Things to Do When It's Raining - Softcover

Stapley, Marissa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1525899015 ISBN 13: 9781525899010

Verlag: Graydon House, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

From the auhor of Lucky, A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK!

"Fans of Nicholas Sparks will adore Things to Do When It's Raining... Marissa Stapley's writing is a gift." —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author

When secrets tear love apart, can the truth mend it?
 
Mae Summers and Gabe Broadbent grew up together in the idyllic Summers’ Inn, perched at the edge of Alexandria Bay in upstate New York. Mae was orphaned at the age of six and Gabe needed protection from his alcoholic father, so both were raised under one roof by Mae’s grandparents, Lily and George.
 
A childhood friendship quickly developed into a first love—a love that was suddenly broken by Gabe’s unexpected departure. Mae grew up and got over her heartbreak, and started a life for herself in New York City.
 
After more than a decade, Mae and Gabe find themselves pulled back to Alexandria Bay by separate forces. But Mae finds her grandparents in the midst of decline and their past unravelling around her, because of a terrible secret that was never meant to be revealed--one that will change Mae's future forever.
 
With honesty and heart, Marissa Stapley reminds us of the redemptive power of love and forgiveness, and that, ultimately, family is a choice.
 
 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marissa Stapley is a journalist and the author of the acclaimed novel Things to Do When It's Raining. She writes page-turning, deeply emotional fiction about families, friends and women's lives. Visit her at marissastapley.com or follow her on Twitter, @marissastapley.

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Things To Do When It's Raining

By Marissa Stapley

Harlequin Enterprises Limited

Copyright © 2018 Marissa Stapley
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5258-9901-0

CHAPTER 1

Part One

Things to Do When It's Raining

A list by Virginia Summers, Junior Proprietor (self-proclaimed) of Summers' Inn, Alexandria Bay, New York

Is there someone at home you miss? Write her a letter and say it. Don't wait; tomorrow it might not be raining.

On the morning Mae woke and Peter was missing, she had been dreaming she was chasing her childhood friend Gabe through the farmer's field with the steep slope where they used to go tobogganing. It was night and the moon was full, and the river was in the distance, invisible but ever present, and every time she almost reached him, she stumbled on a root, she fell, and he just kept running ahead. He would never have done that when they were kids, though; he would have turned back and reached for her hand, pulled her up — wouldn't he have? "Why do I still believe you're good?" she had shouted at his retreating form before waking and reaching for Peter.

But she was on the couch, not in their bed.

She sat up, listened, found only the silence that cloaks a space when the person being waited for hasn't come home. (Sometimes, people go out and don't come back. Sometimes, bad things happen. Mae has known this since she was six.)

Peter. Her partner. Where was he? She searched the apartment, but there was no sign of him. All thoughts and memories of Gabe vanished, all warmth from sleep was replaced with fear. She pictured a black gypsy cab running Peter down. A mugging, maybe even a heart attack. She tried his phone: no answer. She walked through the apartment again, slowly, and found herself cataloging the items that were hers. It was somehow calming, this evidence of her presence in his home, in his life: the painting of the Saint Lawrence River on one wall; a vase near the door in a fox-hunt pattern that she used as an umbrella stand, just like the one her grandmother kept at the door of the inn where Mae was raised; the artist's rendering of Summers' Inn itself, hanging in the hallway; and the photocopied list, tucked into her dresser drawer, a replica of the one that still hung on a corkboard in the lobby of the inn, an artifact from when Mae's mother, Virginia, was alive. What would my mother say to me if she were here now? She would tell me to get out of here and go figure out where Peter is.

Mae went to the office in a taxi. Maybe he's fallen asleep at his desk. The thought reassured her, calmed her heart.

But when she arrived, she found his office empty, the entire floor devoid of life — or so she thought.

First, she found the note, tucked into her Columbia Business School coffee cup:

Mae: I'm sorry. And I want you to know you meant something to me. You won't be implicated; WindSpan had nothing to do with you. And I won't forget you. L,

Peter

P.S. Please destroy this.

The world went black at first. The note was evidence that he wasn't hurt or dead. But this, in a perplexing way, was worse. Mae studied the sentences scrawled on company letterhead like an anthropologist interpreting markings on a cave wall. This was the man she had planned to marry. This was the life she had wanted to lead. And yet she had not allowed herself to see it coming.

And now, here she is. At the beginning of the end.

Mae opens her computer and logs in to the main server. How many lives has he destroyed? How many has she destroyed, by proxy? Will there be anything she can do to make it right? Please let there be something I can do to make it right.

Her fingers fly. She opens files; she reads. It's all there, and it's absurd, how easy it is to piece together. As if he wanted her to figure it out. Or — and this is a thought that spins the room, roils her stomach, brings bile to her throat — as if he didn't bother to hide it from her because he knew she'd be too stupid, too trusting, to ever check.

WindSpan Turbine does not exist. It never existed. But the money did. And now it's gone.

She abandons her computer and goes into his office again. She sits at his desk watching the sun rise over Brooklyn Bridge Park. Less than twelve hours earlier she was buying take-out ramen, carrying it home along with a six-pack of Peter's favorite microbrew. She'd remembered the hot sauce, she'd experienced and felt guilty about the smug joy that can accompany being needed by another person while passing people on the sidewalk who are possibly not needed by anyone at all. She'd set the coffee table, she'd put the ramen in glass bowls in the oven to keep it warm while she waited for him to get home from the office. She'd called him. "Something unexpected came up. I'll be home as soon as I can," he told her. Eventually, she'd fallen asleep watching Netflix.

Now she looks away from the park and down at the yellow diamond on her left ring finger. It belonged to his mother, Peter had told her, in a voice hoarse with heartbroken reverence. When Peter spoke of his family she felt like she was listening to a Southern gothic novel: tragedy and romance, privilege gone sour, a murky history involving a plantation, slaves, family secrets. Sex, lies and a damaged boy. She would heal him with her love, she had decided at some point, perhaps the minute she met him. This time, with this man, she would succeed.

She takes off the ring and puts it on top of the note. They'd gone to see a brownstone on the weekend. There's an expensive white dress hanging in her closet. Her biggest concern lately had been finding the perfect shoes. Who had she become?

She hears a whimper and can't believe she doesn't recognize the sound of her own crying. But then she realizes it's Bud. "You asshole, you left your dog behind!" The dog — named after Bud Fox from the movie Wall Street — is lying in the corner on a canine bed covered in toile-patterned fabric. Mae picked it because it reminded her of the curtains in her childhood bedroom at the inn. She stands; Bud woofs and scrambles toward her.

"Okay, Bud. Come on."

She once found the name of the dog endearing but now she adds it to the list of things that should have alerted her to the fact that Peter is a criminal: Bud Fox, pure intentions or not, ended up in jail. "Come on, we'll go for a walk." Bud wags his tail and romps around her, knocking her back into the chair. He's not a city dog; he's a dog who should have many acres upon which to roam. But he's the same kind of dog Peter had on the ruined plantation as a child. Peter said the dog from his childhood — named Earl — was the one positive memory he had extracted from his youth. Until the dog had been hit by a train while out walking with Peter's suicidal twin brother not too long ago. "You were so lucky," he had told Mae, "to have had such an idyllic upbringing at that inn, with grandparents who loved you so much."

"But ... my parents died when I was six." In that moment, she thought maybe he'd forgotten, but he'd waved a hand, nodded. No, he hadn't forgotten.

"You were so young you can't remember them. How can you pine for something you never really had?" These words had hurt her, deeply and swiftly. What she had wanted to say was, "I remember everything — and yet, I remember nothing. You can't imagine how much that hurts. Sometimes, I wake from a dream and I know it was a memory, but it slips away from me like a fish down an ice hole. And no matter how hard I try, I can't get it back. Except there is one...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Graydon House
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1525899015
• ISBN 13: 9781525899010
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: HarperCollins Publishers Ireland; enquiries@harpercollins.ie; ; Macken House 39/40 Mayor Street Upper; Dublin 1; D01 C9W8; Irland