That Summer Place (7 page)

C
atherine was forty-seven years old and she still didn’t understand men.

For a brief moment she wondered if she had imagined what had happened between them in the woods. If so, she had one heck of an imagination. Perhaps, if she didn’t get the Letni account, she should switch professions and try writing romance novels.

Dana and Aly came around the corner of the house. They were arguing until they spotted Catherine.

“Mom!” Dana came hobbling toward her dragging a rusty old bike with bent handle bars, a crooked seat, no tires and only one wheel. “Look at this!”

It was awful. She frowned at it. “Must I?”

“These are the only bikes in the basement.”

“Are you sure?” She turned to Aly who hadn’t yet reached the age where she needed to always be on the offensive.

Aly nodded. “That’s the best bike of the bunch. It has a wheel.”

Catherine tried to sound cheery. “Then we’ll have to spend our time sailing instead.”

Dana gave a bitter laugh. “In what?”

“There’s a sailboat. I’m sure it’s in the boathouse.”

“Oh.” Dana had that sassy look about her. “You mean that sailboat?” She waved a hand toward the beach.

“What sailboat?”

“That one. The one we pulled out while you were in the house.” Dana pointed to a lump of green, algae-covered sticks and black boards.

If you really stretched your imagination—perhaps into another dimension—it could have once been a small boat.

“Mom, you can’t make us stay here. It’s sooooo awful.” Dana was whining like she had when she was three.

Aly didn’t look much happier. She was staring at the bicycle as if it were a broken doll.

“Catherine?” Michael came around the other side of the house.

Great, Catherine thought, rubbing her hands over her eyes for a moment. Just great.

Michael held out his hand. “Here’s your problem.”

No, she thought. My biggest problems—all three of them—are standing right in front of me. Then there were her inanimate problems—the broken bike and the sailboat from the River Styx.

She stared at the silver mechanism in his hand. Another problem? Probably. Her eyes almost glazed over. “What is it?”

“The sparking mechanism.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He kept looking at her as if she should understand why he was holding that metal gadget in his big hand.

She shrugged and threw up her hands. “So?”

“Your ignitor is bad.”

Not in the woods it wasn’t, she thought. I could have lit the whole island. Which is why I’m staying a good distance away from you, Michael Packard.

“You won’t have any hot water.”

“Mo-ther!”

She held up a hand. “Not now, Dana.”

“We have to leave. We just have to. You dragged me away from all my friends.” Dana’s voice cracked. “There’s nothing to do on this dumb island but run from snakes.” She shuddered and hugged herself. “The bikes are broken and that sailboat won’t even float. You promised this would be fun. Now we can’t even take a shower!” Dana burst into tears and ran into the house.

Catherine wanted to cry, too.

Aly looked at her. “She bragged to all her friends that she was going to learn how to sail.”

Catherine nodded. Sailing was something she had promised Dana for years. Bad mothers don’t keep their word. The phrase chanted through her mind as if there was a guilt devil on her shoulder reminding her over and over.

Would this failed vacation matter in five years? Maybe. Would they be able to laugh about this someday? That she didn’t know.

She sighed because there wasn’t much else she could do. She slid her arm around her youngest daughter. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I guess this was all a big mistake.”

“That’s okay, Mom.” Aly patted Catherine’s hand. “I know you tried to make this trip fun even if it isn’t.”

Well, that about said it all. Her daughters were both miserable.

Aly hugged her back, then turned and walked toward the house with her small shoulders hunched and her head down.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Catherine.”

She looked up at Michael. “I had such high hopes.” She sighed. “I wanted the island to be special to them, too. I’m a lousy parent.”

“Looks like you’re their only parent.”

She nodded.

“Where’s their father?”

“Dead.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be. We divorced eight years ago. He died a couple of years later.”

Michael only stood there, looking at her as if he were searching for important answers that were hidden somewhere deep in her eyes.

“Okay, Catherine. What did he do to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

She was quiet for a long time. She stared at some spot over his shoulder because it was that hard for her. She couldn’t even look at him as she said, “He walked out on us.”

Michael swore under his breath.

“Aly was only three, so she doesn’t remember much. But Dana was seven. Even with counseling I don’t think she ever understood why he left.”

“Why did he leave?”

“Because we were too much for him to handle. Tom was different. A free spirit. He needed to chase his rainbows. Something I never saw in him until it was too late. He wanted a wife and children, until he had them.” She shrugged. “Then we were a responsibility. It took me a while to admit and understand that he could never commit to anything. It wasn’t just us. He had twelve different jobs in the ten years we were married, each one a bigger dream than the last.”

Michael didn’t say anything. Now that he had his answer, he looked as if he wanted to take back the question.

“But that was all a long time ago. Before he died I think I finally understood that he loved us. As much as it was in him to love someone other than himself.

“So.” She waved her hand at the gadget he was holding. “There’s no hot water without that…thing?”

He shook his head.

She gave him a weak smile and a shrug to cover up her disappointment. “Well, then. I guess we’ll be leaving on Thursday.”

He didn’t say anything but seemed a million miles away.

She wondered what he thought of her and her past. She spoke openly because that was how she always dealt with her failed marriage, honestly. But it was a chink in her pride to admit that she had failed at something so very important.

She straightened, squared her shoulders back and held out her hand. “Thank you.”

He tossed the gadget into his shirt pocket, wiped his hand on his jeans and took her hand. “Catherine.”

It took every ounce of her pride and control to act natural. “Michael.” Her voice came out in a raspy whisper, as if it knew this was the last time she would say his name, knew that there wouldn’t be a bittersweet meeting in another thirty years.

She shook his hand, then quickly pulled hers away. She turned around, trying to hold on to a slim thread of dignity, and walked up the porch steps.

She could feel him watching her. His eyes could still do that, hold on to her as surely as if he’d used his hands to grip her shoulders.

She stopped and turned.

He hadn’t moved. His hands were shoved into his pockets as if he didn’t know what to do with them. She remembered that about him. The way he would hide his hands. She loved his hands.

He was still looking at her.

She gripped the porch railing because sometimes you just had to hold on to something to get through a certain kind of moment. “It was great to see you again.”

She gave him a forced smile, one that covered up how she was really feeling.

It was great to have you look at me that way again. It was great to hear your voice again. It was great to kiss you again and feel your hands on me again.

It was great, but it wasn’t enough.

And she walked into the old house.

“No, I haven’t lost my mind. Have them bring it to the slip this afternoon. And make sure there’s a towline.” Michael crossed the cabin, his cellular phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder.

“They’ll do it. Gladly. I spend enough money with them.” Michael grabbed his running shoes and moved over to the chair.

“Then call Valiant Supply and have them deliver that part.” He sat down and stuck his feet into his shoes, then tied the laces while his assistant wrote down the part number. “I’ll be there by four. Meet me at the slip.”

Michael flipped the phone closed and shrugged into his jacket, then slipped on a Mariners baseball cap. He went to the kitchen, opened a drawer and pulled out a bag.

A minute later he left the cabin at a half trot. He moved down to the dock, her words running over and over in his mind.

I wanted the island to be special to them, too.

All those years ago he had clung to the idea that she had run from him as fast as she could, young and scared and overwhelmed by that last summer. By him. Caught between him and her father’s iron hand and all-too-real threats.

A month later boot camp had been a welcome escape. There, he’d been too tired to think for all those months. But it had been different when he got to Nam.

He saw her face on every tree in the jungle. In every muddy river or rice paddy. It was her face he saw whenever he closed his eyes, haunting him as surely as if her image had been tattooed there.

This time he wasn’t going to let her go so easily. Not again.

Some fifteen minutes later he had the plugs and points back into his boat engine. He turned the key and fired it up, then he sped toward the mainland.

C
atherine was standing on the dock the next morning when Michael sailed into the cove on a sleek white sailboat with wicked red sails.

He waved and called out her name.

She walked to the edge of the dock as he sailed toward her. Suddenly it was that last summer all over again, as if thirty years hadn’t passed by, but time and life had just frozen in this one instant of déjà vu.

“Hey!”

She smiled.

He tossed her the line, which she tied onto one of the cleats.

“Thanks.” He stood, then stepped on the dock, and the air around her grew thick and warm.

He was wearing a pair of cutoffs and a white cotton shirt with the sleeves shoved up his arms and the tails out and halfway unbuttoned. His dark hair was wind tousled, and he hadn’t shaved. His beard was dark and scruffy and sexy as all get-out. He looked like an older more weathered version of JFK Jr.

She crossed her arms. “How did you manage to get that dark of a tan in the Northwest this time of year? It always rains until June or July.”

“I didn’t. I got it in Cabo.” He stopped and added, “On a fishing trip.”

Cabo San Lucas? Well, she thought, they said the dollar went pretty far in Mexico these days. And his financial status was none of her business, she told herself.

“Do you think your daughters would like to sail in this?”

“Oh, Michael. Anyone would like to sail in that!” She looked at the boat and got choked up. “It almost looks new.”

“I take care of my things,” was all he said, then he grabbed a sack, stuck of couple of colored tools in his back pockets and turned back to her. “I got to thinking last night about that ignitor.”

“Oh my. What an exciting life you must have.”

He looked down at her through narrowed eyes. “Now I see where your daughter gets her smart mouth.”

Catherine rolled her eyes. “Every sassy thing I have ever said has come back to haunt me. Now what was so interesting about the ignitor?” She placed her hand on his arm. “And don’t get too technical, okay? I don’t sleep well standing up.”

He laughed and held up the sack. “I think I’ve found the solution.”

“You can fix it?”

“Let’s just say that it might work now.”

“If you can get the boiler working we won’t have to leave.”

“I know.”

She looked up at him, at the pleased look on his face. He wanted them to stay. Ohmygod, but she was in trouble and she was so happy about it she almost shouted out loud.

“Go get your daughters ready for a day of sailing, Squirt, and I’ll see if I can’t get that boiler going.” He winked, then a moment later disappeared around the corner of the house.

Laughing, Catherine sliced her fists through the air. “Yes!” Then she ran up the steps and called her girls.

The sailboat sliced through the water, leaving a stringy trail behind it. They had been on the boat all morning, during which time Michael had shown Dana and Aly how to work the lines and jib. To her daughters’ surprise, Catherine had helped him coach them, then sat back watching them make their accomplishments and their mistakes. She never criticized them, but let them learn on their own.

She seemed relaxed and ready to just have fun, as if this kind of outing was a rare and unique moment in her life. It was one of the things he remembered about her, her ability to take the most joy from a moment no matter how trivial it might seem to everyone else.

Even now her arms were resting casually on the rim of the boat and her blond hair was flying back with the wind. She was laughing at something Aly said, and watching her made him smile.

She leaned forward, opened a cooler. “Here.” She handed him a beer.

He leaned closer to take it and their bare knees touched. She looked startled, as if she’d just gotten a shock.

He smiled to himself and leaned back, then let the wind take them through the channel while he took a swig of beer.

She hadn’t moved her knees.

Both her girls had been eager to watch and try to work the sails themselves. Dana was like a different person. No more playing the role of moody teen.

There was a strange kind of intensity about her. She had watched him, every single movement, as if he were a textbook on how to sail. Focused and serious, she took it all in. She wanted to do well. You could see the determination in her face. There was a drive in this girl that was different from both Aly and Catherine. He’d seen this same kind of drive in the men he did business with, the successful ones. This kid had potential.

Aly sat back after she had popped open a Coke. She looked at him. “Do you know why the water is blue?”

“No.”

“It’s blue because every color of the spectrum—like the colors in a rainbow—is inside each molecule of water. When light shines through it, the colors reflect back.” She took a drink and swallowed. “Sometimes it’s blue, sometimes it’s green. The whole process all depends on the amount of light and depth of the water.”

Michael looked at her. “I never learned that in school.”

“I didn’t learn it in school.”

Catherine gave him a smile. “Aly’s a walking fount of information.”

“Mom.”

Catherine laughed. “Well, you are. You learned to ask questions when you were two years old and you haven’t stopped since.” She looked at him. “She doesn’t stop until she finds out an answer that satisfies her.”

“She doesn’t always find the answer to every question, though,” Dana said. “Toss me something to drink, will you?”

Aly handed her a soda and sighed. “I still want to know why fingers aren’t all the same size.”

Michael looked down at his hands and wondered why that question had never crossed his mind. “She has a point.”

“Aly’s destined to be a scientist, I think.” The look Catherine gave her younger daughter was filled with love and pride and all those things that he saw again and again in his friends who had children.

“I’m going to be an actress,” Aly announced. “Someone truly wonderful like Winona Ryder.”

“Okay, sweetie. You can be an actress. Dana can be something useful like a lawyer.” Catherine smiled.

“You always say that, Mom.” Dana obviously didn’t want to be an attorney.

“But you argue so well, honey. Of course maybe you can be a political analyst instead.”

Michael called, “Coming about!” And the boat swung into the wind.

Dana ducked under the boom so perfectly you’d have thought she’d been sailing all her life. “I don’t know what I want to be.” She looked at Michael, almost as if she were seeking approval, like she wanted to know that it was okay to be undecided.

He finished off his beer and set the bottle down. Then he looked right at Dana. “I expect Dana will be anything she wants to be.” He gave her a wink.

A moment later, for the very first time, she smiled at him.