Secrets of the Lost Summer

Noah burst out laughing.

Their call got dropped just as the ceiling in the kitchen started to leak.

Dylan slid his phone back in his pocket and watched water pool on the wide-plank floor.

“Well, hell.”

What could he do? He was stuck here.

He hoped Grace Webster had left behind a bucket.

Four

Olivia’s house had come with a generator for nights just such as this one, but she only turned it on for an hour before she decided to wait out the power outage. She had little food to worry about spoiling, and she didn’t like generators. In storms, people too often misused them and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. She had dutifully read all the instructions and had her father do a dry run with her, but the thing still made her nervous. She wanted to be positive she knew what she was doing before she ran it for any length of time.

As she snuggled under a soft wool throw in front of the brick fireplace, she told herself it was decent of Dylan McCaffrey to check on her. He hadn’t meant anything by his visit except to make sure she was all right in the midst of a nasty ice storm.

The wind picked up, and a spruce tree swayed outside the front window, casting strange shadows in the living room. She heard the crack of a branch breaking off in the old sugar maple in the side yard. Right now, the branches and power lines were weighed down with ice, but once the temperature rose above freezing, the ice would melt as if it had never been. Spring would resume its steady march toward daffodils, tulips and lilacs in bloom.

The fire glowed, the only light in the darkening room. A chunk of burning wood fell from the grate, startling her, but she quickly told herself it was nothing. She had lived alone in her Boston apartment, but she had to admit that living alone in her antique house in Knights Bridge was taking some getting used to. The creaks, the groans, the shadows, the dark nights—anything could fire up her imagination. At first, she’d slept with her iPod on, playing a selection of relaxing music, but she was beginning to develop a routine and was getting used to the sounds of the old house and country road.

Tightening her throw around her, she turned her attention back to her neighbor. Elly O’Dunn must have run into Duncan McCaffrey, Dylan’s father. When Olivia had written to Dylan, she hadn’t expected him to show up in Knights Bridge, and she certainly hadn’t expected to meet him the way she had, muddy, yelling in panic for her wandering dog.

She especially hadn’t expected the new owner of Grace Webster’s house to be a man close to her own age, with a sexy grin, sexy broad shoulders and sexy black-lashed deep blue eyes.

The McCaffreys had no ties to Knights Bridge that Olivia knew of. Because of the massive Quabbin Reservoir, her hometown was out-of-the-way, not an easy commute to any of the major cities in Massachusetts. The University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College, Smith College and Amherst College—the Five Colleges—were a more reasonable commute. A number of people from town worked at the different schools. She had no idea what Dylan McCaffrey did for a living but supposed he could be a college professor.

She pictured him standing in the snow and mud.

He wasn’t a college professor. She knew some rugged-looking professors, but Dylan McCaffrey didn’t strike her as someone who could sit in a library carrel for more than ten minutes before he needed to get moving.

Olivia heard a gust of wind beat against the windows. The truth was, she hadn’t given her neighbor much thought once she wrote to him. She just wanted his place cleaned up. She had so much to do before her mother-daughter tea. She swore she had lists of lists of things to do to get ready.

She wished the power would come back on before nightfall. She didn’t look forward to sitting there in the pitch-dark.

Her landline rang, startling her. Buster barked but settled down, spent from his romp up the road. She reached for the phone on an end table, a flea-market find that she planned to paint. It was on one of her lists, she thought as she picked up and said hello.

“Hey, kid,” her father said. “You and Buster okay out there? Everything’s at a standstill but we’ll be through the worst of it soon.”

He didn’t sound concerned, and Olivia assumed that her mother had put him up to calling. “The power’s out but we’re fine here.”

“Are you using the generator?”

“I did for a while but not right now. It’s okay. Buster and I are nice and cozy by the fire.”

“Cozy. Right. If you need anything, call. I’ll find a way out there.”

He would, too. Olivia debated a moment, then said, “My neighbor’s here.”

“Neighbor?”

“Dylan McCaffrey. He’s the guy who owns Grace Webster’s old place.”

“I thought he was dead.”

“You did? I should have asked you about him. That was his father.”

“I met him a couple of years ago. Ran into him at Hazelton’s.” Hazelton’s was the general store in the village. “I didn’t ask why he wanted to buy a house in town. Why’s his son here?”

“I wrote to him about the junk in his yard. He lives in San Diego. I didn’t expect him to actually come out here. I offered to do the work. I figured he’d jump at the chance since no one’s touched the place in two years.”

There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the phone. “I hope he doesn’t mind freezing rain,” her father said finally.

After she hung up, Olivia got out a sketch pad and colored pencils and, curled up in front of the fire, worked on a color scheme for the interior of her house. She had narrowed down her choices to three different palettes. For each, she drew a large rectangle, then drew smaller rectangles of various sizes inside it. She filled in the large rectangle with her main color and the smaller rectangles with secondary colors and accents. She had decided against a traditional New England look, as much as she loved it. She wasn’t sure exactly what colors she wanted, but she definitely wanted a palette that was lively, vibrant and welcoming, with a touch of rustic charm.

Intrigued by the play of the flames in the fading natural light, she chose a golden yellow lightened with white for her first large rectangle. For the smaller rectangles, she used two shades of aquamarine, a watery blue, a creamy linen, a splash of red. She wanted to choose colors and paint finishes that worked with the sharp differences in New England seasons—from the frigid temperatures of winter to the hot, humid conditions of the dog days of summer. She would have to pay attention to the orientation of her different rooms. An eastern room that received the cool light of morning might need a different shade or tone than a western room that received strong afternoon light.

Buster rolled over, his back to Olivia, as if to tell her how boring he thought paint palettes were. She stayed in front of the fire and continued working. As darkness descended, she liked having him there, close to her, rather than in the kitchen or locked up in the mudroom. Soon the fire provided the only light in the house. She hadn’t lit any candles or turned on her flashlight. She put away her colored pencils and left them and the sketch pad on the floor.

The power still hadn’t come on.

More trees creaked and groaned in the wind. The fire flared in a backdraft in the chimney. She shuddered, a ripple of irrational fear running up her spine. She had locked the front door after Dylan had left and was positive she had already locked the other doors. She knew no one was in the kitchen and mudroom, or in the garage—or hiding upstairs.

She dreaded turning on her small flashlight and walking up to her bedroom.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked aloud. “Nothing’s up there with the power off that isn’t there with the power on.”

The living room glowed in a flash of lightning followed by a rumble of thunder.

It was an ice storm. Why was there thunder and lightning?

Never mind, Olivia thought, grabbing another throw off a chair. She wasn’t going anywhere. She curled up with the two throws on the thick rug in front of the fire, staying close to warm, mean-looking Buster. She had no reason to be afraid alone in her country house, but the occasional bump in the night nonetheless could get her heart racing and her mind spinning with possibilities.

She wondered how Dylan McCaffrey was doing up the road. Grace’s house wasn’t in good shape, especially after sitting empty for so long. People in town speculated that the new owner had bought it for the land, not for the house itself. After receiving the note about the yard, had Dylan decided to head east to check out his newly discovered inheritance and put it on the market? Olivia would love to have the seven acres to add to The Farm at Carriage Hill, but she couldn’t afford them right now and had her hands full getting her own house in shape.

Wrapped up in her warm throws, she noticed the wind was dying down and the one flash of lightning and rumble of thunder seemed to be all the storm had in mind. The power didn’t come back on, but she suspected it would soon now that the weather was improving.

She grabbed a pillow off the couch and placed it under her head. She doubted Grace had left behind blankets and sheets, never mind a bed, or if she had that any of them were usable. Was Dylan sleeping on the floor, too? He probably hadn’t planned to spend the night in a house on the verge of being condemned.

A run-down house, a yard filled with junk, a confrontation with a big dog, an ice storm and a power outage—not an auspicious first day in Knights Bridge. Olivia shut her eyes, imagining what her neighbor thought of her hometown and if he’d be there in another twenty-four hours.

The power came back on just after two in the morning, the floor lamp popping on, the refrigerator cranking into gear, startling Olivia out of a deep sleep. She left the lamp on, letting the glow of the low-wattage bulb settle her heartbeat. She didn’t go upstairs to bed and instead stayed under her throws. Buster got up and stretched as if he thought it was morning, then settled down again in front of the fire, just a few hot coals now.

By morning, the sun was shining and any ice from the storm had already melted. That, Olivia reminded herself, was one of the key differences between early spring and the dead of winter. In winter, the ice would still be there, with more on the way. She could safely hope that last night was the end of any freezing precipitation in her part of New England until next winter.

She switched off any lights that didn’t need to be on and went upstairs to shower and get dressed, figuring she’d head into the village after breakfast. The house, although not large, felt huge in comparison to her apartment in Boston. Back downstairs, she made coffee and toasted some of her oatmeal bread, spreading it with peanut butter. She ate at her table overlooking the herb gardens. Even without checking her palettes from last night, she knew she’d reject the watery colors. She wanted earthy colors that still felt light, inviting, vibrant.

Picking out colors, she thought, was the fun part of opening The Farm at Carriage Hill. The uncertainties and the sheer amount of work that needed to be done were the hard parts.