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Back The Summer Cottage Save as PDF
Chapters (75)
  1. Cover
  2. Back Cover Text
  3. Praise
  4. Booklist
  5. About the Author
  6. Dedication
  7. Quote
  8. Prologue
  9. Part One
  10. ONE
  11. TWO
  12. THREE
  13. Part Two
  14. FOUR
  15. FIVE
  16. SIX
  17. Part Three
  18. SEVEN
  19. EIGHT
  20. NINE
  21. TEN
  22. Part Four
  23. ELEVEN
  24. TWELVE
  25. THIRTEEN
  26. Part Five
  27. FOURTEEN
  28. FIFTEEN
  29. SIXTEEN
  30. SEVENTEEN
  31. Part Six
  32. EIGHTEEN
  33. NINETEEN
  34. TWENTY
  35. TWENTY-ONE
  36. Part Seven
  37. TWENTY-TWO
  38. TWENTY-THREE
  39. TWENTY-FOUR
  40. TWENTY-FIVE
  41. Part Eight
  42. TWENTY-SIX
  43. TWENTY-SEVEN
  44. TWENTY-EIGHT
  45. TWENTY-NINE
  46. Part Nine
  47. THIRTY
  48. THIRTY-ONE
  49. THIRTY-TWO
  50. THIRTY-THREE
  51. THIRTY-FOUR
  52. Part Ten
  53. THIRTY-FIVE
  54. THIRTY-SIX
  55. THIRTY-SEVEN
  56. THIRTY-EIGHT
  57. Part Eleven
  58. THIRTY-NINE
  59. FORTY
  60. FORTY-ONE
  61. Part Twelve
  62. FORTY-TWO
  63. FORTY-THREE
  64. FORTY-FOUR
  65. Part Thirteen
  66. FORTY-FIVE
  67. FORTY-SIX
  68. FORTY-SEVEN
  69. EPILOGUE
  70. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  71. AUTHOR NOTE
  72. Reader’s Guide
  73. Questions for Discussion
  74. The Heirloom Garden
  75. Abby

She places her hands on my shoulders and gives them a squeeze. “Well, I wouldn’t,” she says with a laugh. “But it sounds like you need to.”

“I don’t want to,” I say, unable to hide my emotions, like a kid who is told he has to get a needle.

The librarian laughs. “I don’t blame you,” she says, leaving me to my research.

TWENTY-ONE

“See?”

I try to follow Scooter’s mitten as he gestures into the air, but all I can do is laugh.

“Those look great on you,” I say, trying to keep a straight face.

“They do, don’t they?” he says.

Scooter is sporting a pair of sock monkey mittens. I was worried his fingers would get frostbitten during our walk, and made him wear the only pair of gloves I could locate: a pair that Nate “won” years ago during the white elephant Christmas gift exchange my parents so loved. They always held it on Christmas Eve, after a few glasses of champagne. Nate, of course, was aghast and refused to wear the mittens. He thought they were childish, just like the white elephant exchange.

Scooter holds up his hands and wiggles his thumbs, making it appear as if the two sock monkeys are boxing. I laugh.

“Totally age appropriate,” I say.

“If we could live in a world filled with sock monkeys, Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots and Lite-Brites, it would be a better place, wouldn’t it?” He stops and looks out over Lake Michigan. “Kids just want to grow up as fast as they can.” He turns and looks at me. “We didn’t know how good we had it, did we?”

Like earlier in the day, the raw emotion and innocence of his words touch me. In a stocking cap and mittens, his cheeks ruddy from the wind, his eyes bright, Scooter still looks like a young man, a kid at heart. And, in a way, he’s right. As adults we’re confronted with life’s often unending cruelty: loss of dreams, death, divorce, aging, health and money issues. I watch Scooter as he kneels near a creek, his reflection staring back. He waves at himself with his mittens, and a boyish smile appears.

He ran from his demons and returned, I think. Innocence intact, despite all of life’s setbacks.

“See?” he asks as he had earlier and gestures broadly again. “This is why I wanted you to come down here. You missed a lot of this as a city girl who spent winters in Chicago.”