Summer People Read Online Free Page B

said, smiling with wan satisfaction. He had been staring down at his glass, which he held gingerly with both hands, but he glanced up to see Nathan’s reaction.
    â€œWhy wouldn’t they talk to you?”
    Carl pushed out his lower lip and shrugged. “Well, I was from Oregon, an accountant at Boston College when I met Franny. I don’t thinkI’d even been to Maine. I think it’s a little more open now, but maybe it just seems that way because I’ve been here so long. What’s funny is that most of these people don’t even have that much money. Their parents or grandparents bought the house and put a couple million in the bank, and now they just live off the interest.”
    Nathan wondered how much money Carl must have married into for a couple million not to seem like genuine wealth, but he was more interested in taking a walk with Leah. He tried glancing down at Carl’s watch, but there was not enough light from the house to see the time. Carl adjusted himself in the swing, clumsily moving his fat hand over the age-spotted crown of his balding head, and something about the gesture made Nathan wonder if Carl had been drinking before he arrived. The heavy man tilted his head back to finish off the last of his wine while Franny’s nasal voice bleated from the other side of the French doors.
    Carl glanced up at Nathan as if noticing him for the first time, and said, “Ellen seems like she’s doing all right, though?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œHow confused is she?”
    Nathan searched Carl’s face before answering. “She seems a little absentminded, I guess. Why do you think she’s confused?”
    â€œWell, that’s just what I’d heard—from people who see more of her in Cleveland. But we haven’t seen so much of her lately. A few summers ago, she was back home taking care of Harry before he died, so…”
    â€œHarry,” Nathan said.
    â€œHer husband.”
    Nathan knew that Ellen’s husband was dead, but he did not know that he had died so recently. A moment passed wherein Nathan considered how little he knew about the woman with whom he’d be spending the rest of the summer.
    Carl said, “Then last summer she had to leave early because of her accident.”
    â€œYeah, everybody seems kind of surprised that she’s back this summer.”
    â€œWell, there’s the rock,” Carl said, gesturing down at Parson’s Beach asif pushing something away from him. “Imagine hitting that, going thirty or forty miles an hour without a seat belt, at her age.”
    Nathan stepped away from the porch column where he’d been leaning to approach the railing for a better view. Eyes narrowed, he glanced back at Carl. “What rock?”
    â€œThe big one there on the right, by itself.”
    Parson’s Beach was littered with seaweed-covered rocks of various sizes, but on the eastern rim, moonlight struck the pale barnacles of a single boulder roughly the size of a tank.
    â€œShe just drove into it?” Nathan asked.
    In Carl’s dark, recessed eyes it was possible to see him process the information: Nathan did not know the story of what had happened. The recognition seemed to tire him, and he sighed. “It was at night, and she got into the car and drove down through the yard until she hit it head-on.”
    Nathan scanned the grounds for what Ellen might have been trying to do when she slammed her car into the boulder, but he could think of no explanation. On the other side of the house, Harbor Avenue dead-ended into her driveway, and on this side there was only the steeply sloping lawn and a rocky beach, where no sane person would attempt to drive.
    â€œWhat was she trying to do?”
    Carl shrugged.
    When it was evident Carl was not going to say more, Nathan asked, “How bad was she hurt?”
    â€œShe messed up her hip, I remember. She’s using a cane now to