That Summer Place by Susan Wiggs, Debbie Macomber, Jill Barnett - That Summer Place Read Free Book Online

as the magazine’s predictions. He watched it burn, then picked up his drink and mockingly raised his glass to the jackass who’d written the article.
    Michael toasted him with two extremely crude words.
     
    By eight o’clock Catherine and the girls had polished off six cans of cream soda, a can of cheese Pringles, a box of Wheat Thins and two containers of Allouette spread, five apples, a slab of Tillamook cheese and two pints of Ben & Jerry’s Wavy Gravy ice cream—Aly’s idea of dinner.
    “One more piece and we’ll have the outside frame done.” Catherine stuck her spoon in the empty ice cream carton and scanned the table for a piece that had a flat edge.
    Dana was chewing on a handful of smoked almonds—a gift from Catherine’s mother—and eyeing the small puzzle pieces with a determined look on her face. It seemed that Dana was driven to find that puzzle piece.
    But not Aly. She had given up on the puzzle frame and was putting together Gene Simmons’s chalky face. Even upside-down Catherine could see that in the photograph his tongue was sticking out.
    She suddenly wished they were putting together a picture of Bambi, Thumper and Flower. She sighed in that quiet, tired way, when you knew time had slipped past far too quickly, then went back to the puzzle.
    A few minutes later she had an awful thought. “If this puzzle is missing any pieces I’m going to scream.”
    Almost simultaneously she spotted the last outside end piece.
    Aha!
    She locked her eyes on it and casually set down the empty ice cream carton. Then she leaned forward and quickly reached across the table to snatch up the puzzle piece.
    At that very same moment the lights went out.
     
    It didn’t take Catherine long to remember that whenever a storm hit Spruce Island, the power went out. The sudden and complete island darkness could jar your memory quickly.
    There were no streetlights here. Just the stars and the moon, and on some rainy nights, not even that.
    What she saw in the darkness was the remembered image of her father cursing at the old generator behind the rental house. She could remember her mother holding an umbrella and scolding her dad for cursing, and how Catherine always got to hold the flashlight so her dad could see inside the generator while he cursed at it.
    So she and the girls went outside, loaded with one big old metal flashlight and a huge Mary Poppins-sized umbrella. Dana whipped the flashlight back and forth across the ground. She was on slug patrol.
    Aly carried the umbrella. Catherine stumbled on a rock and almost fell on her face; she couldn’t see because Dana, her slug-fearing daughter, had the flashlight shining near her own feet instead of the path that ran toward the north end of the yard.
    Catherine stopped and turned around. “Dana.”
    “Huh?”
    “Keep the flashlight ahead of us so I don’t fall and kill myself.”
    Dana never even looked up at her.
    Huddled under the umbrella with Aly, Catherine tapped Dana on the arm. “I promise no slugs are going to suddenly leap up from the ground and latch on to your face like that monster did in Alien. ”
    “Oh, Mom.”
    Catherine stopped in front of a small wooden garden shed with a trap door. “Ah, here it is. Voila!” She paused and waved her hand dramatically. “This, my girls, is a generator…I think. Hold the flashlight up, Dana.”
    “Does it work?” Dana asked, glancing up for only one brief second before she turned her gaze back to the grass.
    “I don’t know. It used to drive your grandpa nuts, though. I’d come out here with him and hold the flashlight. Like you are, Dana. Aim it here, sweetie. That’s right. I can still remember him banging on this metal thing when he couldn’t get it to work. He made so much noise you could have heard him hammering on it all the way across the island. He used to say a generator is like a mule. It needs a swift kick to get going.”
    A few minutes later, the wind had picked up and the rain was coming