Summer People Read Online Free

finished chewing. “Mmm…it was a car accident…but I’m okeydokey now.” There was an aggressive singsong quality to her voice that Nathan sensed was intended to put an end to his inquiry.
    â€œWas anyone else hurt?”
    â€œNo.”
    Nathan stared at Ellen, but she did not elaborate. “Well, that’s good,” he said.
    As Ellen continued to eat, Nathan gazed behind her at the glass-fronted liquor cabinet built into the wall. His eyes slid over bottles of Maker’s Mark bourbon and Meier’s sherry and finally rested on an old bottle of Wray & Nephew white rum.
    â€œDo you mind if I have some of this?” he asked as he rose to open the cabinet. Because he had already drunk a tumbler of the rum he’d bought at Gilman’s, Nathan knew he shouldn’t drink any more. It often made him sulk for his ex-girlfriend. Pale and willowy, with closely cropped, mussed blond hair, Sophie Hurst liked to read, drink lots of wine, and make short, impressionistic films he occasionally thought were rather beautiful. They had dated for two years before she’d abandoned him a few months ago for someone else.
    Ellen looked at the bottle Nathan was holding and frowned. “Only you?”
    â€œOh, well, would you like the rum or would you prefer the sherry?”
    Ellen nodded at the wisdom of the question until she’d swallowed a bite of her steak. “Sherry.”
    Nathan poured their drinks and slumped back into his chair. Hedraped one arm across the back of the chair beside him and watched the sun burn into the horizon, slowly gilding the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
    Ellen said, “If I die, don’t bury me at all. Just pickle my bones in alcohol. Put a bottle of booze at my feet and head. If I don’t drink, you’ll know I’m dead.”
    â€œHear, hear,” Nathan said, raising his glass.
    Â 
    I n the living room, they watched The Philadelphia Story. After a late-night party, Cary Grant slid into Katharine Hepburn’s parked car to rouse her softly from a drunken slumber. With both of them cloaked in shadow, heads resting against the bench seat, it was almost as if they were lying in bed. Hepburn had heavy-lidded, bedroom eyes, a voice like dark honey, and even though her words were coy and elusive, you could tell that she loved him. Nathan felt a dull longing for movie-style romance and glanced at the clock on the mantel. In her lounge chair, Ellen’s head bobbed and swayed in an ongoing effort to stay awake. Nathan wished she’d stop trying. He was on his third rum and Coke, and as soon as Ellen went to bed, he planned to walk up the street to see if Leah felt like taking a stroll.
    Ellen’s eyes had been closed for several minutes when a woman’s reedy voice called through the partly open front door, “Anybody home?”
    Nathan stood, but the woman and her husband were already stepping inside the house. “Oh, Eleanor, don’t get up,” the woman pleaded, hurrying over to clasp her hand. “It’s so good to see you again.” The husband, a jowly, sad-eyed man in khaki pants and a green V-neck sweater, followed his wife with the slow, cumbersome movements of an old Saint Bernard.
    â€œWell,” Ellen said, blinking at everyone with surprise. “It’s wonderful to see you, too.”
    The husband reached over to shake her hand. “I’m sorry if we’re barging in on you. We were just on Parson’s Beach and Franny saw the lights on, so—” He rubbed the back of his neck and stepped back, glancing behind him, as if afraid he might knock something over.
    â€œOh, you’re not barging in,” Ellen said, and smiled. Her reassurancesounded a little tired, but then she tilted her head to one side and seemed to eye the man in front of her with greater fondness. “How are you, Carl?”
    â€œI’m all right, I guess,” he said, the corner of his mouth