughed. A few hundred feet away, Cat reached an arm to help moor it.

Here at the edge of the lake, the lawn met the water’s edge in a crooked dirt line. No beach, just some frizzled grass that merged with sandy pebbles and disappeared. From there Pine Point Lake took over, spreading one mile wide and three miles long, gorgeous and blue under the sun. The Hunters had their own dock, as did everyone who owned lakefront property. Two teams of laughing men and women played water volleyball nearby, and bikini-clad women sunned themselves on a raft moored a few feet away.

Summer shaded her eyes. How was it possible that this place still smelled exactly the same, like wind and water and suntan lotion? Put her anywhere in the world and pipe in this scent, and she’d be a teenager again, watching the sun beat down on Pine Point Lake. For a moment she froze, afraid that another memory would darken her mind. None did. She let out a breath of relief.

Rachael hopped from one foot to the other on the scalding wooden dock. “You guys ready to do some skiing?”

Two of the men in the boat glanced over.
Sure,
one mouthed over the engine’s steady throb. He opened a fresh can of beer and lifted it in Summer’s direction.
Hi there.

Hi
, she mouthed back. He was good-looking, a little portly but with muscular arms and a buzz cut that showed off his dimples. The second guy reached out a hand to help her in, and she took it. He looked familiar, and she guessed they’d probably gone to school together, maybe a few years apart. As he shoved some towels off a damp seat for her, she tried to recall the bright brown eyes and the laugh that started in his chest and moved down to his belly.
George Hoskin’s little brother? Maybe—

But then the third occupant of the boat turned around to say hello, and her thoughts scattered.

Damian Knight.
The same wavy hair glinted in the sun. The same blue eyes lit up when he saw her. He raised one hand in greeting, and Summer waved hers in return. Her legs turned to Jell-o and she reached for the side of the motorboat to steady herself.

So Damian was one of Cat’s friends. The one Rachael meant to introduce her to? A smile crept onto her face. She’d almost forgotten how people’s lives wove themselves together in small towns, how everyone belonged to everyone else. Each person became a puzzle piece that locked together to make the town the living thing it was. No secrets here, and no strangers either.

“Hi again, Summer.”

Rachael’s eyes widened. “Again?”

“Damian’s working on the house with Mac.”
And lives on the property I’m about to sell.
Reality thudded against her heart.

“Oh, right. Forgot.” Rachael took her place behind the wheel, revved the boat’s engine and pulled the rope from the dock. The girls on the raft rolled over and waved as the boat passed. “So who’s skiing?”

Summer stumbled as they accelerated across the lake. She sank into the seat directly across from Damian and tried to read his expression. Was he irritated she’d come? Resentful that she owned the place he rented? Or shaken just a bit by their legs so close together, the way she was? She slipped her sunglasses into place and stared across the lake. She’d talk to him later, make him see that she was looking out for both their best interests. She didn’t think he’d mind moving. Renters knew houses might change hands over the years. Didn’t they?

Rachael offered her the skis twice, but Summer shook her head. She was content to watch the others skim across the water’s surface before they crashed into the waves and sucked in mouthfuls of Pine Point Lake. And she was more than content to watch the way Damian made them all look like amateurs as he cut in tight arcs across the boat’s wake on a single ski.

Rachael laughed as she spun the boat in circles, trying to make him fall, and Summer relaxed in slow degrees. She’d been right to come. Some part of her had missed this tradition of early summer on the lake. She’d missed her best friend smiling, the laughter ringing on the wind, the houses rushing by. She’d missed the way an afternoon on the water turned to a night filled with bonfires and drinking until everyone’s stomachs turned warm with alcohol and friendship and desire.

Summer ran her hands in the wake. After a while, Damian stretched out on the floor of the boat beside her, not speaking. Once he offered her a beer, and she took it. Their fingers brushed. Nothing touched but the space between them, yet the afternoon hummed with possibility.

* * * * *

“Race you to the water!” Rachael shouted and pulled off her bikini top.

“Oh, God.” Summer watched Rachael dart away and buried her face in her hands. Eight, eighteen, or twenty-eight, her best friend didn’t seem to have a problem taking off her clothes. Maybe that came from growing up on the water.

Dinner was over. Beer bottles lay scattered around the lawn. They’d barbequed over the open fire and toasted marshmallows as the sun and moon traded places in the sky. After dinner Summer had thought about driving back to the motel to work on some press releases, but two margaritas later she’d abandoned the notion.

A few others followed Rachael, and soon six or seven naked behinds bounced across the lawn and into the starlit lake. In another minute, the sounds of splashing and laughing echoed through the darkness. Summer smiled. True, some things never changed. There was something sensual about warm water splashing over bare skin. She’d tried skinny dipping a few times, but only on the cloudiest of nights, when Cat and his friends were far from the house. Tonight she had no intention of baring anything.

She sat on the bottom porch step and leaned back on her elbows. The bonfire smoldered close by and darkness wrapped her in comforting arms.

“Summer?”

She jumped.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Damian materialized from the driveway and sat beside her.

“Oh.” She let out a breath. “You didn’t. Not really.” She moved an inch or so away from him, distracted by the heat from his arm so close to hers.

“You’re not swimming?”

“I do my swimming with a suit. And I forgot mine.” Summer stuck her hands under her thighs. “What about you?”

He shrugged. “Not in the mood.” He studied her. “Make any decisions about the house?”

“Ah, well, I’m trying, you know, to make sure…” She couldn’t lie to him. Sadie had told her that selling the place with a rental contingency could take twice as long as without it. “I think you might end up having to move. I’m sorry.”

He dug in the dirt with a stick. “We’ve been there for almost three years.”

“Trying to make me feel guilty?”

BOOK: Summer's Song: Pine Point, Book 1
11.01Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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