Summer's Road Read Online Free Page A

and praising my work. She’d taken care of me when I’d been sick, every time, and cleaned my house when I’d been too engrossed in a project to bother.
    It wasn’t just me, either. Rick and Dee’s elder neighbor had taken a fall down her basement stairs two years back. Summer had watered the woman’s plants and taken care of her cat while she’d been in rehab. Summer was allergic to cats. Had that stopped her? No. And her students? She’d visited every one of them in the hospital, held their tiny hands during treatments. She’d attended funerals when they hadn’t beaten the odds. She wore herself thin and then gave more.
    I lay back on her pillows, upset with the fact she poured her heart every Saturday into a group of children that may not be there the next week. Because those “special kids,” as she referred to them, could die at any given moment. She didn’t care. No, I amended. She did care, too much. She just pretended not to. She forged on every week like the little trooper she was, brushing off the obvious.
    She tilted her head and looked at me. “I’m tired of this conversation. Besides, you play with wood all day.”
    She meant that in the literal sense, not metaphorical. I build custom furniture, cozy office or library pieces mostly. I even have a little reading corner in the shop where I sell books.
    I mumbled to myself as I got up and walked to the door. Owning my own store, something that had been her idea, and dealing with suppliers or customers was entirely different than surrounding myself with dying kids who broke my heart. I liked wood. Wood couldn’t talk back. Wood couldn’t break my heart.
    She stretched, raising her arms over her head. “How’s that rocking chair coming along for the Andersons? You were worried about getting the carving just right.”
    Case and point. It was the anniversary of her father’s death and she asked how my day had gone. “Good. I’m nearly done. They wanted a distressed mission-style. I think it came out all right.”
    Grinning, she shook her head. “It came out more than all right. The detail is amazing.”
    My heart tugged and twisted. “Someone snuck into my workshop again.”
    “I admit nothing. Except that I may or may not have seen you putting the finishing touches on it. You were engrossed. I didn’t want to disturb you.” She pulled something from her pocket, a scrap of paper, and tossed it into a desk drawer next to the dresser, then proceeded to stare at the drawer as if it might jump out at her and do a trick.
    My heart bumped against my ribs in worry. “You okay?”
    “I’m fine,” she said, rubbing her upper arms to warm herself. The sound of skin brushing skin in the quiet of her room was thunderous. She had such perfect skin. Like warm milk.
    She wasn’t fine, though. I could tell. I was beginning to despise the word. Perhaps she had herself convinced fine was the truth. I knew better, because those beautiful eyes of hers had a vacant expression and her hand trailed down to rub her right arm where it had been broken from a fall out of a river birch twenty years ago. A habit she used unknowingly when nervous or thinking of something that bothered her.
    Today was the anniversary of her father’s death. She’d come a long way since then, but I knew just how hard it still was on her. Her father had been her only family, and if that hadn’t been tough enough on her growing up, it had devastated her after Tom died. Summer still had a hard time grasping I was right here in front of her. That I would never leave her. And our friends, Rick and Dee, who were right across town, would never walk either.
    While standing in the doorway, I leaned against the jamb with my arms folded over my bare chest. After two plus decades of friendship, she hardly ever seemed aware of my body. Every woman in Wylie took notice, except the one I wanted to. I watched her put away the magazine I’d left on the bed, then stop to stare at me from across the