The Healing by Frances Pergamo Read Free Book Online Page A

at Founders Landing. Where it all began.

chapter seven
    Summer 1975
    There was no full-length mirror in the house, so Karen slipped into her grandmother’s bedroom to check her image in the large dresser mirror. She was seventeen years old, but Grandma’s bedroom in Southold was still like some kind of forbidden sanctum, with its dark antique furniture, high four-poster bed, and old photographs. A familiar and comforting scent hung in the room. It was the scent of Grandma herself, clinging to the sheets and the flower-print housedresses that hung in the closet.
    Karen turned sideways and studied how she looked in her new bathing suit. Fluorescent colors were all the rave for swimwear, and she had picked out a bright orange bikini that was the same eye-catching color as a traffic cone. At least it would complement the suntan she intended to get as the summer went on.
    She pivoted back for another frontal view in the mirror. A few shapely curves had rounded out her once-boyish frame, but Karen was all too aware she didn’t fill out her bikini top like some of her friends. They always told her she was lucky because she could eat ice cream three times a day and never worry about belly bulges and chunky thighs. Somehow she didn’t feel very lucky as she critiqued her lean body. It was great for sports, not so great for bikinis.
    Karen leaned toward the mirror to clip up her dark blond hair. The models in Seventeen all had straight, wispy hair, just like hers, but she could never quite get hers to look as glamorous. She threw a bottle of Sun-In into her beach tote with her brush and suntan lotion. By August her athletic body would be bronze, her hair would be sun-streaked, and her fluorescent bathing suit would be faded.
    As for today, her first day on the beach for the season, Karen was satisfied with her new bikini, a pair of cutoffs, and the glow of youthful anticipation. She had just finished her junior year in high school as the star athlete of both the tennis and swimming teams, but she had spent the last three months staring out the classroom window, daydreaming about what the summer held in store, thinking about the beach, and wondering what might spark her interest in Southold this year.
    â€œGrandma, I’m going!” Karen called, traipsing down the stairs in a joyful rhythm, her beach tote in hand.
    â€œWait!” Grandma called back from the kitchen, where the smell of sautéed garlic still permeated the air from lunch. She appeared in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. Her dark eyes quickly inspected Karen’s scantily clad form, flickering with the questions and mild disapproval of a fifty-year generation gap. “You go?” she asked in her Czech accent.
    Karen was tempted to roll her eyes and click her tongue impatiently, but she didn’t. Her father always balked when his daughters were disrespectful to his mother, and they eventually learned to curb their attitudes in her presence. If Karen gave her grandmother a hard time about anything, her father would make her go back to the city with the rest of the family during the week. Everyone else was working full-time, but Karen had gotten by on babysitting jobs so that she could stay in Southold from the last week of June until Labor Day.
    â€œYeah, I’m going,” Karen repeated patiently, as if saying it for the first time.
    â€œYou be back at five?” Grandma asked.
    Karen knew if she haggled, she could get another half hour. “Six?”
    â€œFive-thirty.” It was the same beach curfew every year.
    Karen ran to her grandmother and kissed her cheek. “Thanks, Grandma!” she said before dashing off. Once she was on her bicycle, a trusty old Royce Union with no gears, no fenders, and rusty handlebars, it felt like the last ten months had never happened. It felt like she had been on her bicycle only yesterday, with the wind in her hair, the sun in her eyes, and the adventure of