Page 7 of Summer After Summer

“I’ve got it,” Ashley says, taking out a Black Amex that belongs to her father. “You take cards?”

“Cash only.”

“Hmm.” Ashley taps the card against her chin. “We’re good for it, obviously.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get cash up front. Don’t want to get fired during my first week.”

“Of course not,” I say, tugging on Ash’s arm to keep her from embarrassing me any further. “We’ll do it another time.”

“I’m here every day,” Fred says to me with that same slow smile.

The tips of my ears are burning, and it’s not from the sun. “Good to know.”

He raises his eyebrows twice quickly, then turns back to Becky, who’s got her arms crossed in a way my mom always used to tell me made me look like a spoiled brat.

“Come on,” I say to Ash. “Hopefully they take your card at the Shack.”

We walk toward the parking lot where the Shack sets up its food truck in the summer. I glance back at Fred, hoping to get a last look at him so I can memorize what he looks like. Becky’s still talking at him, but he’s watching us, watching me, and when our eyes lock, his grin goes wide, and I’m definitely feeling something, though it’s hard to describe what it is.

I think it means I want him to kiss me, but that’s silly because we only just met.

“I told you going to the beach was a good idea,” Ashley says as Fred gives me a friendly wave.

My hand raises to repeat his gesture. “I’ll never doubt you again.”

CHAPTER THREE

June 2023

“Fred Webb?” I say to Charlotte as I struggle to bring my bags through the ornate front door. As predicted, Charlotte’s interest in my things was purely sociological.

“Do we know another Fred?”

“I don’t know,” I say petulantly. “Do we?”

“We do not.”

I pull the suitcase over the threshold and drop my bags onto the black and white marble floor. Cold in winter, slippery in summer, it’s classically beautiful and totally impractical. But my mother loved it, and like too much in this family, if she dictated it, then it stayed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Charlotte gives me an elegant shrug of the shoulder, but I know why. If I knew that Fred had anything to do with the sale, I wouldn’t have come home, no matter how much I wanted to get out of New York.

Damn it.

I breathe in and out slowly as the house’s smell envelops me. Lemon-scented cleaner and the deep tang of the ocean that you can hear if you stand still. It was the lullaby of my childhood, and even now, whenever I sleep near the ocean, I feel at peace.

But not today.

“Have you seen him?” I ask. “Fred?”

“It was all done through the lawyers.”

I can hear my heart hammering in my ears. Fred. Fred. Fred.

If I were smart, I’d wheel my bag right back out of here and drive somewhere else.

But I’ve never been smart where Fred is concerned.

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