Summer's End (36 page)

Gwen had been listening. She too seemed pleased. “Can I assume that five years from now you are going to be running passenger service to the moon?”

“No. I think I'm out of the business world for a while.
I've been talking to the Red Cross. They seem to think that once I learn to fly a helicopter, they could probably use me at disaster sites.”

“Jack!” Gwen stared at him, surprised. “The Red Cross? I had no idea you were thinking about anything like that.”

“
I
wasn't. It was Amy here.” He jerked his thumb in her direction. “Apparently she can't stand to be seen in public with me because I perform no public service.”

“That's true,” Amy agreed. “But I also don't like the way you dress.”

Gwen was shaking her head, not because she disapproved but because she was surprised.

“I know Dad wanted me to join the navy,” Jack said, “but I don't think that would have been such a great idea.”

“I know that,” Gwen murmured. “I've always known that.”

“But I think this should be okay. Since I don't need to worry about money for a while, I can stay a volunteer and keep pretty clear of the bureaucracy while still managing to do some good.”

“This might be the thing for you,” Gwen said slowly. “It really might be.” And Amy felt her hand being squeezed surprisingly hard. It was Gwen, thanking her.

They both understood what had happened. Working up here in these silent woods, Jack had laid a ghost to rest.
I'll be doing something that counts, Dad. You'd be proud. I have not let you down
.

The drive passed quickly. Even though Jack spent it describing in detail what he had been doing, even though he had said he had had a couple of guys come help him, Amy was still amazed when they got to the lake. The big
garage, which had once been storage space for Giles's boat and ten-year-old cans of unusable paint, Jack had finished into a pleasant, comfortable living space. He had insulated the walls and paneled them with pine. He had enlarged the windows, tiled the floor, and put in two wood-burning stoves, one sleek and efficient, the other an old, hulking cast-iron beast with burner plates on the top and a water tank at the side.

Installed along one wail were the stove, sink, and counters. “The lady at the lumber yard,” Jack said, “laid this out so that two or three people can work at once. She said it will be awful for just one person, but it's ideal for a crowd.”

Such was the plan. When Hal and Gwen or any other small party was here alone, they would cook and eat in their cabin. But when everyone was together, they would open the garage. Then the cabins would become private, the garage public.

Hal had told Jack to go ahead and get new furniture, which Jack had done by walking into discount furniture shops and pointing. He had ordered two complete “suites” of living room furniture: one had a sofa, two big chairs, and assorted tables; the other had a sofa, love seat, and assorted tables. One was gray, the other an oatmeal tweed. The gray was a stone gray, and the oatmeal blend had more taupe in it than brown, so the two upholstery fabrics looked almost adequate together. Gwen and Amy believed that was simply luck. They could have been pearl gray and tan, and Jack would have bought them.

“Do you think he's color-blind?” Amy whispered to Gwen.

“No. We had him tested when he was little. He just doesn't care.”

How ironic that she, of all people, should fall in love with someone who didn't—

She stopped herself.
Fall in love?
Why had she thought that?

Because it was true. The flood of joy she felt every time she saw him or spoke to him…if that was just sex, she would have felt the tingling lower down. This sensation started in her chest, spreading quickly down her arms, up the back of her neck. Every hour she spent with him made it clearer and clearer. There would never be another man more important to her than he was. He would always be the one she thought of first, the one she turned to first. She didn't need to be with him to love him. She only needed to be herself and have him be himself.

So what did this mean? She didn't know. But the holiday weekend would tell them so much. They should share Thanksgiving with the family and then see. On Sunday when the holiday was over, she would speak. On Sunday they would talk.

The family was two strands of beads that had been joined together by the clasp of Hal and Gwen's marriage. As the two youngest of their generation, she and Jack had been the last bead on each strand, and the danger had been that the two of them would slip off and roll together into some dusty hidden corner. Then in the case of her family, the other beads might have fallen off as well, Ian staying in California, forever struggling to hold his marriage together, and Phoebe forcing herself to be content with some other lake.

But a necklace is a circle, and this family would become a circle only if the two loose ends met and joined. Amy and Jack were those two ends.

Amy could not think analytically; she knew truth through metaphors. This metaphor told her the opposite of what everyone had said in the summer. She and Jack were not a threat to the family; the family would be stronger, it would endure more as a circle than as a strand.

Jack had certainly turned the garage into a space that was right for this new family, even though at the moment it looked blank and a bit uninviting. There was nothing on any of the surfaces, and Jack, skilled interior designer that he wasn't, had arranged the furniture precisely as it had been in the discount showroom—gray on one side, oatmeal on the other.

So Gwen and Amy set to work. They moved furniture, blending the two sets. From the upper shelves of the cabin closets, from boxes stored underneath beds, they found lap quilts and extra pillows. From the tops of the bookcases they rescued pretty bits of wood, glittering rocks, and interesting shells that two generations of children had been collecting. They selected the best and arranged them on the tables.

They set up systems, figured out ways of doing things, where people would wash their hands, where they would hang their coats. At night, rather than heat the other cabins, the three of them slept in the garage. Both sofas were sleepers, folding out into queen-size beds, and Amy and Gwen shared one bed while Jack was in the other.

True to her plan, Amy had not told him that she loved him, but he knew. He had realized it on Friday, the first night they were there.

Gwen was already in bed, and Amy was curled up under a quilt on the love seat in front of the airtight stove. The stove didn't have the romance of an open fireplace, but it put out a comforting heat, and there was a tem
pered glass door through which she could see the moving flames.

Jack was brushing his teeth at the washstand Amy and Gwen had set up near one of the doors. Amy heard him rinse and spit, followed by some rattling and rustling as he put things away.

Then he came over to the stove and, hooking his foot around the leg of Amy's love seat, inched it back a bit. He lowered himself to the floor, sitting in front of the fire, his legs pulled up, his elbows on his knees, his back resting against the base of the love seat.

His head, his thick, rumpled, curly, sexually symbolic chestnut hair, was near Amy's waist. She pulled her hand out from under the quilt and touched his hair.

He went still. His breath caught and held. He understood.

He didn't move. He was breathless. The floor was disappearing beneath him; he was tumbling, gasping for air and light. Amy knew it as surely as if it were happening to her.

He let his head drop, and his hands made a tent in front of his face. He could have been at prayer.

I don't deserve this
. Amy could hear his thoughts as clearly as if he were speaking.
She loves me, and I do not deserve it
.

Yes, you do
, her thoughts answered.
Yes, you do
.

He reached back and took her hand, bringing it around. He opened her fingers and kissed her palm.

“Why aren't you looking at me?” she whispered.

“I'm afraid that I'll find out that it isn't true.”

“But it is.”

For the moment that was enough. They both knew, they both believed.

 

No one else was supposed to arrive until late Wednesday, but Tuesday afternoon they heard a car on the trail. They assumed it was someone from one of the other cabins, but then the car slowed and turned into their drive. Amy and Gwen looked at each other. Who could it be?

It was Hal and little Claire. “I couldn't keep away,” he said as he hugged Gwen and Amy and took Jack by the shoulder while shaking his hand. “So I taught my eight
A.M.
class, kidnapped my friend here, and hit the road.”

“We brought milk,” Claire said proudly. “I remembered.”

“That's wonderful,” Gwen lied. “We would have been in trouble if you hadn't.”

Of course, the problem with milk now was not keeping it cold, but keeping it from freezing.

Phoebe's family was leaving Iowa City on Wednesday noon as soon as the second-grade Multicultural Thanksgiving feast was over, and they arrived in the evening with a station wagon so crammed that it was a good thing Claire had come up with her grandfather. There might not have been room even for her slender little body.

No one had had time to admire the garage, much less unload the station wagon when a third car pulled in. It was Ian. He had stopped at the Hibbing airport to pick up Holly.

The lights of his car swept across the garage windows, and everyone dashed outside. Only Gwen had the sense to get her coat, so they all danced up and down, rubbing their hands along their arms, waiting for him to ease into a spot between two Norways. It was dark out, and so they couldn't see inside the car, but Amy moved toward the passenger side, wanting to be among the first to greet Holly.

Then a shout went up. “Nick!”

There were indeed three adult shapes getting out of the car, Ian, Holly, and—most unexpectedly—Nick.

It was fifteen minutes before the clamor eased. Alex wanted to show Scott the hot-water tank. Gwen had to mop up the resulting puddle. Ian was amazed at the garage; he didn't know what to look at first. Phoebe and Giles were dying to explore and get ideas for their new cabin. Holly loved, just
loved
, the new makeup brushes Amy had suggested she buy. Ellie wanted everyone to know that Nick was completely responsible for how great things were going with her new boyfriend. Thomas was toddling around looking for new, interesting ways to injure himself, and Claire was telling people that it was fine if they hadn't stopped to buy milk because she had remembered to have Grandpa do it.

Eventually those who cared were settled enough to find out why Nick had come.

“Don't get us wrong,” Gwen assured him. “We're thrilled, but it is a surprise. I can't believe that your mother and grandmother let you come.”

“Well…” Nick drawled out the word. “
Letting
me come…that's not exactly what happened, but they do know where I am,” he added quickly. “I didn't run away.”

“Why don't you start at the beginning?” Hal suggested.

“It started when I was here last summer. I decided that I want to know who my father is. I'm sick of not knowing.”

“You don't know who your father is?” Jack grimaced. “I hated not knowing
what
Dad was doing, where the boats were going and what their mission was, all that. But at least I knew
who
he was.”

“So what does this have to do with your being here now?” Giles asked.

“It's been bugging me more and more, the not knowing. Finally I decided to do something about it. I'm boycotting family holidays until they tell me or at least until they tell a lawyer who will tell me when I'm eighteen. At first I thought I'd just stay in my room, but that's what I do all the time anyway, so I called Holly to see if I could hitchhike down to New York to see her. She said you were all coming here, and she sent me a plane ticket. So if you're glad to see me, thank her. It's her dime.”

Holly waved her hand. “It was nothing really.”

“How long will it take this to work?” Giles asked. “When will they tell you?”

“One Christmas is all it will take.” Nick was confident. “They both make a big deal out of Christmas; they like to do all these crafty-type things to decorate. Gold spray paint and hot glue are our version of glad tidings of comfort and joy. They love doing it, but they don't admit that to themselves. They pretend that they are doing it for me.”

Amy couldn't imagine that Nick cared very much about gold pine cones and lace-edged ribbon. “What will you do once you have his name?” she asked.

“I don't know. I don't think showing up on his doorstep is such a cool idea. He may not have any idea I exist. I can't even get Val and Barb to tell me if he knew she was pregnant. Also I don't want anyone thinking I'm after money. Maybe it makes sense to have someone else, a lawyer or something, approach him first.”

“That's not a bad idea,” Giles said. “And given that you've got three lawyers and one something among your relatives—”

Jack interrupted. “Why do I think I'm the ‘one something'?”

“It could be me,” Ian pointed out. “I'm not a lawyer.”

“What about me?” Amy was determined to be the Afterthought no longer. “I'm not a lawyer either, and if I call this dad of Nick's, he'll call me back.”

“That's certainly true,” Gwen said. “Trust me. People return Amy's calls. In fact, I'm willing to put money on it. All three of you put in a call at the same time, I'll bet anything that Amy's call is returned first.”

“This is my life we're talking about here, not a horse race,” Nick said, but he was clearly pleased at people's interest.

“I can't say that I recommend the horse-race approach,” Giles said, “but we'll certainly help you figure out the right thing to do.”