That Chesapeake Summer (Chesapeake Diaries Book 9) Page 2

  “Mom loved a good storm.”

  “She sure as heck did.” Sis blew her nose again, then cleared her throat. “So if you’re sure I can’t talk you into having company . . .”

  “I’m positive. But thanks again.”

  “By the way, how’s the new book coming along?” Sis stood, preparing to leave.

  “About the same.”

  “That bad, eh?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “What page are you on?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “That’s not too bad.”

  “It wouldn’t be if they weren’t all blank.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know, I never believed in writer’s block. I always thought you could write through anything. But these past few weeks . . .” She held up her hands. “I got nothing, Aunt Sis.”

  “Well, no wonder. Off on that book tour, you get a call out of the blue that your mother just keeled over in her backyard while she was gardening. It’s been a tough blow. I think about her every day, I miss her every day. I remember the good times we had growing up in that house over on Mercer Street. The fun your uncle George and I had with your parents after they moved here to Caryville. The way she held me up after George died, and the times I held her hand after your dad passed away.” Sis glanced back over her shoulder. “This place holds a lot of memories for both of us. I’d hate to see it go, but it may be best in the long run to sell it rather than have it sit empty for too long.”

  “I’ve been thinking that, too. That’s just one decision on a long list, but certainly the most important. Fortunately, I don’t have to make that one immediately, but I know it’s not far down the road. I don’t get back here that often, and I don’t know if it should still be empty come winter.”

  “You’ll know when the time is right,” Sis assured her. “In the meantime, you let me know what your plans are, and remember to tell me what I can do to help you. I’d stay for the afternoon and give you a hand with those planters out front, but today’s my day to volunteer at the animal shelter.” Sis smiled. “I don’t want a dog in the house, but I sure do love the time I get to spend with them each week.”

  “You don’t want to be late, then.” Still carrying the trowel, Jamie took Sis by the arm and walked her out front to the aged sedan that she’d parked at the curb.

  “You probably need to buy some potting soil for those urns,” Sis said as she got in the driver’s seat. “Cameron’s Hardware in town has it on sale this week.”

  “I’ll stop there today. I have a few other errands in town.” Jamie closed the car door.

  Sis turned on the ignition and rolled down the window. “Let me know if you’re going to take any of your china with you, and I’ll help you pack up.”

  “Will do.” Jamie stepped back from the car as her aunt pulled away, one arm out the window flapping a wave. Jamie waved back and watched until Sis made a right at the corner.

  She stepped onto the sidewalk and took a good long look at her family home. Three stories, a large American four-square with an addition on the back that served as a library and her father’s office. The first floor was of stone, and weathered brown cedar shingles covered the second floor. Crisp white curtains hung in all the windows; the trim was white, including the porch railings, the paint having been refreshed two years ago. On a whim, Lainey had the porch ceiling painted a robin’s-egg blue, telling Jamie at the time, “One of your father’s favorite old songs was ‘Blue Skies.’ I think of him every time I open the front door and look out. Even on the stormiest day, your dad has his blue sky.”

  And as everyone knows, you loved nothing better than a good rousing downpour, best when served up with an ample amount of lightning and really loud booms.

  It had rained like a son of a gun the day Lainey was buried. Everyone said it was the worst April rainstorm they could remember.

  “I knew you’d have insisted on a banging storm. I’m glad you got your wish, Mom.” Jamie had said aloud after returning to the house following the funeral luncheon. She’d stood at the kitchen window and watched the wind-driven rain whip across the backyard. Come look, Jamie, she could almost hear her mother calling. This storm’s a doozy!

  “It sure is, Mom.” Jamie had turned away from the window and wondered what to do with herself.

  In the days and weeks that followed, Jamie discovered there was much to do.

  Each room was filled with so many memories, thirty-six years of her family’s life beneath this roof to be gone through, decisions on which furniture and knickknacks to keep, which to be sold or donated, papers to be sorted and saved or shredded. Common sense told her that the job would be massive. It had taken thirty-six years for the family to accumulate a houseful of possessions. It would take time to figure out what to do with it all.

  Jamie unlocked the front door and went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She drank half of it, then wandered into the dining room, where her grandmother’s best china filled the built-in cupboard. From there she went into the living room, with its furnishings that Jamie always thought too formal to be welcoming or comfortable. On the coffee table, her mother had loosely stacked a copy of each book Jamie had written: The Honest Life, The Honest Parent, The Honest Marriage, The Honest Family. The latest, The Honest Relationship, lay atop the wrappings it had come in. Her mother must have received it shortly before her death.

  Jamie sat on the edge of the sofa and picked up the first book on the stack and read the dedication: To my parents, who taught me everything I know about life, and everything I will ever need to know about living it honestly.

  Funny, Jamie thought as she closed the cover and replaced the book on the table, I never saw my mother read a book. Any book. Even mine. Lainey had subscribed to and read a dozen monthly magazines and devotedly read the newspaper from front to back first thing every morning, but she never read an entire book that Jamie was aware of. The irony wasn’t lost on her that the person who’d inspired the books that had made Jamie a fortune and a talk-show favorite often said her favorite part of the book was the dedication. She always meant to read them from cover to cover but admitted that she just hadn’t gotten around to it, though she did assure Jamie that she’d read “bits and pieces” of each one. Had Jamie not known her mother so well, she might have been offended. But truth be told, Lainey was always buzzing and couldn’t sit still long enough to read a book. She defended her preference for magazines by saying they were her quick fix. She could read an article in less than fifteen minutes before being called away by something else.

  Jamie’s dad was the reader in the family, and it was from him that Jamie had learned to love books. Beyond the living room was his study. She pushed open the door and leaned against the jamb, picturing him seated at that big oak desk, a lit cigar in the green glass ashtray, papers in piles as he made his way through one legal file or another, writing a brief or an appeal or preparing for a trial. A mug proclaiming Small-town Lawyer held an assortment of his pens mixed haphazardly with the mechanical pencils her mother favored. In one corner stood the child’s rocking chair Jamie’s father bought for her when she was five so she could join him for a little while after dinner each night. There she would read one of her many books, her father glancing at the newspaper before turning his attention to the work he’d brought home. Jamie knew her time was up when he stubbed out his cigar, folded the newspaper, and dropped it on the floor. She’d close her book and go around the desk for a good-night kiss, then leave the room, quietly closing the door behind her.

  On the wall, Jamie’s law diploma from Dickinson Law School hung next to his, although it hadn’t taken her long to realize she was ill suited for the profession. Her first—and last—job as an attorney had been with a firm specializing in divorces, which she had found depressing, frustrating, and dull. She’d feared her father’s reaction when she told him that the law wasn’t fo
r her—he’d been so pleased when she told him she was applying to law school—but he’d merely grunted and said something along the lines of “I was wondering when you’d figure that out.” Jamie had spent the next year writing her first book, inspired by the sorry state of relationships between the parties she’d represented.

  Why don’t you just tell him—or her—the truth? she had often asked her clients. Why not say how you really feel, or admit what you did and apologize, or say what you really mean?

  Fortunately for Jamie, that book had started a dialogue on talk shows and in magazines and newspaper articles, and had launched her career.

  Her stomach reminded her that she’d had an early breakfast, and that Sis’s wonderful homemade chicken salad was waiting for her in the fridge. She closed the office door and went into the kitchen, where she made a sandwich and ate standing near the back window. The view of the garden was a familiar one, and Sis had been right. You couldn’t tell which flowers Lainey had planted and which had been placed in the beds that morning by Jamie. Unless you got close enough to see that Jamie’s spacing was a bit uneven, and Lainey’s plants, having been in the ground a full four weeks longer than Jamie’s, looked stronger and happier—not a leggy geranium or verbena in sight. While she’d never claim to have had a green thumb, she was well satisfied with the job she’d done that morning.

  But the job, she reminded herself, wasn’t finished. There were those begonias to plant in the porch urns out front. She finished her lunch and washed her hands, considered running upstairs for a quick shower, but rejected the idea; she’d already scrubbed her nails to get the soil out. She dabbed at the back of her neck with a wet paper towel to remove the grit, putting off the shower till after planting. She did stop to brush her hair and redo the ponytail, but other than that, Caryville would just have to suck it up and take her as she was.

  She slipped into sandals and grabbed the list she’d made over breakfast, her keys, and her bag, then went out through the back door, sneaking one last peek at the garden while she started the car and backed out of the driveway. She decided to hit Cameron’s for potting soil first, then the drugstore for a few items, and she’d finish up at the supermarket.

  “Food shopping always last” had been one of Lainey’s mottos, because “you never knew when you’d spy that yummy new flavor of ice cream you’ve been dying to try but the store hasn’t had in until today.”

  The Valentine house was four blocks from the small shopping district. There were the usual storefronts—a deli, a flower shop, several restaurants, a coffee shop, and a hardware store that stocked just about anything you would need for your home or garden.

  The sign over Cameron’s Hardware advertised exactly that: “Every Thing for Your Home and Garden.” Jamie parked in the small side lot and went inside. Three checkout counters were set up on the left, and to the right was the hunting and fishing counter, where most of the hunters in the area bought their firearms and ammunition, and the fishermen picked out their rods and lines and lures. Most afternoons, there’d be a gathering of hunters or fishers, depending on the season, who’d come to pass the time and talk about the one that got away—or the one they’d bagged.

  Jamie knew from countless trips with her mother that all the gardening supplies were located in the back of the store, mostly on the right. She found the bags of potting soil, which were, as Sis had suspected, specially priced that day. She was looking over the selection of sizes when she heard footsteps pause at the end of the aisle.

  “I thought that was you, Jamie.” Ben Cameron, founder of the store fifty years ago, approached her with a smile, a smile that faded when he recalled her recent loss. “Real sorry about your mother, Jamie.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cameron. We appreciated you and your wife coming to the funeral, and I know that Mom would have, too. You know how she loved her gardens.”

  The elderly man nodded. “I could always count on Lainey to be the first one in the door come spring. She’d have a list with her as long as your arm. What pots she wanted for which plants, how much potting soil, and if I had any tubers or bulbs in, she’d go through them and see if there was anything she didn’t already have. Loved her dahlias. Faithfully dug them up and stored them away every year before the first frost.” He paused. “I suppose they’re still in the garage over there at the house.”

  Jamie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they look like.”

  “Be a box with some dirt and some hard tubers wrapped in newspapers. Yup, she really prized her dahlias.”

  “I’ll look for them. Thanks.”

  “You won’t be planting them for a while. At least until after the last frost.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Depends on who you ask, but we look to around Mother’s Day. Just to be on the safe side. I know Lainey always waited till mid-May to bring them back out.”

  “I’ll make a note of that. Thanks, Mr. Cameron.”

  “Sure thing, honey. Now, were you looking for anything in particular today? I see you eyeing up those bags of potting soil.”

  Jamie nodded. “I need to plant something in a couple of urns my mother had, but I don’t know what to buy or how much.”

  “Those front-porch urns on either side of the door? The ones she planted begonias in every year?”

  Jamie smiled. She’d almost forgotten what small towns were like. Of course he knew the house, the urns, where they were placed on the porch, and what Lainey planted in them. “Those would be the ones.”

  Mr. Cameron reached past her—“ ’Scuse me”—and grabbed a bag off the shelf. “This is what she bought.”

  “Great. Thank you.” Jamie held her hands out for the bag.

  “I’ll just carry this up front for you, and you can check out when you’re ready.”

  “I think I’m ready now.”

  “Right this way, then.”

  Jamie was greeted by the cashier with more condolences and paid for the bag of soil. Over her protests, Mr. Cameron insisted on carrying her purchase to her car.

  “I thought Mom said you retired,” Jamie said as he placed the bag in the trunk of her car.

  “Not exactly. Turned the business over to my son—Ben Junior, I think he was in your class back in grade school—and he lets me come in and play shopkeeper when the spirit moves me.” He slammed the trunk lid. “Glad I was here when you stopped by, Jamie. Like I said, your mom was a friend and one of our favorite customers. She will be missed.”

  “That’s so sweet of you, Mr. Cameron. Thank you for saying that.”

  He nodded his white-haired head and walked her to her car door. “Don’t be a stranger, now. Stop in from time to time.”

  “Will do that. Tell Ben I said hi.”

  He nodded again and waved before heading back into the store.

  Her next planned stop was at the pharmacy, but she took her time driving the two blocks. Seeing her mother through an old friend’s eyes had opened up the wound that was barely starting to heal. She hoped to get in and out of the drugstore without seeing anyone she knew.

  Cunningham’s Pharmacy had been a mainstay of the town for over a hundred years. It had managed to outlast the chain store in the strip mall outside of town by reason of its loyal customers. Tall, lanky Mr. Cunningham knew everyone in town, the names of their kids, who suffered with what chronic disease, and who was having problems at home. He knew which shade of lipstick would be the first to sell out over at the cosmetic counter, which of the ladies in town dyed their hair, and which brand and color they preferred. He’d played poker with Jamie’s dad every other Wednesday night from the year the Valentines moved to Caryville until Herb’s death. He had served as one of her father’s pallbearers and, four weeks ago, had done the same for her mother. Jamie wasn’t sure she could handle an encounter with him on the heels of her chat with Mr. Cameron.

  But she needn’
t have worried. Her parents’ old friend was in semi-retirement and now worked only three days a week. Had she known this? She wasn’t sure. She’d spoken with him at length at her mother’s funeral luncheon, but the whole experience had been so surreal that she barely recalled the conversation. She found the items she needed and paid for them at the front register. She placed her purchases in the car and walked two doors down to what passed for a supermarket in Caryville.

  She had a list, and she stuck to it and considered herself fortunate to make it in and out with just a few encounters with well-meaning friends of her mothers, some she’d first met at the funeral—fortunate because not knowing them meant she had no personal memories of them with her mother, so there were no shared experiences to recall.

  Returning to the house, she unloaded the car, put away her groceries, and proceeded to plant the begonias before she forgot about them. In this, she couldn’t bear to let her mother down.

  By the time she’d finished planting and stepped back to admire her work—the urns did look pretty damned good—she was past being ready for a shower, some dinner, and one more night of her first round of cleaning out the house. She’d tried to spend a day or two in each room and had already gone through the guest room, the living room, and the dining room, trying to decide what to keep and what to part with when the time came, though she hadn’t decided when that time might be.

  Tonight her father’s study was on the schedule. From a quick glance, she knew the filing cabinets were filled with items like old bank statements and tax returns that would need to be shredded but would not require a lot of emotional investment. After the day she’d had—planting the last of her mother’s garden and following in Lainey’s footsteps around Caryville—mindlessly shredding paper and giving her poor heart a temporary respite was just what she needed. She could watch a movie on her iPad while she worked, and that, too, would distract her from the reality of the finality of her task.