Page 7 of The Summer that Changed Everything
She shot him a sheepish expression. “I know. I remember that summer, too, and I feel bad for what happened to Aurora. She wasn’t the nicest person—not to me, anyway—but she didn’t deserve to die.” She dug around in her purse, came up with a set of keys and started for the front door. “Still, who am I to tell Lucy McBride that she can’t come back here?”
“I’m not suggesting you should’ve done that. I’m just wondering if you knowwhyshe’s coming.”
She unlocked the door and swung it wide before waving him inside ahead of her. “Nope. Didn’t tell me. And I didn’t want to pry. I’m just going to freshen the place and hope she doesn’t cause any trouble while she’s here.”
He glanced back at her as she followed him in. “I think the Clarks are more likely to cause trouble than she is.”
“They’d better not. She’s not the one who killed Aurora.”
“So they’re no longer claiming Mick did it for her benefit?”
The level of light in the room dimmed as she closed the door. “To get rid of her romantic rival? So that she’d have no competition for you?”
He didn’t want to be the reason anyone had died. He could only imagine how much worse it would be for Lucy to be accused, even if it was only via gossip, of having a girl killed over normal teenage drama. “They were claiming something like that,” he mumbled.
She took the basket and put it on the floor of the living room. “Aurora thought you were too good for a poor girl living in a trailer park. She complained about Lucy to her friends and family all the time. I bet that’s where it’s coming from.”
“Probably.” He remembered Aurora showing up at his houselate one night, smelling of alcohol and being a little too eager to climb into his bed. Fortunately, he’d been so caught up in Lucy he hadn’t been interested—or he would’ve felt even worse about her death. “You’re saying they’ve stuck by it ever since?”
“Really seem to believe it,” she said. “I warned Lucy that they still live in town, and it might not be pleasant for her here, but...”
“But...” he prompted.
She sighed as she rested her hands on her hips and looked around at the dusty interior. She obviously had her work cut out for her. “Lucy’s either brave or stupid, because she wanted to rent this place, anyway.”
“So... when’s she coming?”
“Lease starts first of June. But I told her it’s sitting empty, so she can come whenever she wants.”
“And what’d she say to that?”
“She just thanked me—politely—and left it there.”
He didn’t need this complication. He’d come here to escape. But in a way he was glad. Maybe he’d have the chance to apologize and make up for what he’d done—or hadn’t done—so he could really leave the past in the past. “Do you have her number?”
Dahlia’s eyes narrowed. “I do. Why?”
“I’d like to have it—so I can check on her now and then while she’s here.”
“Checkon her? Last I heard, you were married. As a landlord, I’m not sure I can give out that kind of personal information, anyway.”
“I’m divorced—or soon will be. But this isn’t about that. I feel I should’ve done more for her back then and would like to be able to look out for her now, from a distance,” he clarified. “I won’t bother her other than to make sure she isn’t harassed.”
Dahlia studied him for several seconds. “Okay, I believe you,” she relented and got out her phone.
3
He had Lucy McBride’s—Sinclair’s—phone number, which felt strange after so many years. Ford had been excited about her once, could still remember how beautiful she was with all that thick, curly dark hair tumbling down her back, her big, liquid brown eyes and her smooth, golden skin. When she wasn’t in a simple bikini at the beach, she’d almost always worn the same pair of cutoffs that hung loosely on her hips with a scooped-neck tee and a pair of flip-flops, and never bothered with makeup. Since all the other girls were highlighting their hair, getting their nails done, tanning for hours each day and buying expensive clothes, makeup and jewelry, she’d stood out. She didn’t seem to care all that much about her appearance, and yet, the more he’d looked at her, the more he’d thought she was the prettiest one of all.
She hadn’t been part of the group of friends he’d hung out with, though, so it hadn’t been easy to get to know her. He was among the rich summer folk, staying in multimillion dollar vacation homes with a view of the ocean, and she was a year-rounder who lived in a trailer park and worked at the hot dogstand by the beach to help her father pay the bills. The first time he’d seen her, he’d been with his buddies, sitting on towels to protect them from the hot sand, enjoying some shaved ice after tossing around a football, and she’d been playing in the surf with the three-legged mutt she’d called Trip she’d adopted from a shelter because no one else wanted him.
He remembered being mesmerized by the fact that she didn’t care whether or not they were watching her—didn’t care if anyone was. When her dog came hobbling over, she’d followed to drag him away, and from the start she’d seemed refreshingly wholesome and unpretentious—realin a world where everything else seemed staged. She’d come as a relief to him. His mother, and the other girls he’d known, were so concerned with the trivialities of life.
Of course, all that natural, God-given beauty made Lucy even more appealing. He wondered what she looked like now.
After spending the evening on the back deck with a glass of whiskey, staring out at the foaming waves washing up the beach under a full moon, he’d slept in the master bedroom and had breakfast in town, where he ran into several people who welcomed him back. He also heard Lucy’s name again, so he knew word was spreading fast and that the community wouldn’t be quite as welcoming to her.
He was tempted to warn her. Now that he had her number, he could text her. But Dahlia had already alerted her. She knew what she’d be facing here...
