Summer House Read Free

from Kingston, Jamaica, to live with her and act as housekeeper and, if necessary, nurse, for Glorious was an LPN. Glorious was in her thirties, a tall, broad-shouldered, voluptuous woman with a gentle voice and an easy laugh.
    Nona’s children weren’t thrilled with this expenditure of money for live-in help, but it was Nona’s money, after all. And after the first year, they had to admit that Nona seemed to do very well indeed, living in that drafty old wooden yacht of a house, even in the winter. She had friends over once a week to play bridge, and she attended lectures, plays, and concerts, driven to all events by Napoleon Posada in his ancient Cadillac taxi, where Nona sat in the front seat and caught up on all the local gossip, for Napoleon knew it all.
    Still, as each year passed, Nona slowed down just a little. Arthritis crippled her, so she needed a cane to walk and could no longer jump up and rush up stairs the way she had all her life. Her hearing and sight were diminished, and more and more she seemed to be forgetful, absentminded. When Glorious had to fly back to Jamaica when her own mother was ill, Nona assured everyone she was fine alone fora few days. But Helen had made a little spur-of-the-moment trip down from Boston and discovered that for three days Nona had pretty much forgotten to eat. When Helen pointed this out, Nona had argued that at her age she didn’t need much to survive.
    Luckily for Charlotte, this was just a month before Family Meeting, and when she submitted her market garden plan, everyone in the family saw at once how helpful it would be to have a member of the family living full-time in the house with Nona.
    The arrangement had worked out nicely for everyone. Or it had, until her relatives learned that she’d actually made a profit on her harebrained scheme.
    Would it be better, somehow, if her garden enterprise failed?
    Carrying a long woven basket piled with weeds for the compost heap, Charlotte headed back through the rows of growing plants to the greenhouse. Her back and arms ached pleasantly. She liked this feeling, liked having worked hard. How different it was from the bank, where she had spent each day with a cramped back and a crashed brain. Now she felt healthy, clear-eyed, well-used.
    And she felt guilty for even this much pleasure.

Two
    N ona spent much of her day tucked up in a lawn chair in the garden, dozing beneath the sun. If it was stormy, or overcast like today, she settled on a chaise at the window with the tea service on a table by her side and a good book in her lap. She seldom read. More often she napped or looked out at the garden and remembered all that had happened over her ninety years.
    Today she could not seem to get comfortable. She wedged another pillow behind her back and smoothed the mohair throw over her legs, but she was still restless. Well, of course she was; everyone would be arriving at any moment, and the peace she had come to crave in her dotage would be shattered.
    From where she sat now, she could see out into the garden terrace, with its walls of high privet hedge, and just a bit farther through the arched opening onto the white gravel drive. She would spot any arriving vehicle.
    Although the main entrance to Wheelwright House with its pretentious Doric columns faced Polpis Harbor, the descendants of itsbuilder, old Horace Wheelwright, never understood why. It wasn’t as if the mailman, neighbors, or friends regularly arrived at the house by water. When any of the family took a boat out, they set off from the dock at the boathouse on the far side of the property, and they got to the boathouse by leaving the mudroom at the side entrance of the house and following an ancient slate walk carpeted with low-lying mosses and determined periwinkle. The mudroom door was also the entrance for anyone in the family carrying armfuls of groceries or luggage from the garage or the half-circle white shell drive. Guests parked on the drive, walked beneath