A Sweethaven Summer (22 page)

“What is it?” Luke righted the trunk and sat down on the curb next to her.

Campbell ran her hand across the front of a sealed envelope. “It’s a letter. To my grandparents. From my mom.” She looked at him. “Returned to sender.” The stamp on the front of the envelope told her the letter hadn’t been delivered. Her grandparents had sent it back. Unread.

“Are you going to open it?”

She handed it to Luke. “You do it.”

“What? No. It’s personal.”

“Right. So, maybe I should just leave it alone.” Campbell set the letter inside the trunk.

Luke stared at her for a few seconds and then pulled at the hole in the cover.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m wondering if there’s anything else in there.”

Campbell watched as he made the hole larger. “We could cut it.”

But even as she was getting the words out, he pulled the cover off and exposed the trunk’s secret underbelly. A stack of letters, identical to the one they’d already found, fell into the base of the trunk alongside something else—a small stack of scrapbook pages. Pages her mom had kept hidden.

She picked one up and studied it. A photo of the Sweethaven Dock adorned the left center of the page. Underneath, her mom had painted a design, and beside it, she’d written a long journal entry.

Mom’s handwriting hadn’t changed over all these years. It read:

Strange thing happened last night. Fought with Cathy—as usual. Dad’s getting more and more upset that I refuse to call her Mom anymore. She thought I was sleeping, but I left. Like in a movie, I climbed out the window and shimmied down a tree. Didn’t even know I could do that. Cut my thigh in the process
.

I wish I could’ve taken a picture of the sky. Pitch black. No moon. Stars dancing like crystals playing with the sunlight. In seconds, I forgot why I was angry in the first place
.

I went to the dock and put my feet in the lake. The water was cool and it felt good on my toes. I lay down on the dock and found the Pleiades, Orion, and Cassiopeia. I didn’t even hear him behind me. He asked if he could sit with me. Said he had a lot on his mind. I never really paid attention to him before. I mean, we’re friends, sure, but not really. He’s preoccupied. This is our last year before we’re officially grown-ups
.

We didn’t talk at first. Just stared at the sky. He found the Milky Way. How’d I miss it? He asked me what I was doing out there so late at night and I told him. I told him
the truth. Even my friends don’t know how bad things are at home, but I spilled it all. Maybe it felt safer since it was so dark. I’m going back tonight. I’m embarrassed to say it, but I hope he’s there again
.

Campbell’s heart threatened to pound straight through her chest. She stared at the page, reading the last paragraph two, three times.

Had the answers been with her the whole time?

She flipped through the pages quickly, scanning the journaling for any mention of a name, but there was none. Only “he” and “him” over and over again. Her mom had been purposely vague, but why? Could it be Jared Kimball?

“If your dad had a troubled past, I can see why your mom would’ve kept it a secret if she had something going with him. Her parents wouldn’t have approved.”

“I need to think about this.” Campbell had tried to imagine introducing herself to Jared Kimball, but in her mind she always stumbled over the part where she asked if he had a relationship with her mom. Did she even have the courage to keep pursuing this?

“You can’t quit now. It’s what you came here for. If you go back home now and you don’t find out, you’ll always wonder.”

Campbell looked away.

“Look, we’ll just close it up.” He shut the lid of the trunk. “We’ll go shoot pictures and you can come back to this whenever you decide it’s time. But just think about it, okay?”

She nodded.

He opened the passenger door to the truck and motioned for her to get in. They drove downtown, and he parked outside the Sweethaven Train Station.

“Um, I don’t think a train is going to work for this trip,” she said.

“Have a little faith, will ya?” He turned the engine off, jumped down, and walked over to her side of the truck.

She watched him, unmoving.

He opened her door. “Seriously, it’ll be fine,” he said. “Come on.”

“You do know I have a deadline now, right? And it won’t be daylight forever?”

“Come on, trust me.”

She took his offered hand and stepped onto solid ground. When he didn’t loosen his grip, she felt that flutter back in her stomach.

“You sure you wouldn’t rather read those letters?” He prodded now. Perhaps he was more curious than she was.

“I’m positive. Stop asking me.” She smiled, and they crossed the wide sidewalk in front of a yellow wooden building with hunter-green trim.

“Wait, I’ve seen this before.” The building reminded her of a photo she’d seen in the scrapbook of her mother and her three friends peeking out the back of an electric trolley.

They crossed the tracks and walked up to a window that had been cut out of the side of the building. Behind a counter sat a man, reading a newspaper and chewing on a toothpick.

“Hey Russ,” Luke said as they approached.

The man didn’t respond.

She glanced at Luke, who seemed unfazed by the lack of interest.

“Hey, we were hoping you could take us for a ride. A couple stops so my friend here can take some photos. It would only take about an hour.”

He was so optimistic.

Russ shuffled his papers as he tried to turn the pages, but he still didn’t respond.

“Free coffee for a week,” Luke offered.

That warranted a sideways glance, first at Luke and then at Campbell. Russ’s brow furrowed, and his eyes turned to slits as he sized her up. “Two weeks.”

“Ten days.”

“Deal.” He closed the paper and folded it in half twice. “Who’s your friend?”

“Campbell Carter.”

“Related to the Reverend?”

The question caught her off-guard. Until that week she hadn’t been related to anybody but her mother.

“Suzanne was her mother,” Luke said.

“Was?” Russ tossed the toothpick from side to side with his tongue.

“She passed away just a few days ago,” Campbell said.

He frowned. “Shame. I always liked that one. Used to let her ride around for free.”

Why did fond memories of her mother nick her heart like a too-sharp razor on loose skin?

“We’re in kind of a rush,” Luke said.

“Don’t start bossing me around, Mr. Coffee.” Russ lifted the counter and locked the door. “I’ll get there when I get there.” Judging by his slow movements, it might take awhile.

Luke tossed Campbell a look that told her their banter was playful, and she followed them down the platform to where an electric trolley was parked.

“I took your mom and her friends on our very first ride.” Russ stepped into the trolley and sat behind the wheel. “The trolley hasn’t been here forever, but the day it opened, those girls hopped on board, all four of them with their own camera. You’d have thought they were the tourists.”

“They were good friends, weren’t they?” Campbell had never
had those kinds of friends. Her friends had been fair-weather. She brushed the thought away.

She snapped a picture of her view from inside the trolley, Russ’s profile off to the left, his worn wrinkles deep and telling. She imagined it in black and white.

Luke showed her the places her mother had painted, and she photographed those, but as she worked, a different idea welled inside her. She had her own story to tell through images: the story of Sweethaven through the eyes of a stranger. A tiny seed of excitement had burrowed down deep inside her and now twisted and turned and begged to be watered. The creativity seed.

She couldn’t ignore it. Her hair blew away from her face as they rode down Main Street.

“Just tell me when you see something you want to look at.” Luke draped his arm on the back of the wooden bench where they sat in the rear of the trolley.

The same two old men she’d seen together once before sat on a park bench at the corner of two downtown streets. The trolley moved slowly enough now that she could raise the camera and zoom in to capture the smiles of the two old codgers.
Click
. They spotted her and one of them waved. Another
click
.

Luke waved back. “That’s Charlie and Dale. They’re both widowers. Both been coming to Sweethaven since they were kids. They retired up here. When the weather gets nice, they spend all day on that bench. Notice they’ve got their sack lunches and a big thermos of coffee.”

She focused the camera again, zooming in on wrinkled hands wrapped around a thermos lid of a steaming drink.
Click
.

From behind the camera she waved as they passed by, and the men laughed. “Make us famous,” one of them shouted.

“That was Charlie,” Luke said.

As they rode along, she clicked off a few shots of the entire downtown area through the open window at the back of the train.

She could almost picture her mom, Jane, Lila, and Meghan riding bikes down the brick road to the candy store to fill a bag with jelly beans and then dashing off to the soda fountain for root beer floats. Her mother had walked these streets.

For that matter, so had her father.

Her thoughts turned to the hidden scrapbook layouts she’d found. The words on the page told of the beginning of a crush, or at least an infatuation. Who was the boy who stole her heart? A dark art student? A gangly admirer? What if the pages placed her no closer to the truth?

An even scarier thought popped into her head: what if they did?

Jane watched Lila pull out of the driveway and disappear down Lilac Lane. She’d been asked to locate Mark Davis—a task that wouldn’t be difficult but seemed completely ridiculous.

Off the hook for dinner, she walked out back, wondering if she should think about planting some flowers this year. Mom had always kept up on the flowers. Their yard had exploded with color every year. Now it looked dry and empty.

Who was she kidding? She didn’t need to landscape the yard of a house she had no intention of revisiting. Her conversation with Lila left her analyzing her own heart. She’d made peace with God, but she still carried a grudge against Meghan. The thought shamed her. Logic told her it wasn’t her friend’s fault, but blaming Meghan meant not shouldering all the blame herself.

Because trying to carry that burden had nearly killed her.

Graham tossed a ball to Sam in the back yard. Sam whipped it back and pelted his dad in the leg.

“Good aim, buddy. Next time, maybe not so hard.” Graham threw it back.

Jane sat in a lawn chair and watched for a few minutes, thankful the trees obstructed the view of the lake.

“All right, let’s take a break, Samster,” Graham said.

“Okay, I’m going to play my DSi.” Sam ran toward the house.

“Half an hour, buddy,” Jane called after him.

Graham settled into the chair next to her and stared until he had her attention.

“What?” She knew the look on his face meant trouble.

“I didn’t say anything.” He took her hand. “How are you doing?”

She sighed. “I feel like this trip has set me back months. I was doing so well.”

“No, you just stopped thinking about it all the time,” Graham said. “And now, it’s smacking you in the face.”

“Punching me in the gut is more like it.”

He stayed quiet.

“Lila thinks she found Campbell’s father.”

“Really?”

“I don’t buy it, but she’s convinced. She wants me to find out if this guy’s family still owns the house down the street.”

“Why you?”

“Because our families were friends.”

“And why would it be such a secret if it was this guy?”

“Because I had a huge crush on him.” Jane giggled. She looked at Graham. “He was so dreamy.”

“I don’t want you talking to this guy,” Graham joked.

“I just think Lila’s got the wrong person.”

“You have another idea?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.” She paused. “We may never know now.”

“True.”

Empty flowerpots flanked the back door. “I know we’re not coming back here, but do you think I should plant some flowers in the yard?”

He looked at her. “Why couldn’t we come back?”

She shook her head.

“The kids love it. Emily and Jenna could use a little small-town life. Maybe a couple of weeks this summer would do us all some good.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Graham. Forget I said anything.”

“Just think about it. I believe it’s good for us.” He took her hand. “All of us.”

But thinking about it meant thinking about the lake. And thinking about the lake meant thinking about Alex. And thinking about Alex meant being in pain.

And that’s why she hadn’t wanted to come back here in the first place.

* * * * *

Against Deb’s better judgment, Campbell had looked up Jared Kimball in the Sweethaven phone book and now pulled into what appeared to be his driveway. The GPS had led her to a gravel road on the outskirts of town. When the voice told her to turn right, she nearly missed the turn for all the overgrown brush that covered the driveway.

The car bounced down the gravel drive until she turned a corner and a tiny white house came into view. Outside sat a late-nineties–style Nissan with rust above the tires. Campbell took a deep breath and willed herself to calm down.

The curtains on the second floor moved, and a yellow-headed little girl appeared between the two sheers. When she met Campbell’s eyes, surprise crossed the little girl’s face and she disappeared back behind the curtains.

Campbell walked up to the house and knocked deliberately on the door, wondering if there were any more children hiding inside.

And then she wondered if they were her half-siblings. She’d always imagined having a sister.

The sound of the door jolted her back to reality, and Campbell waited for Jared Kimball to appear, but when it popped open, a tired-looking woman stood there, scowling at her.