Page 3 of The Summer Save

“Sounds like it. You can open the house for the summer, fill the fridge with favorite foods, and plan a big gesture. Flowers, books, the works. You’ll figure out something. Good luck. And, Dad?”

“Yeah, Princess?”

“Don’t screw it up.” My darling daughter was the perfect combination of us. Her hold-nothing-back, calls-you-on-your-bullshit side was definitely from me. The side that never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings and the tendency to keep her heart guarded was her mom.

They say the hardest part of parenting is realizing your child doesn’t need you anymore. They’re wrong. The toughest part is when they start parenting you. “I’m going to fix this, Amber. Your mom is my world, and somehow, along the way, I stopped showing her that and started taking her for granted.”

Once I ended the call, I made my way to the kitchen to find the laminated checklist Annie kept in the top drawer. Opening tasks were organized by room on one side, with closing tasks on the other. After I removed the sheets from the living room furniture, I tossed them into the washing machine with then added the ones that covered the beds upstairs. After I started the wash, I wandered through the house and looked at the pictures of my family. Each summer we spent in Seaside was documented on the walls in frames throughout the three-bedroom home.

When I got to the wall outside the primary bedroom, I faced three of my most cherished memories—our first date, the night I proposed, and our wedding. All three at Painted Rock Beach. It took five asks before Anne Marie agreed to go on a date with me, and she finally agreed when I stopped asking her out for dinner or a movie and instead asked her if I could spend the day with her at her favorite place in Seaside. She told me to meet her at Sea Breeze Café the next morning, and she’d show me everything she loved about Seaside.

Breakfast at the café, where she refused to let me pay for her meal. Then a walk to the bookstore where she insisted we each choose something to read once we got to her favorite spot. I forced her to let me buy her book by purchasing a gift certificate. Then she let me buy her a coffee at Seaside Brew before we went to the most unique place I’d ever seen. A small beach covered in colorfully painted rocks that tourists and locals left to commemorate their trips or special occasions.

Three years to the day of our first date at that beach, I took her to paint rocks together. When we finished, I handed her mine, and tears filled her eyes when she read the words “Will You Marry Me?” on the sunset-inspired rock. Two years later, we exchanged wedding vows at that same spot. We’d originally planned to marry the summer following our engagement, but Annie got an offer to spend three months playing the cello with a small ensemble in Paris. I knew I’d miss her, but I was her biggest champion the way she was my ultimate supporter. I refused to let her pass up the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When I took my bride’s hands into mine, I promised to always support her dreams.

Today was the beginning of something incredible. I just know it. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. The way every fiber of my being feels alive for the first time and how time practically stood still tells me that Jonas is someone who’s going to be in my life for a long time. It’s far too soon to think he’s ‘the one’ or start planning a wedding or dreaming of raising babies and bringing them to Seaside each summer, but I can’t help myself. I want to think about those things. He bought me this journal today. Actually, he bought me a gift certificate at the bookstore because I was being stubborn and refused to let him pay for anything. I chose a book and this beautiful coral journal with linen pages. I’m going to use it as my summer journal and fill each page with a memory.

Whoever says there are no such things as perfect days has obviously never spent a day with someone like Jonas. He opened doors for me. He placed his hand on the small of my back to guide me from one spot to another when we were in a crowded coffee shop or the bookstore. His eyes never left mine when I babbled for hours about my dream of playing the cello for the San Francisco Orchestra and told him about everything I’d done to make the dream a reality. Most people tune out or try to change the topic because they think the music is boring or old-fashioned. But Jonas not only listened, he asked questions. While I spoke, I felt like the most important person in the room.

The only thing I regret about our day together was waiting so long to accept his date request. I’m unsure why I declined his dinner invitation each time. Maybe I was being stubborn, thinking someone so handsome and talented couldn’t possibly be interested in me. Or perhaps I was guarding my heart from another summer romance heartbreak. The one that’s inevitable when teenagers and young adults leave Seaside and head home. Unfortunately, most of us can’t take the magic of the summer with us.

My summer wish is that we find a way to make things work when I go back to the conservatory and he returns to life as a rising hockey star.

As I closed the journal and pressed it tightly against my chest, my eyes immediately found the framed photo of us that first summer on the fireplace mantel. The one her best friend took without our knowledge. We stood, hand in hand, looking at the water on our last night in Seaside. Annie’s blond hair is a wind-blown mess, thanks to my insistence on her leaving it down because I love the way the lighter layers framed her face. Her head rests against my arm. What you don’t know from the picture is that this is the exact moment I told Annie I loved her for the first time, and I promised to love her every day of my life. I can hear my words in my mind as clearly as I can smell the salty air. “Annie, it’s going to be hard. Between my schedule and yours, we’re going to make this work. Letters and phone calls. And I’ll see you as often as possible. I’ll love you until every star in the night sky fades. Nothing and no one will ever be more important in my life than you. I know this is sudden and we’ve only known each other one summer, but someday, we’re going to look back on this moment and tell our children and grandchildren about the night I promised to love you until the end of time.”

Oh, my love. Where did I go wrong? How did we end up like this?

Time with my best friend was always what I needed when everything in my life felt chaotic and like it was too much to handle. When I arrived in Ashland, she was already waiting in our hotel room. Since it was just the two of us this year, we opted for a room with a balcony instead of a two-bedroom suite. Usually, Amber traveled with me, and Meredith’s daughter Vivian drove down from Portland to meet us. But Vivian was spending the summer teaching ceramics at a camp in North Carolina, and Amber was leaving on her honeymoon in two days. It was the first time our Shakespeare Festival tradition wouldn’t include the girls.

Meredith had filled the small table by the window with a variety of our favorite treats and stocked the mini fridge with our go-to drinks. After I changed into pajamas, we each made a plate of snacks, poured a glass of wine, and got comfy on our beds before we did our traditional ten-minute catch-up. I kid you not; we’d done this since we were seven. We met the summer when we were six and were attached at the hip. The next year, her mom and mine arranged a sleepover the night my family arrived in Seaside. We were both chatting a mile a minute, trying to tell each other everything that had happened since we saw each other ten months ago. Her mom sat us at the table with a plate of cookies and a timer between us. “When the timer goes off, it’s the other person’s turn to talk. You get ten minutes at a time.”

Since that night, we’d always started our visits with ten minutes each. No matter if we’d seen each other two weeks before or six months. Plus, we talked on the phone weekly and texted throughout the day. Honestly, life was so much easier for us as long-distance best friends now than it was in our childhood, thanks to technology.

“How was the drive up?” she asked as she tucked her chestnut curls into the pink silk sleep bonnet before securing it in place with a double-knotted bow. I thought the sleep bonnet was ridiculous when she sent it to me and assumed it would be a nightmare to sleep in, but it wasn’t, and she was right. My hair was so much more manageable when I didn’t wake up with knots and tangles.

“Not as much fun as it usually is with Amber. And I missed sharing the driving with someone and having someone to sing show tunes with at the top of my lungs.”

Her kind smile and soft chuckle were comforting after everything that had happened over the last couple of days. “Silent road trips suck. Did you substitute the musical playlist for a good audiobook?”

I shook my head as I swallowed the jalapeño-stuffed green olive before taking a sip of Riesling. “Oh, I still sang my show tunes. It was just a solo performance, and I’m sure anyone who saw me thought I had lost my mind. But I don’t care. I enjoy singing in the car. I do it every day. It doesn’t matter who’s watching. Jonas used to—” I let the sentence hang in the air. I knew we’d talk about everything soon, but not yet. I wasn’t ready.

After almost 50 years of friendship, Meredith knew me as well as I knew myself. She didn’t miss a beat and picked up the conversation. “It’s my turn to do the ten-minute recap first.” She unlocked her phone, opened her clock app, and started the timer. Then the speed talking began. “We’ll open at 10 am and close at midnight instead of 11 to 11. We figured the first hour wouldn’t be incredibly busy, but we had enough interest in it that we thought we’d try it. And I’m in at nine four days a week anyway to do paperwork, so it truly is no staff cost. I’ll work the first hour. If it’s busier than we expected, I’ll add some staff time. If not, no loss, really, because I’m already there. The three days a week I’m not in, Alex is in because, like me, he prefers to do the office side of running the business when it’s quiet.”

Meredith’s youngest is the only one who made Seaside his home. She was almost certain her third-generation family business would end when she decided to retire. But about two years ago, Alex told his mom he wanted to put his culinary training to work in the family business. He took over making the baked goods they used for toppings and created new recipes not only for toppings, but cones and ice cream flavors. He wanted to keep the family’s tradition of locally sourced ingredients while combining his love of unique flavor profiles. “How’s he liking his new role as manager?”

“Loves everything about it except managing staff schedules and payroll. I handle that. And when I leave, we’ll make sure he hires someone to take over that. That’s always fallen to someone in the family, so it will be new for us, but we’ll find someone great. When the time is right.”

Meredith had debated retirement for years. Probably as long as I did. But her divorce meant she didn’t have much else going on. She didn’t have someone to travel with and do all the things she thought she’d do once she retired, so she kept working and focused on the one thing that had been constant in her life—her family’s business. “And how are things besides business?”

“Vivian is living life as the carefree artist she was always destined to be. This summer in North Carolina will be good for her. She loves teaching and has always enjoyed summer camp. It’s sort of breaking my heart that she will miss the entire summer. It will be the first time only one of my kids is home for the festival. You’d think with four, I’d get at least two of them home. But Mikey has surgeries scheduled almost every day, and Nathan’s ship doesn’t get back to port until the beginning of October. I guess when you raise your children to chase their dreams, you don’t think about how they could end up scattered throughout the country. And for part of the year, around the world, depending on where Nathan’s ship is sent.” Meredith’s twins were born within weeks of PJ, even though she was due ten weeks after me. Being pregnant together was something we’d dreamed about as teens and were lucky to experience not once, but twice. Amber and Vivian were born four days apart.

Other than our children being the same age and essentially being second-generation best friends, our parenting experience couldn’t have been more different. Meredith was the type of woman who dropped everything when she became a mom and focused on her children. At times, I wish I could say I’d done the same, but I hadn’t. We had a nanny, and I continued to pursue my music career. Thanks to support from my in-laws, we always had help with the kids, and someone was always present at ball games, hockey games, piano recitals, orchestra concerts, and theater performances. I never even considered doing the stay-at-home mom thing. My best friend studied horticulture in college and planned to open a nursery in Seaside one day. She worked for a landscape design firm for a few years before getting married. Once she had the twins, she stopped talking about the nursery. Her new dream was to be home with the kids until they started school and then take over her family’s ice cream shop. Never being one to question someone’s motives for changing their career path, I never asked why, and instead simply supported her. The way she had me.

By the time her ten-minute timer went off, I had finished my wine and my plate was empty. It was my turn. “I don’t need the full ten minutes. PJ and Amber are both doing great. Amber is loving her job. She’s enjoying life as a newlywed. I adore Wyatt and couldn’t imagine a better husband for her. PJ is adjusting to his new role in the hockey world and no longer looks like a lost puppy since his time on the ice ended much too soon. My volunteer work keeps me busy, but not satisfied. I long to travel and start tackling the things on the retirement list Jonas and I wrote years ago. As I told you on the phone, I thought he was announcing his retirement, but instead, he announced to not only the fans but to me that he had accepted a new position running the family’s new foundation. So much for spending my retirement with my husband. He didn’t show up to our standing appointment with our therapist. Then he sent me to voicemail multiple times. So, I left him with an ultimatum. Show up in Seaside this summer, work on our marriage, or I want a divorce.”

Everything up to him not showing up to therapy wasn’t a surprise. She knew that. I’d told her on the phone that night as I cried myself to sleep. She spat her wine out. “Holy shit. What did he say?”

“I don’t know. I left a note on the kitchen counter. The same way he does to me before he heads off to a meeting or to travel with the team. Then I set his phone number to go directly to voicemail. If he wants to talk to me, he can come to Seaside. I made sure he, Amber, and PJ knew about our Ashland plans and how to contact me at the hotel. If it’s an emergency, he can reach me here. Anything else can wait until he gets off his ass and shows up.”

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