The Light in Summer Read online

  DEDICATION

  For Irving and Thelma Bialer,

  with love and gratitude.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . . * About the Author

  About the Book

  Praise

  Also by Mary McNear

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  Mr. Finch?” Billy Harper said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Finch? We’re closing now.” She shook him gently. Nothing. She sighed. “I can’t wake him up,” she said to Rae, who was standing at the public library’s front windows and looking out onto Butternut’s Main Street.

  “Are you sure he’s still . . . with us?” Rae asked over her shoulder.

  “Yes,” Billy said, scowling at her, though, in truth, she’d already checked to see if Mr. Finch’s concave chest was rising and falling under his habitual cardigan sweater.

  “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you about those armchairs,” Rae said. “They’re too comfortable. Now people are just coming in here to sleep.”

  “Maybe,” Billy murmured, lifting up the Minneapolis Star Tribune draped over the arm of an overstuffed chair and hanging it on a nearby rack. She didn’t mind. The library’s new furniture was comfortable—she’d seen to that herself. It was all part of her “library as your living room” campaign. And for the main reading room, she’d chosen a sofa and chairs that were deep and soft in an acorn-colored suede. If someone decided to take a nap in one of them, as Mr. Finch occasionally did, that was all right with her. Especially when it was so pleasant here now, with the late afternoon sunshine slanting in through the windows and burnishing the rows of books in a million jewel tones. She loved this library. It was small, but not too small. It had been built in 1929, and while on the outside it was a serviceable red brick, on the inside it had an old-world elegance that included high ceilings, large multipaned windows, and the original walnut paneling.

  Mr. Finch stirred now, and Billy waited hopefully to see if he’d wake up. He didn’t. She wished, just this once, he’d taken his nap a little earlier in the day. It was closing time now, and she had a sulky teenager to get home to. She left Mr. Finch and started to gather up the books and magazines that had been left on the long pine table running down the center of the library’s reading room. One of the books, Pride and Prejudice, made Billy smile. She was always recommending this novel, though not everyone took her up on it.

  “What are you looking at?” Billy asked, glancing over at Rae, who was still standing at the library’s front windows.

  “Officer Sawyer pulled someone over,” Rae said, gesturing out onto Main Street.

  “And this passes for entertainment now?” Billy chuckled, thinking that even Butternut, Minnesota, population 1,200, had more to offer than watching someone get a ticket.

  “It does when the man getting the ticket is driving a Porsche 911 GT2 RS.”

  “Oh,” Billy said, barely glancing at the windows as she turned off the green-shaded lamps on the reading table. Unlike Rae, she had no interest in cars, unless it was in her own 2005 Ford Focus, which was sitting in the shop right now, waiting to do more damage to her credit card.

  “The guy driving the Porsche isn’t bad either,” Rae added. “Come take a look at him.”

  “No, thanks,” Billy said, sliding some books onto the reshelving cart. “I’ve got to get home.”

  Rae appeared not to hear her. “I’d love to get a better look at that car,” she said. “I wonder if this guy will be sticking around.”

  “A good-looking man driving an expensive car? I doubt it,” Billy said, only half joking. “If he’s in Butternut at all, it’s only because his GPS malfunctioned.”

  “That’s probably true,” Rae said. She left the windows and started straightening up the checkout desk, and Billy went to shut down the computers. There were five of them available to the public, housed in a quiet corner behind the stacks.

  “Why don’t you go home,” Rae said as Billy returned to the checkout area. “I can finish up here.”

  “But Mr. Finch . . .”

  “I’ll wake him up,” Rae growled. “Just not as politely as you would have.”

  Billy, who really did need to get home, stopped and lingered at the display she’d set up that morning, “In Celebration of Midwestern Authors: From Theodore Dreiser to Jonathan Franzen.” Should she have chosen My Ántonia for Willa Cather? she wondered now, straightening this book a little. It was her best-known novel, of course, but Billy herself had always been partial to O Pioneers!

  “You don’t want to go home, do you?” Rae asked her. She’d sat herself down on a swivel chair and was extracting her enormous handbag from the checkout desk’s bottom drawer. “You’re stalling.”

  “No, I’m not,” Billy said automatically.

  “Yes, you are,” Rae said shrewdly. “You’d sort paper clips by size now if you thought it would buy you another five minutes here.”

  “Not true,” Billy said, going to gather up her own things.

  “Honey,” Rae said, “you can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me.”

  “Oh, all right,” Billy said, pulling another chair over to the checkout desk and sinking down onto it. She slipped off her flats—she’d been standing up most of the day—and wiggled her bare toes with pleasure, then tucked her feet underneath her. “I don’t want to go home. I can’t go home. You should see him, Rae,” she said of her thirteen-year-old son, Luke. “When I checked up on him at lunchtime . . .” She shook her head.

  “Why? What was he doing?”

  “He wasn’t doing anything. That’s the point. He’s lost all his privileges. The computer, the cell phone, the Xbox,” Billy said, ticking off the terms of Luke’s confinement on her fingers. “All of his favorite electronics have been either disabled or confiscated. So he was just . . . sulking.” It wasn’t the sulking she was worried about, though. That, she hoped, would pass. What worried her was something more amorphous, harder to pinpoint. She couldn’t explain it to Rae. She couldn’t even explain it to herself.

  “Oh, please,” Rae said. “Tell him enough with the sulking. What I don’t understand is why they suspended him on the last day of school. I mean, what’s the point? Everyone knows that day’s a complete waste of time anyway.” Billy started to answer, but Rae, indignant, was just getting started. “And another thing. Why are they still busting kids for smoking under the bleachers? They’ve been smoking under them since they put them up, and they’ll be smoking under them when they tear them down.” She smiled, a little wistfully. “Did I ever tell you that’s where I had my first cigarette?”


  “Nope,” Billy said.

  “Well, it was. I was right around Luke’s age,” she said, “but I remember it like it was yesterday. Those were good times,” she added, practically glowing with the memory. “Good times.”

  Billy rolled her eyes. Rae’s nostalgia was definitely misplaced, she thought, especially considering it had taken her twenty-five years to quit the smoking habit she’d acquired under those bleachers. Even today, Rae, who was in her midforties, had the gravelly voice of a heavy ex-smoker.

  “What, you never smoked under the bleachers?” Rae asked.

  “Definitely not,” Billy said. “Not with a mom who was the vice principal at my high school.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot about that,” Rae said. “Probably not worth the risk, then.” And she laughed the deep, rumbling laugh that, unbeknownst to her, had gotten her the job of library assistant. During her interview with Billy three years ago, she’d laughed that laugh, and Billy had decided she liked listening to it. After all, it was like Rae herself: full-bodied and warm, with an almost contagious sense of fun. No, Rae didn’t do anything halfway, and that included laughing, Billy thought affectionately. Her colorful appearance was another example. Her red hair came compliments of L’Oréal and ranged anywhere from Blowout Burgundy to Cherry Crush, depending on the time of year and her mood. Her plum eye shadow and pink lipstick, on the other hand, were perennial fixtures. And when it came to her wardrobe, she favored snug jeans and bright blouses that showed off a little cleavage.

  “I’m willing to overlook Luke sneaking one cigarette,” she said to Billy now, “but his attitude, that’s another matter. The last time I saw him, he wouldn’t even look at me, and he barely grunted when I spoke to him. What exactly is he so angry about?”

  “He’s a teenager,” Billy said. “Does he really need an excuse to be angry?” But the truth, she knew, was more complicated than this.

  “Oh, he can be angry,” Rae grumbled, “as long as he keeps it to himself. If he’d grown up in my family, his attitude would have gotten some adjusting, I can tell you that right now. But, you know, I could ask Big Moe to have a talk with him,” she added. Big Moe was Rae’s boyfriend, and he came by his name honestly.

  “No, thanks,” Billy said. “I don’t think that would go over too well with Luke.”

  “Maybe not. But in my family”—Rae was one of seven children—“one whipping from my dad, and us kids would think hard about copping an attitude. That’s what they used to call discipline.”

  “Mmm,” Billy said skeptically. “Now I’m pretty sure they call that assault.”

  Here Rae shrugged blithely, dismissing the whole subject. She wasn’t done with Billy yet, though. “Honey,” she said, “we both know Luke isn’t your only problem right now.”

  “Do we?” Billy said casually, standing. She knew which topic was coming up now, and she fully intended to get herself out the library’s front door before Rae got started on it.

  “Hey, hey, hey, not so fast,” Rae said as Billy slipped on her flats.

  “I’ve got to get going,” Billy said, edging away. “You know, juvenile delinquent son and all.”

  “Fine, I’ll let you go. Just answer me one question.”

  Billy, almost at the door, held up her finger. “One,” she said.

  “When was the last time you were with a man?” Rae asked.

  “I’m with men all the time.”

  “I don’t mean men Mr. Finch’s age. I mean men of a pre-Viagra age.”

  “You know what, let’s talk about this on Monday,” Billy said, her hand on the doorknob.

  “Oh no, I’m not letting you off that easily,” Rae said, waving her back over. “And since you won’t answer my question, I’ll answer it for you. It’s been at least a year since you went on a date, and it was another year before that you were romantically involved with someone. By the way, being a single mom is not an excuse. I’m telling you, Billy, two years of celibacy at your age is not normal.”

  What is normal? Billy wanted to ask, coming back and leaning against the checkout desk, but Rae didn’t give her time. “Here you are,” she continued, “thirty-two years old, a woman in her sexual prime, who still turns heads wherever she goes . . . and what do you have to show for it? Nada. Nothing. Not a damn thing. Honestly, I’m fifteen years older than you, and I couldn’t live the way you live. Big Moe and I can’t go twenty-four hours without—”

  “Stop, please,” Billy said, holding up her hands. She knew from experience that she did not want to get Rae started on her and Moe’s sex life. After all, Billy had been raised in a family in which people did not discuss sex in polite company. “Look, Rae. I get it. You’re worried about me. You think I need to date more—”

  “Date?” Rae hooted. “Honey, at this point I’d settle for you just getting laid. Really, haven’t you ever heard of meaningless sex? Because in my opinion, it is way, way underrated.”

  “That may be, but where is this man I’m supposed to have all of this meaningless sex with, and when, exactly, would I find the time to have it? In a free minute between meeting with the guidance counselor about Luke and wrangling with the library board about next year’s budget?” She would have continued had she not caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. “Mr. Finch,” she said, turning to him and flushing instantly. How much had he heard?

  Mr. Finch, though, seemed unfazed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I drifted off. I hope I haven’t kept you two here past closing.”

  “Not at all,” Billy said, smiling. She liked Mr. Finch, and she knew, the way you knew everything about everyone when you live in a small town, that he was eighty-five, lived alone, and had never quite come to terms with his wife’s death several years earlier. “Come on,” Billy said, “I’ll leave with you.” She held her arm out to him, and he took it companionably.

  “I’ll finish up here,” Rae called. “Say hi to Luke for me. And tell him that if he doesn’t shape up—”

  “I know, I know,” Billy said as she was closing the door behind her and Mr. Finch. “You’re sending Big Moe over.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Everything took longer in Butternut, Cal Cooper reflected, glancing at the patrol car in his rearview mirror. Even getting a speeding ticket. He checked the dashboard clock of his Porsche 911. He was already fifteen minutes late meeting his sister, Allie, at their family’s cabin on Butternut Lake. He reached for his cell phone and started to text her, then changed his mind and called her instead. He needed to hear her voice.

  “Cal? Where are you?”

  “In town. I’m getting ticketed, I think.”

  “For what?”

  “For going thirty-five in a twenty-five-mile zone. Figures, right? I’ve speeded through five states since I left Seattle, and it wasn’t until I was on Main Street in Butternut that I got pulled over. It’s the out-of-state plates, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “No, Cal. It’s the car,” Allie said. “Seriously, you’re just asking for a ticket when you drive something that expensive.”

  “That’s class warfare,” he objected.

  “Maybe. But if it is, your class is winning,” Allie teased.

  Cal smiled. He missed her. And the events of the last several weeks had only made him miss her more. “I’ll be there soon,” he said, though another glance in the rearview mirror told him that the policeman—Officer Sawyer, according to his name tag—was still checking his license and registration.

  “I’ll be waiting,” Allie said.

  Cal hung up. It would be good to get to the cabin, he thought, good to get out of this car. The last three days of his life were already a blur best summed up by numbers: nine cups of coffee, seventeen hundred miles of highway, twenty-seven hours of driving, and twenty-six of those hours spent trying not to think about why he’d left Seattle. He wouldn’t think about it now, either. He’d concentrate instead on Butternut’s Main Street, which on this June afternoon looked like a movie set of sma
ll-town America. Children with ice cream cones, a black Lab lazing on the sidewalk outside the hardware store, a woman pulling a little boy in a red wagon, some teenage girls clumped on a bench in front of Pearl’s coffee shop, and an older couple stopping to look at a display in the window of the variety store. But Cal saw Butternut’s charm without really feeling it. Feeling wasn’t something he was that eager to do right now.

  “Mr. Cooper?” Officer Sawyer said, appearing at his car window. He handed Cal his license, registration, and a $145 speeding ticket. “Are you just passing through Butternut?”

  “No,” Cal said. “I’ll be here for a couple weeks, maybe more.”

  “Well, slow down, then,” the officer said gruffly. “This is a small town.”

  I know, Cal thought. He’d spent the first eighteen summers of his life at his family’s cabin on nearby Butternut Lake. But to Officer Sawyer he said, “I’ll drive at the speed limit, Officer.” And he would. After all, he’d sped halfway across the country, and he still hadn’t outrun his life.

  The rest of Cal’s drive was uneventful. A half hour later, he and Allie were sitting on the front porch steps of the cabin their grandparents had built in the 1950s. The cabin itself was modest. The view from it was not. It overlooked Otter Bay, one of the largest bays on Butternut Lake, a twelve-mile-long spring-fed lake that was over a hundred feet deep in places and that, on a sunny day like today, was apt to be a dazzling blue. The water was made to seem even bluer, of course, by its contrast to the green of the pine, balsam, and spruce trees that bordered the lake, the granite boulders that dotted its shores, and the occasional crescents of golden beach etched into its sides. The term pretty as a postcard didn’t apply here, Cal thought. He’d seen the postcards of Butternut Lake on sale at the drugstore in town. The real thing was prettier by far.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Allie asked finally.

  “What do you mean?” Cal said, turning to her.

  “Well, for one thing, you look . . .”

  “Like hell?” he suggested.

  “I was going to say ‘tired.’”