Page 10 of Summer Love

“Just in case. See you later.”

I take it without looking and slip it into my bag without answering.

Outside, the warm air wraps around me all at once. The sun’s climbed higher now, and Main Street is bathed in a harsh light that flattens the shadows.

I grab my bike and stay on the sidewalk, hands on the handlebars, replaying the conversation.

“Go take a look around the neighborhood.”

Ryan danced around it. Ten minutes of smiles and politeness, but zero answers. It’s not discretion, it’s a choice. He wants me to see for myself, and there’s a reason for that. When someone refuses to name a problem, it’s because the problem has a face.

“The beach is very active.”

“The immediate surroundings complicate things.”

There’s only one way to find out.

I take a breath, get on my bike, and head back toward Crescent Beach.

CHAPTER 4

Summer

At the bottom of Main Street, the road forks. To the left, the boardwalk runs along the beach. It’s the shorter way—but it goes right past the surf school. To the right, Shoreline Drive loops around the back of Crescent Beach, behind the waterfront houses.

I turn right.

I cut through the stand of redwoods. Five or six trees, but their dark red trunks rise so high the light barely gets through. The air changes when you pass through—cooler, damper, thick with earth and bark. As a kid, I called it my forest. Grandma would correct me, laughing, “It’s just a few redwoods, Summer.” But to me it was a kingdom—my secret passage between the road and the house.

I get off the bike and walk it the last few yards.

The house comes into view at the back, by the porch—shutters drawn, wood siding gone gray in patches where the white paint has surrendered to the years. The roof looks intact, but the gutters sag and the shutters are in sorry shape. Weeds have pushed up between the warped deck boards.

It’s just a house. Four walls, a roof. A price per square foot.

My fingers find the pendant.

I prop the bike against the garage door and dig through my bag for the back door key. I try the lock. It sticks, swollen with moisture, then gives all at once with a dull thud.

The smell hits me: stale air, warm dust, dry wood, salt worked into the walls. And, almost gone, something softer underneath. Grandma’s soap, maybe. Or Grandpa’s coffee, which he’d leave on the living room table until it went cold.

I stop on the threshold. It’s too dark to make anything out. I turn on my phone’s flashlight.

The hallway looks narrower than I remember. White sheets cover the furniture—the side table, the coat rack, the little shelf. I don’t even know who put them there, or when. Everything’s frozen, like time stopped and forgot to start again.

The kitchen’s a little less dark—thin shafts of light filter through the gaps in the shutters.

My phone’s beam sweeps the empty counter, the closed cabinets, the sink. The faucet coughs and spits nothing but air when I turn it.

And on the drying rack… a mug.

A thin gray film covers it. My thumb brushes the surface. The dust lifts away to reveal a crackled glaze, painted in once-bright colors—blue, yellow, green—laid down by the clumsy fingers of a little girl who didn’t yet know how to hold a brush.

Best Grandma in Coral Bay

The letters are carved into the clay, a little crooked. The B leans, the G looks like a 6, the a in Grandma has a wild tail that flies up too high.

I made it in kindergarten, during a pottery class. I wrapped it in pink tissue paper and gave it to Grandma the summer I was five. She said, “It’s the most beautiful mug in the world, Summer!” before tucking it in beside the others—the real ones—in the cabinet. That was the one she reached for every morning.