Summer House by Nancy Thayer Read Free Book Online Page B

leave for the airport.”
    Helen steadied herself. “I’ll be right down,” she called.

Arrival

Four
    F rom her chaise , Nona heard the white shells on the driveway crackle and then doors slammed, voices called out, and a baby cried.
    She looked out to see them file beneath the curved arbor, through the hedge, her daughter Grace and Grace’s family—Kellogg, the nicest and most boring man on the planet, and their three daughters: Mandy, thirty-five; Mellie, thirty-three; and Mee, twenty-eight. When they were infants, their names had been cutely abbreviated from Amanda, Amelia, and Amy, and of course they were referred to as the Ms. The fact that not one of the girls, when she became an adult, insisted on reverting to her full name suggested to Nona that all three granddaughters chose to exist in the infantile state their parents preferred.
    But Nona had to admit that nicknames were rampant in the Wheelwright family. Long ago, Oliver had referred to Kellogg, his daughters’ husbands, and Worth as the Bank Boys, and the name stuck. That was, at least, a useful moniker. Secretly, Nona thought ofKellogg and his daughters’ husbands as the Nonfiction Husbands: no romance, no mystery, no suspense. She wished she could share this witticism with someone without hurting anyone. Perhaps someday she would tell Oliver. He could keep a secret, and he’d appreciate the humor.
    But she would never want to hurt her granddaughters. They were nice girls, the Ms, never the least trouble, and pretty, but they lacked the spirit, what Nona thought of as spunk , that inspired Worth’s children. Ms had made good marriages, all three—although Mee had just gotten a divorce.
    Something rather strange had been happening to Nona over the past few years, and it worried her. She’d even considered discussing this with a psychiatric doctor, and Nona had always scorned therapists and psychology. The older she grew, the more she seemed to love people in general. When she voyaged across the water on the ferry, she watched the other passengers and felt an unexplainable rush of affection for them all—the gawky teenage boys wearing their jeans so low they trod on the cuffs; the young women with their glossy hair, multicolored nails, and cell phones; even the (probably illegal) Hispanic immigrants clutching their shopping bags full of the inexpensive merchandise one could always buy on the Cape and never on Nantucket. Or if she watched television—for example, one winter evening she’d watched the Super Bowl with Charlotte and some of Charlotte’s friends. A good-looking blond-haired man named Tom Petty sang during halftime, and the cameras panned around to show some faces of the individuals swaying to the music, smiling, singing, waving light sticks, all of them young and in jeans, and Nona was swept with something she could only call bliss at the sight of so many beautiful and happy young people. It was odd, but she felt related to them all, as if they were all her grandchildren. This is how God feels, she thought, looking down at an infinity of faces.
    And yet now that her real grandchildren were arriving, what she felt was a kind of dread. She seemed to have lost her enthusiasm for people in particular. Or, rather, for particular people. She loved having Charlotte around, and when Oliver visited she was in heaven. But plodding Kellogg and his three bland daughters often bored andsometimes just plain irritated her. That in turn made her feel guilty. She and Herb had tried their best not to show favoritism to any of their children or grandchildren, and she thought they’d succeeded.
    What had caused this change? It had to be this business with Charlotte’s garden. It was peculiar and almost amusing, how Beach Grass Garden’s paltry net income of four thousand dollars had sent the family into a maelstrom of jealousy and greed. Of course no one, and Nona included herself, had expected Charlotte to make a go of her garden. It had seemed just