28 Summers: The gripping, emotional page turner of summer 2020 by 'the Queen of the Summer Novel' (People) (43 page)

It’s astonishing how the events of one evening can influence so much. Mallory thinks about her parents. Why did Senior not just stay in the Audi and call AAA? Well, because he was Cooper Blessing Sr. and would have deduced that he could change the tire himself in half the time it would take for AAA to arrive. Kitty had gotten out of the car—well, because she was Kitty and liked to supervise, always.

“Mallory!” Jake yells again. “Mal! Mal, please! Where are you?”

Mallory is forced to face her own disingenuousness. If she’d really wanted this to work, she would have gone away. But she’d wanted to see Jake’s reaction. Watching and hearing him without his knowledge is like reading his mind: he loves her.

She gets another text. The buzzing of her phone is louder than she anticipates.

Where are you? Your cottage is locked but your Jeep is here. Just please, for the love of God, tell me where you are. It’s not fair for you to just leave me hanging like this, you know it’s not.

He’s right; it’s not fair.

“Mallory!”

She imagines this from his point of view. He waits all year, anticipating. Then he makes the necessary arrangements, lies to Ursula and the forty staff members who are now watching his every move, and shows up here, expecting to step through the door of the cottage and find burgers, shucked corn, sliced tomatoes; Cat Stevens, World Party, Lenny Kravitz on the stereo; a new pile of books on “his” side of the bed—and Mallory.

The door is locked. He’s had no warning of this. He’s blindsided.

Mallory wants to run over the dune calling out his name and jump into his arms. She wants to kiss him. It will be like the ending of the movie where Doris and George think it’s over, but then George comes bursting back in and they reunite—to continue, year after year,
until our bones are too brittle to risk contact.

But this isn’t a movie—that movie, or any other. It’s their lives, and she’s a human being and can take only so much.

She sends him a text:
We can’t do this, Jake. It’s too dangerous now.

I don’t care if it’s dangerous.

Not only for you,
Mallory writes.
For me as well. And for Link. And for Bess.

Are you here somewhere?
he writes.
Can you see me?

No,
she types. But before she can hit Send, her phone rings. The buzzer is loud, and it’s a still afternoon, the air heavy with mist; she’s certain he can hear the sound floating over the dunes. She declines the call.

You are here,
he says.

No, I’m not.

He calls again. She declines the call immediately. She should turn her phone off, she knows, but she doesn’t want to end their communication. She and Jake have spent the past twenty-odd years not using cell phones because that’s how other people get discovered. Now that they have been discovered, she supposes it doesn’t matter.

I want to see you for sixty seconds,
he texts.
Please. Then I’ll leave.

Jake, no. That won’t work.

One kiss,
he texts.
Please. Just one kiss, then I promise, I’ll leave.

There might be some among us who would say no to that request, but our girl Mallory isn’t one of them.

Close your eyes,
she texts.

She climbs out of the dunes and doesn’t see him, which means he’s moved around to the front porch. And that is indeed where Mallory finds him.

They kiss. It’s just one kiss, the deepest, sweetest, most heartbreaking, stomach-flipping kiss of Mallory’s life. With only the Atlantic Ocean as their witness, they swear that kiss will hold them through the next two or six or ten years.

“I love you, Mal,” Jake says.

Mallory closes her eyes, too overcome to say anything back.

When she opens her eyes, he’s gone.

U
rsula de Gournsey has a weeklong campaign stop in St. Louis. Every speech is followed by a reception where they serve fried ravioli, Imo’s Pizza, gooey butter cake, and Ted Drewes frozen custard.

Jake is with the campaign in a suite at the Hyatt Regency when he receives the call from Lincoln Dooley.

He hangs up the phone and sits down on the bed that he and Ursula are supposed to be sleeping in, although sleep these days is done mostly on airplanes and in the car. He feels like he’s falling. He’s been pushed off a building. He’s a coin flipped carelessly into a bottomless well. There’s air rushing in his ears. Vertigo. He deals daily with the loss of Mallory, but he reminds himself that it’s only temporary. They may see each other as soon as next September if Ursula loses.

Ursula, he knows, isn’t going to lose.

But now, suddenly, that has no bearing on his life—win, lose, elected, reelected; it doesn’t matter. The melanoma came back, metastasized to her brain. Link has called hospice. Mallory is dying.

Jake tries to remember how she looked when he saw her the summer before.

Beautiful. She looked beautiful. She looked like Mallory.

Her eyes had been blue.

Jake enters the suite’s sitting room, St. Louis command central, where Ursula is meeting with her young staffers—one of whom is Avery Silver, Hank Silver’s oldest daughter, the squash champion—and the UDG campaign manager, Kasie Smith. Ursula met Kasie at a charity event sponsored by
Western Michigan Woman
magazine and hired her on the spot.

We do well together,
Ursula said.
She gets me.
Jake remembers that these were the exact phrases Ursula used to describe her relationship with Anders; it’s her highest praise. Jake likes Kasie very much. She’s smart and focused like Ursula, direct and poised like Ursula—and warm and empathetic, qualities that she’s trying to teach Ursula. Kasie is now the most important person in Ursula’s life, in all of their lives.

Around Kasie and the staff, Jake works hard to come across as the consummate supportive spouse, but now, his voice is sharp. “Ursula, I need to talk to you.”

Ursula is reading something. She doesn’t look up.

“Ursula,” Jake says.

“Ursula,” Kasie prompts, and Ursula puts a finger down to mark her place. Kasie’s voice is the only one that can penetrate Ursula’s concentration these days.

“What is it?” Ursula asks.

Jake nods toward the bedroom.

The bubble over her head says,
This had better be important.
She follows Jake into the other room. He closes the door.

“I got a phone call just now,” he says. “From Mallory Blessing’s son. Mallory has cancer, it’s metastasized to her brain, and they’ve called hospice.”

“Oh no,” Ursula says. “Jake, I’m so—”

“I’m going to Nantucket tomorrow.”

“You can’t leave tomorrow.”

“St. Louis isn’t going anywhere.”

“We have three events plus the health-care symposium that
you’re
moderating. It’s a can’t-miss thing.”

“Nothing is a can’t-miss thing,” he says. “Get some perspective, Ursula.”

“Jake.”

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll go Saturday.”

Later that afternoon, Jake goes into his hotel room and puts the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign up. He sits at the desk and tries to work on talking points for the symposium, but he has a difficult time concentrating. There’s a tentative knock at the door. Jake is sure it’s Avery Silver. He’s assigned her a top-secret task.

But the person Jake finds is his daughter, Bess. She’s wearing a dress, heels, pearls, looking so much like a younger version of Ursula, it’s spooky. Bess is working on the campaign this summer, reaching out to Generation Z voters. “Hi, honey,” Jake says.

“Please take me with you to Nantucket,” Bess says.

Jake flinches. “What? Did your mom—”

“She told me you’re going to say goodbye to a sick friend.”

Jake closes his eyes. Ursula can’t keep her fingerprints off anything he does. She just
has
to be in control.

“Yes,” Jake says. “It’s delicate stuff and not anything you want to be a part of, trust me.”

“Please, Dad,” Bess says. “I have to get out of here, even if it’s only for a couple days.”

“I understand. But, honey, this isn’t a vacation…”

“I’ll let you do your thing, I promise,” Bess says. “I just need a break from the meetings and the strategizing and the canvassing. It’s a brain-squeeze. I want to get outside. If I could see the ocean, even for a couple of minutes—” She breaks off and gives him an assessing look. “Besides, Mom says you’re going to be sad. And I don’t want you to be alone.”

After his phone conversation with Jake McCloud—Jake McCloud!—Link has questions. He sits at his mother’s bedside Googling Jake McCloud. In every single photograph, Jake is with Ursula de Gournsey. And then Link reads about him on Wikipedia.

…graduated from Johns Hopkins University…

Aha! Link thinks. Maybe he knows Uncle Coop? But that still doesn’t quite explain it. Why would
his
be the number in an envelope in the sticky drawer?

“Mom?” Link says when Mallory’s eyelids flutter. He doesn’t like forcing her awake but he needs answers while she’s still somewhat cogent. “Listen, I called that number and Jake McCloud answered.”

Mallory’s eyes open.

“He said for you to hold on,” Link says. “He told me he’s coming.”

A single tear drips from the corner of Mallory’s eye. Link wipes it with his thumb.

“Mom?” Link says, but her eyes have closed.

Apple stops by the next day. She reads to Mallory from
The English Patient
for a while; it’s not a cheerful book by any means, but it’s Mallory’s favorite. Then Apple starts talking about their old Summer House–waitressing days—
Hokey Pokeys, Ollie’s dollies
—and Link hears his mother laughing. She seems better. Is she getting better?

Uncle Cooper flies in from DC and he and Link both talk with Sabina, RN case manager. Sabina tells them that watching a loved one “transition” can be painful and draining.

“Make sure you take care of yourselves,” Sabina says. “Fill your cup. Do things that comfort you and sustain you so that you can be whole and present for Mallory.” She pauses. “She probably has several more days.”

Several more days means five or six, maybe even a week. Which means this time next week…what? Mallory will be dead? How is Link supposed to process that?

After talking to Sabina, Cooper and Link take a walk down the beach. It’s warm and sunny, one of the first beautiful days of the summer. Link can see people gathering down at Fat Ladies with their brightly colored umbrellas and their coolers, so they walk in the other direction.

Coop says, “You will never be alone. For the rest of your life, I’ve got you, man. And your dad will be there too, of course. But even together, we aren’t going to be able to replace your mom.” Coop clears his throat. “Have you contacted Leland?”

“I wasn’t sure I should. Mom hasn’t spoken to Leland since I was in ninth grade.”

“I’ll get ahold of her,” Coop says.

“Mom asked me to call the number in this envelope that was tucked away in her desk drawer and I did, and you’re never going to guess who answered.”

Coop kicks at the sand. “Oh, I bet I can guess,” he says.

The door opens and Link, her beautiful, sweet, strong boy, says, “Mama, are you up for visitors?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. He just lets them in, one by one.

Cooper.

Fray.

Leland.

Jake.

Everything is okay,
she thinks. They’re around the harvest table, their faces glowing from the flame of one votive candle. Cat Stevens is on the stereo:
I’m looking for a hard headed woman.

Everything is still okay.

Cooper is overcome; she can see that. She feels guilty about leaving him like this; first their parents, now her. She hopes he finds someone new, someone who will stay. He kisses her forehead.

She says, “In my next life, I’m going to be cool like you.”

“I hate to tell you this, sis,” he says, his voice breaking, “but you’re already cool.”

“Now you’re lying.”

“I love you, Mal,” he says, and then he disappears out the bedroom door.

Fray is next. He roams the room, hands stuffed into the pockets of his very expensive jeans. He’s jittery; too much caffeine, probably. All that coffee.

“Mal,” he says. “Come on, Mal.” His voice is pleading, as though she has the power to change what’s happening here.

“Thank you,” she says. It’s funny, right? Peculiar funny and
funny
-funny that they got drunk at Cooper’s second wedding and Fray eased up her ballet-slipper-silk sheath and in that impulsive moment, a lark for both of them, she ended up with the greatest treasure of her life. Their son.

He kisses her cheek and then he too goes out the door.

Leland takes Mallory’s hand. Mallory is furious with Leland; she wants to scream. She still has one last fight in her. What she says is “Hi, Lee.”

She doesn’t say:
You are my best friend, the best friend of my life.

She doesn’t say:
I need you to keep an eye on Link. Please, Lee, fill my shoes. You, Apple, Anna. He’s going to need all three of you.

She doesn’t say:
Go win Fifi back. You can do it. You deserve to be happy.

“Are you angry?” Leland asks.

There are so many reasons to be angry: the duck confit and lamb shank, brunch at the Elephant and Castle, the rooftop thing at Harrison’s, “suggestible…a follower,”
Leland’s Letter
.

“Disappointed,” Mallory says, and after a beat, Mallory and Leland grin like the crazy girls they were on Deepdene Road.

Leland bends down and squeezes Mallory so tight that it hurts and then she, too, leaves the room.

How had Jake described it so long ago?
The dog that chased the cat that chased the rat.

Everything is still okay.

Jake is there. He’s there! Mallory can smell the browned butter sizzling in the pan before he makes the omelets. She can see him standing on Tuckernuck, their provisions at his feet, wondering if Mallory is ever going to pick him up or if he’s supposed to know where to walk, how to find her. She can hear him reading his fortune aloud:
Practice makes perfect
.

Between the sheets,
she says.

“Are you going to leave too?” Mallory asks.

“No,” Jake says, and he pulls the chair right up next to her. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll stay.”

Let’s go back a few days to St. Louis and the top-secret task Jake assigned to Avery Silver.

An acoustic guitar?
Avery thought.
Where am I going to find an acoustic guitar?
But St. Louis was a Mississippi River town and therefore a music town. Avery used her personal assistant, Google, and in less than five minutes she had rented a Yamaha Dreadnought-whatever-whatever-whatever for a hundred and five bucks for the week and guess what—the place delivered.

Now Jake pulls the guitar out of its case and slides the strap over his head and shoulder. Mallory makes a noise. He looks over. She’s laughing.

“No,” she says. “Are you…”

“Yes,” he says, sounding way more confident than he feels. He had to double-check the chord progression, but once he saw it, everything came flooding back. Jake closes his eyes, and suddenly, he’s a college senior again, sitting on the end of Cooper Blessing’s bed with the phone next to him and Mallory on the other end of the line, waiting to hear if he’s any good.

He’s far more nervous now than he was then.

He strums the D-minor chord, then G, then C. It sounds okay.

He whispers, “This is for you, Mal. My hardheaded woman.”

And he begins to sing.

While all the adults are with his mother, Link steps out back to get some air. He takes in the vista: the pond, the rugosa rose, the flash of amethyst irises through the reeds, the swans paddling side by side like a long-married couple. Nantucket Island in June.

Mallory wants her ashes scattered on the pond. The ocean, she fears, will carry her away, and she wants to stay right here.

Suddenly, Link startles; he’s just seen, sitting in the passenger side of one of the rental Jeeps in the driveway, a girl with dark hair and deep brown eyes. She has the car window down and is unabashedly staring at him. Link stands up a little straighter. He strides over. “Sorry, I just saw you there. I’m Lincoln Dooley.”

“Bess McCloud,” she says. “I’m Jake’s daughter. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Okay,” Link says. “Wow.”

Bess eyes his T-shirt. “Do you go to South Carolina?”

“I just finished my sophomore year,” he says.

“I just finished mine too,” she says. “I go to Johns Hopkins. What’s your major?”

He’s afraid to tell her it’s political science. That would be weird, right? When her mother is running for president?

He shrugs. “Political science.”

“Hey!” she says. “Mine too!” She gazes past him, at the ocean. “I’ve been stuck with my parents in hotels and conference centers for weeks. Do you think it would be okay if I walked down to the beach? Is there a path?”

Link opens the Jeep door and offers Bess McCloud his hand. What did Sabina tell him?
Fill your cup
.

“There is,” he says. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Get Elin Hilderbrand’s sizzling summer read SUMMER OF ’69 here