Summerland: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand Page B

sounds.
    There was a green front lawn, divided into two squares by the stone walk. There were two limestone walls divided by a set of three steps leading to the front porch. At the base of each of the walls was a water garden growing tall white flowers on stalks.
    “Look how green everything is,” Ava said. “This is winter.”
    Yes, Jordan remembered this from his previous visits. The winter was lush and green; the summer was hot and dry, leaving the grass brittle and brown. Right now, in early July, the heart of winter, the sun was out, and the temperature was about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. It might even be colder on Nantucket, where it was summer.
    The porch had a long bench swing made of teak.
    “Handsome,” his mother said, touching it. If she sat on it, Jake was certain he would weep. How could she be returning to life when Penelope was dead?
    There was a screen door, and beyond that, the house was open. There was no one here to meet them, though his mother had five siblings living nearby and he, Jordan, had twenty-six cousins. But his father had promised that for the first few weeks, it would be just the three of them getting used to things. Jake was grateful for that. In September he would enroll at the American School, but he would have to attend class only three days a week. The other two days would be dedicated to independent study.
    The house smelled like eucalyptus. The floors were made of polished wood the color of Coca-Cola, but the rest of the house was finished in old wood pocked with nail holes and knots. The doors were mismatched, as if they had been salvaged from other houses. Jake moved tentatively forward. A doorway to his right revealed a bedroom with a stone fireplace, and on the left was the master, with its own attached sunroom and bathroom. Farther down the hallway was another door that opened up into the common space, a living room with wooden beams, a bigger stone fireplace, and a couple of comfortable-looking leather couches. Up one step was the kitchen, which had a red brick floor and a huge old stove with a blackened griddle. Next to the stove were a deep enamel sink and an old-fashioned refrigerator, white with rounded corners and a chrome pull handle. There were two sixteen-paned windows that faced the backyard, and in front of the windows a massive oak table with six chairs. A cast iron chandelier hung over the table. Jake liked the kitchen, then hated himself for liking it. His mother had stopped cooking after Ernie died, and she barely ate, and so what was the point of this warm, wonderful room? Maybe she was going to start cooking again, maybe the three of them would sit around the oak table and eat together as a family.The mere thought made Jake livid. But why? He had wanted that for so long, ever since that painful morning four years earlier when he’d been awoken by his mother’s screaming.
    “Mom?” Jake had called out. But she hadn’t heard him.
    Afterward, Jake and his father had gradually adjusted to the way things were, to the disturbing mystery of a human being that Ava had become. Dinnertime was all about eating from pizza boxes and takeout cartons whenever they got a free minute—more often separately than together. But
now
, now that Penny was dead and they had moved halfway across the world,
now
Ava was going to become the Barefoot Contessa?
    The three of them stepped, single file, out the back door and into the garden. The yard was enclosed on either side by waist-high limestone walls with a spiked wrought iron fence above. The garden was a rectangle bordered by beige pebbles. Inside the pebbles was grass, inside the grass was a bed of red and orange flowers, and inside the bed was a circular limestone fountain. There was a bench in the grass where his mother, in her former state, would have sat and stared at the shooting plume of water all afternoon.
    Jake felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. Jake was going to start biting in a minute.
    “And here’s the best