Summer at Forsaken Lake by Michael D. Beil

Author:Michael D. Beil [Beil, Michael D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-375-89791-7
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-06-12T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

It had been a long, busy day, and after a late dinner of hot dogs and baked beans, the Mettleson kids said their good-nights and good-byes to their mom, who planned to be on the road for New York by five o’clock in the morning. As the twins tramped upstairs to their rooms with their books in hand, Jo marveled at Hetty, the twin who, just a few short weeks earlier, had claimed not to like reading.

“This is my seventh book so far,” said Hetty. “The librarian has a list of kids who read the most books over the summer, and I’m in eleventh place.”

“I’m in second,” bragged Hayley. She held up Misty of Chincoteague. “This is my thirteenth book. It’s my last one, Uncle Nick. Can we go to the library tomorrow?”

Jo laughed. “Who are you kids? And what have you done with my Hayley and Hetty?”

Meanwhile, Nicholas, who had already finished the books he’d borrowed from the library, scrounged around the bookcase in the living room, finding Lillie’s collection of Agatha Christie mysteries. He chose Murder on the Orient Express. He had heard of the book and its eminent detective, Hercule Poirot, and smiled at the memory of the day’s detective work. He and Charlie hadn’t really discovered answers—just more questions, really—but he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he felt more energized.

A half mile down the road, it had been essentially the same story with Franny and Charlie. Charlie fell asleep reading a romantic book about young time travelers that Janet, the librarian, had insisted she would just love, while Franny struggled to concentrate on the thriller a friend at work had lent her. Her mind kept taking her back to the marina with Will and all of her old friends, and she couldn’t help thinking about how her life—all their lives—had turned out. Would everything have turned out differently, she wondered, if Will had chosen a simpler, less spectacular ending to his movie? Or if she had been standing six inches away, in either direction, and the mast had missed her completely? She knew it was a pointless exercise, but she couldn’t resist imagining a version of her life that might have been—if Will had found her letter, if he had written back, if he had returned to Nick’s the following summer. Instead, she had started hanging out with Jimmy as a freshman in high school, a few months after Will’s departure, brokenhearted but blessed with the resilience of youth.

She wandered into Charlie’s room, where she found her daughter sleeping soundly—still dressed, her book resting on her chest. She covered her with a quilt and turned off the light, but didn’t move toward her own room. Instead, she stood silently at the threshold for a long time. The moon shone through the upper window onto Charlie’s peaceful face, and the curtains billowed gently as a cool north breeze filled the room. The scene gave Franny goose bumps, and in the perfect beauty of that moment, any misgivings, or questions, or doubts about her own life were put to rest.

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