Page 8 of The Summer Guests

Reuben

The summer people were back.

As Reuben Tarkin paddled his kayak on Maiden Pond, he surveyed which of the seasonal cottages were now occupied and which still stood empty, awaiting the annual return of their owners. He had lived all his life on this pond, through sixty-five years of ice storms and mud seasons, through hot summer nights so suffocating he’d lie sweating and sleepless next to his rattling fan. He knew the rhythms and the seasons of the pond so well that he could predict when the first red-breasted robins would arrive in the spring, when the annual chorus of spring peepers would be succeeded by the croaks of bullfrogs, and when the newly hatched loon chicks would make their first appearance as bits of dark fluff, piggybacking atop their mothers.

He also knew, just as intimately, the annual comings and goings of Maiden Pond’s human population.

Arthur Fox was usually the first to arrive for the season, sometimes as early as May, when the weather was still unsettled and the water far too cold to swim in. This year, Arthur had shown up the second week of June, pulling up at his cottage in a sleek blue Mercedes with New York plates. He’d wasted no time hauling out his deck furniture and dragging his canoe out of storage and down to the water’s edge. Arthur waseighty-two years old, but he was still fit enough to haul his own wooden float into the pond, a strenuous task that summer people usually hired local muscle to attend to. He seemed to exult in the challenge of physical labor. The wealthy often liked to masquerade as common folk, and Maine was where they came to indulge that fantasy. This afternoon, Arthur had stripped off his shirt to play the part of rustic gardener as he enthusiastically lopped off the low-hanging branches that blocked his water view. As Reuben glided past in his kayak, Arthur spotted him and abruptly stopped cutting branches. He didn’t say a word to Reuben, didn’t smile or wave; no one ever waved at Reuben Tarkin. Instead, Arthur just glared at him with a look that said:I’m watching you.

Reuben paddled toward the next cottage. Hannah Greene’s.

Hannah was stretched out on a lounge chair, sunning herself on her back deck. At sixty-one, Hannah had grown plump, and with her winter-white skin she looked like a lump of bread dough left to rise in the heat. She’d inherited the cottage from her parents, the late Dr. and Mrs. Greene of Bethesda, and along with the cottage, she’d also inherited her parents’ antipathy toward Reuben. Perhaps she sensed his gaze as he paddled closer, or perhaps she heard the splash of his paddle in the water, because she suddenly sat up in her lounge chair and looked at him. Like Arthur Fox, Hannah did not smile or wave. Instead, she got up from the chair, went into her house, and closed the door.

Reuben paddled on.

At the next cottage, he stopped paddling and simply let his kayak drift, past the private dock, past the wide lawn where two canoes rested on the grass. This was the largest house on Maiden Pond, the house they called Moonview because it faced east toward both the rising sun and the rising moon. Even before the Conovers arrived, he’d known they were coming because he’d seen the housekeepers and gardeners and the caretaker at work, preparing the house for their return. Reuben’s modest little shack sat directly across the pond from Moonview, and over the years, through his living room window, he’d observed the comings and goings of the Conover family. He’d been nine years old whenElizabeth and George Conover, young marrieds then, bought the house on Maiden Pond. He’d watched as they’d expanded and updated the sprawling cottage to accommodate their growing family. He’d tangled more than once with their older son, Colin, a golden-haired, strapping boy who liked to stand with his arms crossed, always spoiling for a fight, unlike the younger boy, Ethan, who was forever hiding behind a book.

As the years passed, the house continued to expand to accommodate Colin and his ice-blond princess of a wife, and then their baby boy and their nanny. Of the entire Conover clan, the nanny was the only one who ever looked at Reuben as if he were human. As if he was worthy of a smile, a wave.

Until the family turned the nanny against Reuben too.

He dipped his paddle and stopped the kayak dead in the water. For a moment he merely bobbed in place, eyeing Moonview. A table and six chairs were outside on the deck, and upstairs, all the windows were open, airing out winter’s stale air. He’d heard George Conover passed away a few months ago, but George’s widow, Elizabeth, was back, as was her older son, Colin, and his family. Her younger son, Ethan, had not visited in years, which made Reuben think there’d been a falling-out, a rift in the family.

So he was surprised to see Ethan emerge from the house and walk down the lawn, toward Moonview’s dock, where a woman was standing. He’d never seen this woman before. She was slim, with brown hair, and she waved at Reuben, a friendly gesture that so startled him that he was too paralyzed to wave back.She doesn’t know yet,he thought.She doesn’t know she should be afraid of me.

There was a teenage girl, too, a sprite in a purple bathing suit who was gliding through the pond like some water creature, half nymph, half fish. Another visitor he’d never seen before. He’d heard that Ethan Conover finally married, and when he saw Ethan put his arm around the woman, he realized this must be the new wife and stepdaughter. So the whole Conover family was back in Maine, presumably for George Conover’s memorial service.

May the bastard rot in hell.

Reuben turned his kayak away from Moonview and began paddling toward the opposite shore. His sister would be awake from her nap by now, and she needed his help transferring from the bed to her wheelchair. She needed to be bathed; then there was dinner to prepare and the kitchen to tidy up and Abigail’s pills to dispense. An evening of duties stretched before him, but this moment on the pond was his to savor, his kayak gliding across the sunset-gilded water, the dragonflies flitting on the surface.

Then he glanced back at Moonview, looming across the water, its chimneys like talons clawing the sky, and he shuddered.Everything is about to change,he thought.The Conovers are back in town.

Chapter 5

Susan

Susan woke up to the melody of a house finch singing its heart out. She was usually the first in the family to get up in the morning, so she was surprised to look at Ethan’s side of the bed and find it was empty. In Boston, it wasn’t birdsong that normally roused her awake but the early-morning roar of buses and trash trucks outside their apartment building. How luxurious it was to be lazing in bed at nine thirty, with nothing on her schedule except perhaps a swim in the pond, or a drive into the village of Purity. This was how every holidayshouldbe, waking up late every morning to the tantalizing smell of coffee. Made, for once, by someone else in the household.

She pulled on jeans and a button-down shirt and followed the delicious scent downstairs to the kitchen. There she found Ethan sitting at the breakfast table, papers spread out in front of him, his pen scribbling furiously. He didn’t even glance up as she walked barefoot into the room. Oh, she recognized that look of fierce concentration on his face. She didn’t want to interrupt him, so she went to the coffeepot and quietly poured herself a cup. Only when she took out the cream and closed the refrigerator door did Ethan snap straight, suddenly aware that she was in the room.

“Hey,” he said, pulling off his glasses.

“Hey, back. What’s all this?” She nodded at the pages, which were covered with his hastily scribbled words.

“It’s coming.” He laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “It’s finally coming!”

“That story you’ve been working on?”

“No, this is something entirely new. I don’t know what happened. I woke up this morning, and it all justclicked. Like a switch suddenly got turned on, and the words started flowing. Maybe it’s being back on the pond again after all these years. Remembering all the things that happened here, all the stories I heard as a kid. Or maybe I just needed to get the hell out of Boston.”

Where a cloud of failure had hung over him like a depressing miasma, choking off his words. For the first time in months, she saw the Ethan she’d married, the happy Ethan, sitting before her.

“Now I wish I’d brought my laptop,” he said.

“You seem to be turning out pages just fine without it.” She picked up his empty coffee cup and refilled it for him. “Whereiseveryone?”

“Mom and Arthur went to meet the minister who’ll be leading the service. Colin and Brooke are off shopping, I think. Kit’s still in bed.” He shrugged. “Teenagers.”

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