Secrets of the Lost Summer (38 page)

Thirty-Two

O
n a warm early summer morning, Grace Webster sat in her favorite chair in the sunroom and listened to the birds through the screen. She had just received an invitation, designed by Olivia Frost, to the autumn wedding of Jessica Frost and Mark Flanagan at The Farm at Carriage Hill.

According to Audrey Frost, Olivia and Dylan were planning a Christmas wedding.

Dylan…my grandson…

Audrey and the rest of the residents at Rivendell still weren’t over the shock of that one. Grace smiled, thinking not just of their shock but their support and love.

Everyone has their secrets,
she thought.

Louise and Randy Frost were planning a trip to Tuscany next spring, after the weddings.

Grace knew that her traveling days were long past, but Olivia and her friend Maggie O’Dunn had asked her and Audrey to teach them all they knew about old-time soap-making. They’d looked at each other and figured, well, why not?

A breeze floated into the sunroom, bringing with it the scent of mowed grass and summer flowers. Grace took out a pad of yellow-lined paper and the fountain pen she’d bought for her journaling class, and she wrote in wavering but clear script:

“As I write this, I am dressed for a bridal shower for Jessica Frost at The Farm at Carriage Hill. I’m taking a moment to add this postscript to my book. So far every night this beautiful summer, I’ve dreamed about that long-ago summer when I lost my town, my valley, my home and very nearly myself…when I fell in love for the first and only time of my long life.

If Philip had come back to me, I’d have gone with him anywhere. I know that. We would have raised his daughter and our son together. But he didn’t come back, and I stayed on the path I was always on… I became a teacher, a woman destined never to marry but to have a full, good life and to keep her secrets close.

All these years, I thought I’d lost my son, but I never did. He had his own path in this life, and at the end, he brought Dylan to us all here in Knights Bridge.

My grandson is a swashbuckler of a man, and he and Olivia are so much in love.

My story is their story now.

Ah. I see an eagle flying high over Quabbin. I’ll put my pen down now, and I’ll sit here a moment and let myself be a girl again, snapping beans on a summer afternoon with my grandmother, dreaming of romance and adventure.

* * * * *

Author’s Note

T
hank you for reading
Secrets of the Lost Summer!
I hope you enjoyed the story. Knights Bridge and the Websters are fictional, but the Swift River Valley is a real place, a beautiful place in West-Central Massachusetts where I grew up. My family home, a former eighteenth-century carriage house, is on the western edge of the Quabbin Reservoir. No doubt being so close to that vast “forbidden” wilderness fueled my storyteller’s imagination.

For help with research, I want to thank my mother, M. Florine Neggers, and her friends at the Stone House Museum in Belchertown, Massachusetts. It’s a “must visit” if you’re in the area, as are the Swift River Valley Historical Society in New Salem and the Quabbin Visitors Center. During the research for this book, I enjoyed revisiting and exploring many of the trails and old roads of Quabbin that are open to the public.

I also appreciate the detailed and fascinating histories of Quabbin by J. R. Greene;
Quabbin: A History and Explorers Guide
by Michael Tougias;
Quabbin Valley People and Places
by Elizabeth Peirce; and the many websites with photographs and information on Quabbin. The photography of Les Campbell opened my eyes as a teenager to the beauty of the area right outside my door; his work and his talent are as amazing as ever.

I want to pay tribute to the people my family and I knew who gave up their homes and livelihoods in this idyllic valley to provide pure, safe drinking water to millions. I especially remember Eleanor Griswold Schmidt, who once called the lost town of Prescott home. Her well-known quote says it all: “Now I have two beauties; one to remember and one to enjoy.”

For more information, please visit my website, www.carlaneggers.com.

Thanks again, and happy reading!

ISBN: 9781459220324

Copyright © 2012 by Carla Neggers

All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

www.Harlequin.com