Fifteenth Summer

Fifteenth Summer Read Free

Book: Fifteenth Summer Read Free
Author: Michelle Dalton
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dead. And of course, he never was . Well, except for that last time . . .”
    Then she’d laugh wickedly, and I’d say, “Granly!” and pretend to be shocked.
    But of course that phone call never happened.
    After Mrs. Berke called the ambulance, Granly was taken from Bluepointe to South Bend, Indiana, which was the closest city with a big hospital. My mom took the first flight out and spent an entire day and night at Granly’s bedside, holding her hand. Then Granly’s doctor told my mom that Granly wasn’t going to wake up. My mom had followed Granly’s living will and allowed her to die, which she did “peacefully” two days later.
    Through it all, none of it felt real to me. Granly’s number was still in my phone. I still had e-mails from her in my inbox. She was in at least half of the Silver family portraits that hung on our dining room wall. And in all those photos she was surrounded by the still-living. The irony was, she looked more alive than any of us in the pictures. She always seemed to be laughing, while the rest of us merely smiled.
    Depending on the year the photo was taken, Granly’s hair was either closely cropped or sproinging out wildly, but it was always the exact same glinting-penny red as mine. That’s because when I was little, Granly snipped a lock of my hair and took it to her hairdresser.
    “ Nobody could get the color right until you came along,” she told me after one of her triumphant trips to her salon. “Now I have the same hair I had when I was a girl. You should save some of your hair for you to use when you’re old and gray like me. Red hair is really difficult, Chels.”
    “It is difficult,” I agreed with a sigh. Of course, I’d meant it in a different way. I hated that my hair was as bright as a stoplight. I cringed when people assumed I had a fiery temper or was ashilarious as an I Love Lucy episode. And I resented Granly’s Anne of Green Gables law (that law being that a redhead in pink was an abomination and completely undeserving of gentleman suitors).
    So I kept my hair long, the better to pull it back into a tight, low ponytail or bun. And if I fell for a coral shift dress or peppermint-colored circle skirt at one of my favorite vintage shops, I bought it—Anne Shirley be damned.
    Before Granly died, my hair had felt simply like an inconvenience, like being short or needing glasses. But now it seemed like this precious legacy, one I wasn’t worthy of.
    Thinking about this in the backseat of the car made me feel short of breath—not from carsickness but from panic.
    To put it as bluntly as my dad had that morning in January, Granly’s death had freaked me out. I knew that she was gone. I knew she was never again going to call me just to tell me some random, funny three-minute story. I knew that we’d never again pick her and her enormous, bright green suitcase up at the airport.
    I knew this, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it. It just didn’t feel possible that someone could exist and then—poof—not.
    That was why I hadn’t wanted to look at Granly in her casket before her graveside funeral service.
    And it was why I really didn’t want to spend this summer in Bluepointe.
    We’d never stayed at Granly’s cottage without her. The cottage was Granly.
    When I was little, Granly had also had an apartment in Chicago.That’s where my mother grew up, spending weekends and summers at the cottage.
    Granly’s apartment had been filled with masculine mementos of my grandfather, who’d died before I was born. There’d been a big leather desk chair and serious Persian rugs and a half-empty armoire that had smelled like wood and citrus, like men’s aftershave.
    But Granly had decorated the cottage all for herself, and eventually she’d decided to live there full-time. The walls were butter yellow and pale blue, and the floorboards were bleached and pickled, as if they’d been made of driftwood. Every wall was a gallery of picture frames.

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