Page 3 of Summer After Summer

“I’ve put you in your old room—hope you don’t mind. It’ll be hot as blazes most nights. The air is on the fritz, and we aren’t going to be fixing it before we leave.”

“William must be complaining about that.”

“We’ve put window units in his room and mine. They do all right. He spends most of the day at the club, so it’s not too bad, really.” Charlotte smiles, proud that she’s managed our father’s whims to a degree that kept his complaining to a minimum. William doesn’t suffer, well, anything, and has always been vociferous in his complaints at the least hint of discomfort.

“Is there a window unit for me?”

Charlotte raises a bony shoulder. “I didn’t know you’d be coming when I bought them.”

“Fair enough.”

Most days, the breeze from the ocean keeps the house tolerable for sleeping, but on a still night it can be murder on the third floor. When we were kids, we used to sleep in the summer house, but I’m not sure it’s hospitable now.

“You want to get your things?” Charlotte says. “It’s hot out here.”

I walk to the back of my car, not waiting for Charlotte to help, based on experience, but she surprises me by coming up to my shoulder and peering into the cargo area. “Is that all of it?”

“Everything but the furniture.”

“He’ll take that, I suppose?”

“I don’t care where it goes.”

I reach in and grab one of the suitcases and a large satchel that has my toiletries and overnight things. I decide to move the rest of it later. It’s coming up on five, and if there’s one thing I know without having to ask, it’s that cocktails will appear shortly, on the veranda. I need a gin and tonic (or ten) to wash the taste of today out of my mouth.

“Is Aunt Tracy here?” Every summer since my mother died, her best friend has been making us delicious meals. Cooking is her passion.

“She arrived a couple of weeks ago.”

“How’s she taking the sale?”

Charlotte shrugs, then tilts her head back and looks at the house. You need to do that to get it all in one view. “It’s funny to think of not living here. Sometimes I’m quite sad about it.”

She sounds sincere, but it’s often hard to know with Charlotte. It’s hard to know Charlotte. She’s always been a self-contained unit, even before our mother died. Afterward, she grew a shell around her that was hard to penetrate. Eventually, I stopped trying.

“Where will you go?”

“Not sure yet. But that man paid enough to settle all the debts and keep Father until the end of his days and then some. We’ll each get our share, so I’ll buy something, I think.”

All of this is new information to me, and my head’s playing catch-up. I latch onto the least confusing part of what she just said. “Who ended up buying it? No one told me.”

Charlotte turns toward me, her eyes as dark as beads. “You haven’t heard?”

“No. Who is it?”

“I can hardly believe it myself, and where he got the money, I don’t know, but it was Fred.”

CHAPTER TWO

June 2003

“I’m so bored,” Ashley says, swatting at a fly on her long, thin, already tanned legs.

We’re sitting at the pool at the Southampton Lawn and Tennis Club, facing the ocean. Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body” is playing on a loop on Ashley’s iPod, which is sitting between us on a small table, with two sweating Diet Cokes.

“You’ve only been here for two days,” I say.

Ashley checks her pale pink nails. “Bored.”

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