Summerland: A Novel (49 page)
Read Summerland: A Novel Online
Authors: Elin Hilderbrand
Tags: #Fiction, #Family Life, #Contemporary Women, #Fiction / Contemporary Women
Demeter decided that she would keep this letter and her mother’s notes for the rest of her life so that when that 20 percent of her was struggling, she could pull them out and read them.
It was dark now, fully dark at seven-thirty, and whereas a part of Demeter knew that ninety miles away on the island where she had been born and raised there were lights burning brightly on a football field, the only lights Demeter cared about now were the headlights of her parents’ car. When, a few seconds later, they pulled up to the Vendever exit, which was also the entrance to the rest of her life, Demeter turned around and said to Sebastian, who was patiently manning the sign-out desk, “They’re here! They’re here! I’m going home.”
The Nantucket Whalers lost their first home game by a score of 35 to 7. It was a whipping the likes of which we hadn’t seen in over a decade, but no one, not a single one of us in the stands that night, cared about the score. We had learned some things over the past few months. We had learned that when we looked upon our children, the young heroes and goddesses of Nantucket Island, all we could do was hope. We knew they would struggle; we knew they would fall prey to the same temptations we did, they would have lonely and sad moments as we did, they would eat too much and drink too much and cheat at golf and slander their neighbors and fail to recycle assiduously and speed on the Milestone Road and do the wrong thing when the right thing was smack in front of their faces, just as we did. But what we could see as the team filed off the field—some of the kids smiling even in defeat, some of the kids hopping in their cleats because they were
so eager to play again next week
—was that they had survived with their spirits intact.
We saw Claire Buckley’s hand fly to her abdomen, her mouth
pursed in an astonished O, and we knew that as she walked away from the field that night, she had felt her baby kick for the first time. Hobson Alistair III.
We would all of us persevere. We would keep going. We would move in the only direction we could move, and that was forward.
I must start by thanking my editor, Reagan Arthur, for consistently encouraging my very best work. She is the Smartest Person in the Universe and always manages to take the rough gems I give her and make them shine. Thank you to the rest of my devoted and brilliant team at Little, Brown, including Michelle Aielli, Michael Pietsch, Amanda Tobier, Heather Fain, Mario Pulice, Terry Adams, Sarah Murphy, Justin Levine—and at Hachette, the gracious and forever fabulous David Young.
I have two amazing agents who not only advocate on my behalf but also serve as valued readers, and who are among my most treasured friends and confidants. They are the Best Agents in the Universe: Michael Carlisle and David Forrer.
And then there are the people who keep the carousel of my life spinning. I know I sound like a broken record, but I could not live and certainly could not write without their continued presence in my every day and, more important, in the every day of my children: Rebecca Bartlett, Richard Congdon, Margie and Chuck Marino, Debbie Bennett, Elizabeth and Beau Almodobar, Wendy Rouillard and Illya Kagan, Anne and Whitney Gifford, Wendy and Randy Hudson, Shelly and Roy Weedon, John and Martha
Sargent, Norman and Jennifer Frazee, Evelyn and Matthew MacEachern, Mark and Eithne Yelle, Helaina and Dewey Jones, Lorri and Brian Ryder, Scott and Logan O’Connor, Jill and Paul Surprenant, Jeanne and Richard Diamond, John Bartlett, Holly and Marty McGowan, Jamie Foster, Rocky Fox, West and Manda Riggs, Jay Riggs, Andrew Law and David Rattner, Heidi and Fred Holdgate, Kristen and Dan Holdgate, Sean and Milena Lennon, Stephanie McGrath, and always and forever the rudder on my boat, Heather Osteen Thorpe.
For time and space and love and laughter, I have to thank my own home team: my husband, Chip Cunningham, who has, over the past nineteen years, made all of my dreams come true; my all-star son Maxx Cunningham (who gets his first cameo in one of Mom’s books); my son Dawson “the Dawg” Cunningham, who is coming out on top; and my radiant daughter, Shelby Cunningham.
It may sound strange, but I’d also like to thank the places that inspired me during the writing of this book. Thank you Fremantle and Margaret River, Western Australia. Thank you Smith Court, Beacon Hill, Boston. And thank you Nantucket Island—I love you, of course, the best of all.
E
LIN HILDERBRAND:
novelist, mother of three, sports enthusiast, avid fan of Bruce Springsteen, Veuve Clicquot, and four-inch heels. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Nantucket Boys & Girls Club and Nantucket Little League and is a founding member of Nantucket BookFest. Her resting pulse is 65.
The Beach Club
Nantucket Nights
Summer People
The Blue Bistro
The Love Season
Barefoot
A Summer Affair
The Castaways
The Island
Silver Girl
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2012 by Elin Hilderbrand
Cover design by Ploy Siripant
Cover photograph © Stephen Simpson/Getty Images
Cover © 2012 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown and Company
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First e-book edition: June 2012
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ISBN 978-0-316-20247-3