The Summer We Lost Her Page 13

  “I was. Nate worked incredibly hard. To win was truly gratifying.” She pierced a cherry tomato with her plastic fork. “I’d love to see us secure a third Winter Games.”

  “How did you come to start a camp?” Elise asked.

  “Years ago, my husband and I started to wonder, with all the families flocking to the resorts up here, if someone shouldn’t offer a drop-off day camp program so the parents could catch a bit of a break. The hotels have kid programs—some of them, anyway. But not where kids get that real summer camp experience. It’s more glorified child-minding. I thought, these parents go online to check out a resort. They see the beautiful photos promising luscious beds, lazy-morning coffees over a misty lake where they can relax as a couple. But the reality is, their kids wake up and want to go for a swim, and the parents never really get to be that contented couple who pad out to the end of their dock in robes, coffee in hand. Then, when Brice died last year, I sold the house back to Cass, renovated a little cabin on the campgrounds, and bought a camp bus to expand our enrollment. Had the staff go to town painting it.”

  “Brice died?” Matt said. “He was such a nice guy.”

  “The best.” Jeannie smiled, wistful.

  “You should see how cute the bus is.” Cass pushed a twirl of hair off her face. “Covered in flowers and smiley faces. Total hippie-mobile.”

  “The parents really do get to be the couple in the brochure; they don’t even have to drop the kids off. We come to them. And we’re flexible. Kids might come three days in a row, then hang with their parents. Families can strike whatever balance feels right.”

  Gracie took a bite of hot dog, leaving a smear of ketchup on her lip that Elise reached across to dab with a napkin. “Can I go, Dad? Please?”

  Cass answered for him. “You’d love it. River goes every year, right, Riv?”

  The boy nodded, mouth full.

  “We’re here to be together for the next two weeks, Little Green,” Matt said to Gracie. “That’s the whole point.”

  “Little Green after Joni’s daughter, seriously?” Cass was staring at Matt. “I love it.”

  “Cass is obsessed with Joni Mitchell,” explained Garth.

  “It was my fiftieth a few weeks back,” said Cass. “Garth’s gift to me was borrowing the Camp Imagine bus and parking it over at Tupper Lake, where we had a picnic with a bunch of friends and played Joni Mitchell. I introduced him to Joni’s best album. Her most personal.”

  “Blue,” Matt and Cass said in unison.

  Matt had always been appalled that, because of their twelve-year age gap, Elise didn’t really “get” Joni. Or Dylan. Or Leonard Cohen. He’d made fun of her being raised on a steady diet of Paula Abdul and Billy Idol.

  Risking a further demonstration of her ignorance, Elise said, “Joni named her daughter Little Green?”

  “Kelly, actually,” said Jeannie. “She gave up the girl for adoption and wrote a beautiful song about her. ‘Little Green.’ Hauntingly beautiful. Like a love letter to her only child.”

  Cass added, “A lifetime’s worth of advice in one song.” She ruffled Gracie’s hair. “Beyond cool nickname you have.”

  Elise stared at Matt—why had he never once mentioned this?

  Humiliating that she was finding this out in front of strangers. In front of Cass. “I always thought it was Gracie’s froggy voice. . . .”

  He shrugged, bit into his burger. “It’s both. No big deal.”

  River looked at Gracie and said, “Ribbit,” collapsing the two of them in giggles.

  * * *

  LATER, THE TABLE a battle zone of balled napkins, felled pop cans, ends of burgers, and half-empty glasses, they all sat around the fire, lazy and satiated. Cass got up to rearrange the charred logs, sending sparks skyward, then took a sweating wine bottle, held it up to see what was left, and circled, topping off a few glasses. “Elise, did you hear about the bears this year?”

  “My buddy and I saw one on the putting green at Whiteface yesterday,” Garth said. “Took the flag right out of the hole. Last week, someone said, a pair of cubs came bouncing out of the woods to play with a golf ball.”

  “I saw one on the roof last night,” Elise said. “Creeping along like he wanted in.”

  “Probably wanted to get in on that pile-making we’re about to do.” Matt turned to the others. “We have master pile plans for the detritus of my life. Piles have become the big thing. Apparently they have TV shows about piles.”

  “I love those shows,” Cass said. “Are you going to make those little signs?”

  Matt turned to Elise, who nodded and said, “Of course we’re making the signs.”

  “We are all over those signs,” Matt confirmed.

  “Why are there so many bears?” Gracie asked from the other side of the fire, where she was using the uncoiled end of a hanger to draw a smiley face in the cooled ash.

  “We had a late start to spring,” Garth said. “Bears woke up hungry and stayed that way.”

  “People have been seeing bears in their garbage, bears in their yards.” Jeannie waved away a mosquito and pulled her chair closer to the fire. “One wandered right out onto a public beach a couple of days ago. Middle of the day.”

  “I don’t want to see a bear,” Gracie said.

  “As long as your mother’s around, we’re all safe,” Matt said. “Everything will bite her first.”

  “Who wants to hear a ghost story?” Garth rubbed his hands together as Cass returned to her seat. “Nothing better than a little Lake Placid lore.” He glanced at the kids. “You guys okay with it?”

  “Yes!” in unison.

  “You’re going to wind up with nightmares, princess,” Matt said.

  “Matt.” Elise looked at her husband. “Drives me nuts when you call her that. It sends a fairy-tale, wait-for-a-prince-to-save-you message.” What she didn’t say was it struck far too close to her own childhood, to her runaway father’s endearment for her when she was young. She stretched her legs out toward the fire.

  “She’s right, Matt,” Cass said. “It’s so archaic.”

  Elise looked at Cass with fresh eyes. “I think I like you.”

  “Oh, we’ll get him in line.” Cass winked. “Don’t you worry.”

  The thing was, Matt had had decades to pursue Cass before he met Elise. If he’d wanted to be with the girl next door, wouldn’t he have hunted her down? It was ridiculous to worry. Elise left Matt for months every year. She could trust her husband to stay here next to his childhood friend—who had a boyfriend right here in town—for one week without her.

  “Please, Dad?” said Gracie.

  “The story’s told over the campfire at least once every summer,” Jeannie said. “Honestly, parents today deprive kids of so much fun.”

  “All right.” He held up his hands. “I give.”

  “Mabel Douglass was her name,” Garth said. “It was September 1933. Mabel was the first dean of a women’s college down in New Jersey, and she was having guests over that night for dinner.”

  Gracie and River crawled closer in the grass.

  “Off she goes for one quick paddle around Lake Placid to gather pretty leaves to decorate the table with and she never comes back. All sorts of rumors flew. She’d run off with a salesman passing through town. She’d paddled to the other side of the lake and climbed up into the mountains to live out her years as a recluse. Then, in 1963, thirty years later, scuba divers found an old boat way down in the deepest part of the lake, a hundred feet down, by Pulpit Rock. They saw what they thought was a mannequin. It wasn’t until one of the divers tugged it by the arm that it happened.”

  “What happened?” said Gracie, eyes wide.

  “It wasn’t a mannequin. It was Mabel. She was so well preserved by the cold water, it was like her body was made of plastic. But when the diver touched her, her arm came right off in his hands! In fact, as they brought her closer and closer to the surface, and the water wasn’t so icy cold, Mabel’s limbs started falling of
f.”

  Gracie gasped, clapped her hands over her mouth in horror and delight. She and River grabbed each other, groaning and laughing.

  Garth said, “She’s called the Lady of the Lake. Her entire body started to break apart. And just before they surfaced, her face disappeared! Bits of flesh—her nose, then her cheekbones and eyeballs—”

  River let out a scream for his new friend’s benefit and ran into the house. Gracie grabbed her crutches and gamboled after him, the screen door slamming behind her. An echo bounced back from across the lake.

  “Characters,” Matt said.

  Cass brought a bowl of cherries over to the fire pit and offered it to Garth, who took a handful and set the bowl on a flat rock between Matt and Elise.

  “Do you two live together?” Elise asked.

  The awkward silence that followed answered the question.

  “We don’t want to rush it. Right, Cassidy?”

  “That’s right.” Cass rolled her eyes. “It’s only been a year and a half. Moving in would be crazy. . . .”

  “Why ruin a good thing, is the way I see it.”

  “Exactly. God forbid we commit while we still have our teeth.”

  “My funny, funny girl.” Garth reached out and squeezed her knee, then stretched back in his chair and went back to his cherries. After flicking one into the trees, he turned to Matt. “Hey, I don’t want this to be awkward or anything, but if you guys are selling, I’m happy to help. I’ve sold most of the larger parcels left on these lakes. Saranac. Flower Lake too. The serious buyers know to come to me.”

  “Would a single family buy a lot our size for a vacation home?” asked Elise. “Seems awfully big for that.”

  “Not likely. I mean, the area is known for these large, multigenerational family compounds. You know, the quintessential great camps. But they’ve sort of been here forever. And with land having gone up so much in value, a plot this size isn’t a realistic single-family purchase.” He flicked another cherry into the woods.

  Elise looked at Matt. “Maybe severing the land is a better option.”

  “Yeah, I had a client who tried a few years back. Neighbors put the brakes on it, signed a petition to block the severance.” Garth shook his head. “She appealed the decision twice and got shot down again and again. It’s damn near impossible these days. Plus, a good chunk of what you’ve got doesn’t have road access.”

  “So, what do you recommend we do?” asked Matt.

  “I’ve got a guy right now really hot on the area. Texas-owned resort chain just dying to get their hands on the right piece of land. You give me the go-ahead, I can set things in motion. Don’t even have to put it on the market.”

  “I’d feel better about listing it,” said Matt.

  “Fair enough.”

  “What kind of money are they talking?” Cass asked.

  “Nearly a quarter mile of prime waterfront on Lake Placid?” Garth spat a pip into a napkin and looked to Matt and Elise. “You’ll never have to work another day in your life.”

  “So this is a land sale, then.” Elise sat forward. “Can we leave the cabin as is?”

  “I would say so. It’s classic Adirondack nostalgia—no one’s going to demolish it. It’ll be kept as a satellite outbuilding or superior room if the resort builds individual cabins.” He sat back and rested an ankle on one knee. “I mean, there’s no downside to fluffing it up a bit. Just don’t sweat too much over it.”

  “And you’re fairly certain this will be tempting to a resort?” Matt said.

  “Big-time. It’s next to impossible to secure a prime piece of land that size. So much is under conservation protection.”

  “I hate the idea of a resort next door,” said Cass. “The road will become a nightmare. And we’d be living next to a place crawling with entitled little shits. They’d be partying at all hours. Then there’s the boat traffic. Just pull your price down, doll it up, and sell it as the beautiful lake house it is. The land becomes a lovely bonus. Would be great if whoever bought it had that length of shoreline protected through the conservancy too.”

  Garth reached out to poke her with his foot. “Cass here is a bit of an idealist, if you haven’t noticed. But Cass’s dream buyer could turn around and do the same thing. Sell to a resort. Ultimately, you have no control. Makes total sense you feel all sorts of sentimentality, attachment to it. But once people let go, you’d be amazed at how quickly they move on. If I were you, I’d be prepared for all scenarios. Fix it up a bit and list. But be quick about it. Whatever happens, you want a sign on your lawn yesterday, because the summer market really dies off in July.”

  “We also have a vintage boat, a Chris-Craft, that can go with the place, if you want to have a look,” Matt said to Garth. “A 2012 Range Rover to unload as well. About twenty-five thousand miles on it.”

  Drinks in hand, sandals flapping against bare heels, the two men walked down to the Sorenson waterfront, leaving the women in front of the fire.

  Just as Elise started to say something about getting her daughter settled in the boathouse, the door swung open to bang against the back of the house. “Mom!” Wild and slightly out of breath, Gracie rushed down the back steps: crutches, hop, crutches, hop. “River says they have tuck at camp!”

  “What’s tuck?” Elise asked.

  Jeannie was clearly amused. “I used to go to summer camp in Canada when I was your daughter’s age, so brought the idea here. The tuck shop is a tiny store . . .”

  “That sells candy!” Gracie cried.

  “We also sell fruit and nuts. And healthy juices. And you can borrow books to take home at night.”

  “Jeannie’s camp is a great place,” Cass said. “I hung around all day when River first started, and I went home feeling he was better off at Camp Imagine than with me. The counselors are sweethearts. And the atmosphere builds such independence.”

  “We really encourage children to find their voices,” said Jeannie. “And she can attend for as long or as short a time as you like. A few days, a week. Whatever works.”

  Surely they could let Gracie go to camp for a few days. It would free up Matt and Elise to get the cabin ready and still enable Elise to have solid Gracie time before leaving on Friday. And it solved the problem of keeping Gracie out of the cabin until the raccoon was caught. Elise turned to Cass. “Are you sending River this year?”

  “Not for a few weeks.”

  “We have plenty of space,” said Jeannie. “And my staff is trained for kids of all needs.”

  “Can I, Mom? Dad doesn’t let me do anything.”

  As a mother, was she not entitled to make a decision about three days at camp? Matt made all sorts of unilateral parenting choices while Elise was gone.

  “I always say to Jeannie that Riv comes home braver every night,” said Cass.

  Exactly what Gracie needed.

  “Please can I go, Mom?”

  “Do you have swimming lessons?” she asked Jeannie.

  “All levels. We can even do private if she’s a beginner.”

  “She’s definitely a beginner.” Elise looked at her daughter. “Would you be willing to take lessons?”

  “No.”

  Elise took her daughter’s hands. “Swimming is a very important life skill, honey.”

  Gracie’s face twisted up tight as she debated the no-swimming stance she’d held all her life. “Fine. I will swim, but I won’t like it.”

  “Come.” Elise held out her arms. For the first time since Elise had been back, Gracie accepted her mother’s affection. The child let her crutches drop and wrapped feather-light arms around Elise’s neck. The crackle of the fire, the scritch-scratch of crickets, the hum of conversation between Jeannie and Cass, all faded. “I think three days at summer camp is a terrific idea. Let’s do it.”

  Gracie’s face lit up. “Can I start tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “That’s fine,” said Jeannie. “We service the tourists, so kids can start any day o
f the week. I’ll tell my assistant to put her on the bus schedule. Ken will pick her up at eight forty.”

  “Okay, then. We’re all set. You, my girl, are starting camp tomorrow.”

  Gracie grew an inch. She flashed a big, lopsided grin, then scrambled back to the house and called, “River, guess what!”

  The crackling logs and wavering hum of the flames had given way now to the comfortable hiss of red-hot embers. Scattered around the ash lay fallen marshmallows, a few balled napkins, and the melted remains of several unfortunate plastic army men.

  “I hope Matt won’t hit the roof.” Elise twirled her wine in the fire’s glow.

  Cass slid to the front edge of her chair and kicked off her sandals. She plunked her feet on a rock surrounding the fire pit and coiled her hair into a messy knot on top of her head. When she lowered her arms, the shoulder strap fell again, dropping the front of her dress even lower.

  Was that a smirk on Cass’s face as she leveled her gaze on Elise?

  “Put me on the case,” Cass said. “I can convince that boy of anything.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” Elise said with a measured smile. She reached out once again to adjust Cass’s strap. “But I’ve got this one.”

  – CHAPTER 13 –

  Swimming to Blueberry Island and back in the early morning mist had always made Matt feel alive. He kept his focus on a perfect front crawl: body streamlined and flat, legs kicking from the hips rather than the knees, each arm rising from the cold water bent, then reaching far beneath the surface with a gentle hourglass pull down his torso, a barely there turn of his head to breathe every three strokes—alternating left and right for balance.

  Jesus, it was good to be in the lake again.

  Sleeping with Gracie between them in Cass’s airless and rickety boathouse had made for a sweaty, wakeful night and given him way too much time to think about the partnership—and what to say to Barrans on Monday. What lawyer in his right mind says no to partnership? Even if the buy-in is a problem, the firm guarantees a loan. Beyond highlight cases that offer particularly big wins or some sort of personal satisfaction, a lawyer has one of two goals: sole proprietorship or partnership.