Summer Breeze Read Free Page A

home often for meals or to sail. It was only a fifteen-minute drive. Today he looked familiar, her normal brother, clad in khaki shorts and an old tee shirt.
    Bella went up the steps to the front porch. “Hey, Mom.”
    “Join us, honey.” Louise gestured toward the wicker sofa. “Natalie, this is my daughter Bella.”
    “Hi, Natalie.” Bella smiled at the woman sitting next to her mother, even as she cringed just a little inside. Natalie looked so sophisticated with her cropped black curls and no jewelry. Shelooked like the smart girl in high school, the one who always rolled her eyes at Bella. Bella was smart, but she was petite, only five two, with blue eyes, blond hair, and what older people always praised as a “sweet” face.
    Natalie grinned shyly. “Hi, Bella. I think you and I might have met once or twice when we were kids. When Slade and I came to the lake for a week in the summer.”
    Bella nodded, although what she remembered most about next door was Eleanor Clark. She was glamorous, a wealthy interior designer from Boston’s most chichi area. During July and August, her driveway was lined with convertibles and sports cars and even a Jaguar, with license plates from as far away as California. When Bella was younger and Bella’s older sister, Beatrice, wasn’t married yet, they used to hide in the attic with their parents’ field glasses, spying on all the golden people languidly lounging on Eleanor’s back deck in their very abbreviated bathing suits. It was better than HBO.
    Bella remembered also, vaguely, Natalie and her brother, Slade, from past summers when they visited their aunt Eleanor: two scrawny, pale kids who seemed uncomfortable outdoors. Their mother and father never came to the lake house. The kids would wade from their aunt’s beach into the lake, rushing right back out, clutching their arms, complaining that the water was too cold. The girl shrieked when she turned over a log and found bugs. The boy spent a lot of time in the forest, often carrying a book and studying tree trunks, which Bella had thought kind of weird and kind of intriguing.
    If she remembered correctly, the brother had been pretty cute. Movie star cute. Black hair, like Natalie’s.
    “I remember,” Bella told Natalie. She settled on the edge of the sofa, cradling the three bottles of wine in her arms. “Seems like a long time ago.”
    “It was,” Natalie agreed. For a moment, she dropped her gaze, looking pensive.
    Louise announced brightly, “Natalie’s an artist.”
    Bella said, “Yes, I heard that. What sort of art?”
    Natalie cleared her throat. “I paint. I’ve studied art for several years now, most recently in New York. But I’ve always had to work full-time as a waitress or sales clerk to pay the rent and buy food, so I’ve never had a chance to concentrate on my work. When Aunt Eleanor asked me to watch her summer house for her, it was an answer to my prayers.” Talking about her work transformed her. She was prettier, more engaging. “What do you do, Bella?”
    “I teach,” Bella began. “Well, I taught . Hey, I’ve got to get these bottles into a cooler. No one wants warm white wine. Want to walk around to the back with me?”
    Natalie glanced at Louise.
    “Go on, you two,” Louise said. “Grace asked me to sit out front and tell people where to put their stuff.” As she spoke, an older couple came up the lawn to speak to her.
    Natalie rose, extending a hand. “Here,” she said to Bella. “I’ll carry one of the bottles.”
    Bella and Natalie went down the steps and around the side of the house. Almost a dozen people were on the back lawn, setting up tables and chairs, firing up the grill, going in and out of the kitchen. Bella found a cooler full of ice for the wine.
    “I don’t like to talk about it in front of my mother,” Bella confessed to Natalie, “but when you asked what I do—well, it’s a complicated question. I’ve taught third grade for a few years. Last