The Summer Girls by Mary Alice Monroe

Author:Mary Alice Monroe [Monroe, Mary Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Contemporary Women, Family Life, Fiction, Romance, Family & Relationships, General, Friendship, General Fiction
ISBN: 9781476709000
Google: wTyodPBmUbIC
Amazon: 1476709009
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2013-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

The following few days there was a flurry of activity at Sea Breeze. Harper waited until her mother left for the Hamptons, then she flew to New York to pack up clothes and conclude her affairs with human resources at the publishing house. Harper didn’t think she would be gone for more than two weeks, and Carson believed her. Meanwhile, Dora drove home alone to Summerville to see to the many details of preparing the house for sale and to face the odious task of meeting with lawyers for her divorce. Despite her reservations, she’d agreed to let the women at Sea Breeze care for Nate until she returned.

The house seemed quiet with her sisters gone. Carson loved them, of course, but they were as yet hardly close. She lay on the iron bed, her arms folded under her head, and her thoughts turned back to those summers the girls had shared at Sea Breeze. Back when Mamaw had called them her Summer Girls.

The many summers had been a hodgepodge of visits that continued from the time each of them was very young until they’d become teens. Initially, only she and Dora had spent summers together. Carson had lived with Mamaw in Charleston, and Dora, three years older than Carson, was invited to spend the summers with them from her home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Those early years were the best for the two eldest girls, long lazy summers of playing mermaids and painting on the veranda with Mamaw. Later, those years’ difference signified a lifetime when Carson was ten and Dora was thirteen. Then, Dora found her half sister annoying; she invited friends to Sea Breeze and Carson was excluded from their games.

It was a turnaround when Harper began coming to Sea Breeze at six years of age. She was so small and delicate, dressed like one of the Madame Alexander dolls she coveted.

The girls had spent only three full summers together, during which time there was an eight-year spread between Dora and Harper. Carson had been the link between the eldest and the youngest, the go-between, the popular one, the peacemaker. After Dora turned seventeen she stopped spending her summers at Sea Breeze. Carson and Harper spent another two summers together alone, which forged their bond. Where Dora loved playing dress-up and feminine make-believe games, Carson and Harper let loose their inner Huck Finns. They’d explored every inch of Sullivan’s Island and Isle of Palms, searching for the pirate treasure every child on the island knew was buried somewhere.

Like the Lost Boys, however, eventually they grew up. When Carson turned seventeen she got a summer job in Los Angeles and Harper’s mother purchased a house in the Hamptons. This marked the end of the Summer Girls at Sea Breeze.

A few years later, the girls came together again when Dora married Calhoun Tupper in a grand Charleston event. On the heels of the wedding came two funerals. Their father died young, at forty-seven, and soon after, their grandfather Edward Muir passed away.

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