Last Summer: A Novel Read online

  “You’re in your element up here.”

  “I can’t stand being indoors when the sky’s this blue.”

  “Which has me wondering. Why Luxe Avenue? Isn’t Outside a more suitable audience for you?”

  He glances at her over his shoulder. “Déjà vu.”

  “What?”

  “You asked the same question last time.”

  She steps over a fallen branch, the needles brown and brittle. “Every question I ask will probably be the same. Remember, patience.”

  “I know. Trying.” He whistles for the dogs. They’ve put some distance between them, antsy to run and most likely used to Nathan hiking faster. They lope back in their direction.

  The sun rises higher, burns brighter. Light reflects off the snow. Ella feels the cool heat on her cheeks. It stings like dry ice.

  “Do you have sunscreen?” she asks.

  He stops midstride and Ella bumps into his back with a grunt. “Sorry about that.” He grins and she smiles back.

  “Sunscreen’s in the small pocket.” He points over his shoulder.

  Ella fishes out a sunscreen stick. She rubs it around her face and offers it to Nathan. He drags the wax stick across his brow and down his nose, capping the tube and handing it back to Ella.

  “Women made up over sixty percent of Off the Grid!’s audience,” Nathan comments as Ella zips up the pack.

  “Are you expecting to reach the same audience through Luxe Avenue? What about the men? Thirty-five percent is a large chunk to ignore.”

  “I don’t care about the men. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about the female audience.” Nathan resumes walking. “Luxe Avenue is Stephanie’s favorite. She reads it religiously, cover to cover. Always has.”

  “You’re hoping your wife reads the article. Why?” Ella asks when another thought occurs to her from her research. Nathan and Stephanie have been separated since before Carson’s death. She jogs to catch up. “Hey, Nathan, when was the last time you spoke with her?”

  Nathan stops abruptly. Ella steps off to the side to avoid running into him again and bumps into a tree instead. “Oomph.” She rubs her shoulder.

  Nathan points off to the right. “Look.”

  She does. Through the trees, the mountainside drops into the wide topaz-blue sky. Above them, jet streams crisscross the flat blue atmosphere like a tic-tac-toe game. All around them, tree bark creaks, expanding in the sun. A bird of prey swoops and dives like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat. “Wow.”

  “It’s incredible.” He grins broadly. “Never gets old.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “The view’s even better where we stop for lunch. That’s what I want to show you. We should be there within the hour.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “I bought the place several years back as a vacation retreat. Moved here permanently when Steph left.” He reaches for a water bottle. “Drink?”

  “Yes, thanks.” She drinks some, then Nathan takes his share, sliding the canister back into the pack’s side pocket.

  “What were you like as a kid?” she asks when they resume their hike, choosing to wait until later to delve into his reasons for using Luxe. “Were you always like that guy we see on Off the Grid!?”

  “How would you describe that guy?”

  “An adrenaline junkie. Lives life at maximum speed. He doesn’t fear death.”

  “Wrong. He fears not living. Look around.” He gestures at the surrounding scenery. They’re walking amid a pine forest blanketed in snow. “Does this look like life at maximum speed?”

  It looks like a guy hiding. Hibernating from the public, which isn’t living. But she doesn’t tell him what she thinks. She wants to keep him talking to the point where he feels comfortable doing so. It’ll be easier when she delves into the more difficult topic of his son. By then he should feel at ease with her. Again, she assumes. So she starts with a more neutral subject, his parents. Besides, she wants to understand who he was as a kid. What shaped Nathan into the man he is now? Someone willing to perform extreme feats in front of a camera and have them broadcast worldwide.

  “Tell me about your parents. I read that your dad was an army captain,” she begins.

  “He was. He’s the reason I served in the Special Forces a few years after college. As a kid, we moved around a lot. I get attached to land easier than people. Anytime we moved, I could count on Mother Nature being there.”

  Poetic words for a rough-around-the-edges man.

  Ella studies him. His strong shoulders and masculine hands. Workman’s hands. His long legs and rugged good looks, which, she admits, she isn’t immune to. His presence is compelling, and from what she saw of his survival series, he relishes being the center of attention. Like Damien, Nathan is partial to control. He must have derived those traits from his military father.

  “What was it like growing up with them?” She read that his father, George Donovan, passed away five years previous. Massive heart attack. His mother, Rae, retired to San Diego.

  “They did their best to make every home we moved to feel like a castle, even if it was military housing the size of a shoebox. Anytime Dad got leave, he and my mom would pull my sister, Heather, and me from school. We’d pile into Dad’s Wagoneer. No destination or care in the world. We’d just go.”

  “That’s spontaneous. Your mom didn’t mind?” Ella thinks of her parents. Aside from day trips to the beach or museums, they never went on a real vacation, the kind where you pack a suitcase and travel somewhere for an extended stay. There was never enough money. She also can’t picture her mother roughing it outdoors. From what Ella recalls of her limited memory of her, her mother liked her fingernails polished and heels high.

  Aunt Kathy did take her and Andrew to Disneyland a few times, but then her aunt got too sick to travel. Ella feels like she missed out on that part of childhood. It’s one of the reasons she loves traveling with Damien and for her job. Aside from her semester in Germany, she never had the opportunity to go places until she graduated from college and started her career.

  Should she be fortunate enough to have kids again with Damien, she’ll take every opportunity she can to show their child the world.

  “My mom was just as adventurous as my dad. Sometimes more so,” Nathan explains. “My grandparents homeschooled her. They raised her in a lakeside cabin in Alabama without electricity or running water.”

  “She sounds hard-core.”

  “She is. She was the one who took us camping when my dad couldn’t get away. One time she pulled off the highway onto a dirt road. We bumped along for what had to be a mile or so before she parked the car and announced that this was where we were going to spend the night.”

  “In the middle of nowhere?”

  “In the middle of nowhere,” Nathan echoes. “Heather and I grabbed the gear and my mom hiked us several hundred yards through the woods until she found a spot to set up camp. The night was warm, the sky gorgeous. We didn’t bother with tents and slept beside the campfire. It was perfect until I woke up at two a.m. with a shotgun in my face. I about shit my pants.”

  “Whoa.” Her eyes bug out. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing, not right away. I was too scared to move. This guy was huge, with a full beard. He nudged my mom’s foot and woke up her and Heather. He ordered us to douse the fire and pack up. Then he followed us to the car and waited until we left.”

  “You’re lucky that’s all he did.”

  “No kidding.” He laughs at the memory. “I think half the places she found for us to camp out were on private property. That’s the only time we got caught, though.”

  “Your mother’s a daring woman. She met your dad at Tulane?” She recalls his Wikipedia page.

  “Yep.” He holds back an errant branch so that Ella can pass without the needles scratching her face.

  “How would you describe their relationship?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Come on.” She shoots his back a
dubious look. Nobody’s relationship is perfect. “For real?”

  “In their case, yes. My parents were as hot and cold as the next couple. But they were a perfect match for each other, which is why they worked.” His tone echoes of nostalgia and a trace of disappointment. He envied his parents.

  “Were you looking for something similar with Stephanie?”

  The trail widens and Nathan falls into step beside Ella. He sighs. “Steph found being married to me ‘taxing.’ Her description, not mine.”

  “So you stressed her out?” Ella asks, trying to understand.

  “Yep.”

  Ella can see that. She’d worry, too, if Damien jumped out of planes on a regular basis. “Is that why she left you?”

  He stops and slips off his pack, sets it on the ground. Rubbing the scruff on his jaw with both hands, he takes an unsteady breath.

  “Everything all right?” she asks, concerned, only to realize her question about Steph leaving him was tactless. With any other celebrity, she’d ask without thinking twice. She couldn’t care less how she phrased the question as long as it got the answer she needed. But Nathan has clearly been wounded by the separation, so much so that he thinks the only way he can appeal to his wife is through a magazine article.

  Nice going, Skye.

  She reminds herself to be more sensitive.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he replies, then gestures at the view, which seems endless. From their vantage point, she can see granite peaks reaching for the blue heavens.

  “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

  He takes a beat, then looks down at her, his eyes intense. “I’ve been wanting to show you this since the day we met.”

  CHAPTER 14

  I’ve been wanting to show you this since the day we met.

  He murmured the words, but they’d been spoken with an air of wonder, as if he couldn’t believe she’s there with him.

  You only said something like that, in that way, when the person meant something to you.

  Nathan nudges her. “You’ve got that spooked look. Relax, Skye. It’s not a big deal.”

  But her being here seems like a big deal to him. Her heart beats a little faster as he looks at her. Then he turns and calls over the dogs. They obediently sit at his feet, panting, tongues lolling.

  “There’re snacks in my pack. Help yourself,” he tells her.

  At the mention of food, her stomach grumbles. She feels light-headed. She can’t tell if it’s from hunger, the altitude, Nathan’s comment, or her interpretation of its meaning. Maybe a little bit of all four.

  She searches his daypack, finding a bag of trail mix and a couple of apples. She takes them out and settles on a flat granite boulder while Nathan sets up the dogs with their water. He’s downplaying the comment, Ella thinks. This is one of his favorite spots to think, he told her earlier as they hiked. She can see why, with a view like this, so broad and blue that when she squints her eyes, she can imagine she sees the curvature of the earth. She doubts Nathan’s brought anyone else here. So who is she to him?

  A gust of wind pushes up from the canyon below, raising goose bumps across Ella’s arms. She worked up a sweat during their hike and had removed her jacket, tying it around her waist. She puts it back on.

  “Cold?” Nathan asks, settling beside her.

  “I’ll be fine now.” She zips up the jacket and gives him an apple. “Thanks for the snacks.”

  “You doing okay? The hike wasn’t too much?” His gaze roams over her.

  She shakes her head. “It wasn’t too bad.” She’s used to the pounding of pavement and steep inclines of Russian Hill, which should have prepared her for this. But she’s feeling a little nauseous, probably from the cold and the altitude. It should pass since they’re resting, but she’ll be sore in the morning.

  “This spot is lovely.”

  “Yeah. I come here about twice a week, and only in the past month since the snowpack started melting. It’s impassable most of the winter.” He removes his knit cap and scratches his head. “I think better when I’m moving.”

  He finishes his apple and bags the core. Ella adds hers to the trash when she’s done and pulls out her voice recorder from her jacket’s deep side pocket. Time to get the official interview started. Time’s a wastin’.

  “Nathan,” she begins.

  “Hold up. Before you start recording, is it true what you said?” he asks. “That you don’t remember our time together last summer?”

  She nods. “It’s not just that I don’t remember the interview. I didn’t know of you until my editor called. I had to Google you.”

  Nathan whistles. “What a trip. Any idea why?”

  “I was hoping you could help me.”

  “In what way?” He tosses a handful of trail mix into his mouth.

  “Did something happen between us?” she asks, knowing her question is loaded. But she wants to know it all, everything she’s beginning to suspect. What did they talk about on the mountain? Did they argue? Were they involved? Is that why she convinced Rebecca to kill the exclusive?

  Nathan slowly shakes his head, his eyes on her. “I can’t think of anything that would cause you to forget me.”

  Ella helps herself to the dried fruit and nuts. “What did we do on the previous assignment?”

  Nathan pulls his legs into his chest and rests his forearms on his knees. “You mentioned yesterday you lost your notes.”

  “Everything. Research, recordings of our conversations. Phone logs and voice mails. I have no idea how.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I deleted them? That’s the only explanation I’ve been able to draw.”

  “And what else?”

  She looks askance at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you sure it was just me you deleted?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I might not be the only assignment you’ve forgotten, or person.”

  Her heart sinks. “You’re not. I forgot my son.”

  Nathan reaches over and tugs off pieces of hair stuck to her lips, blown around by the wind. “I’m sorry. About your son,” he says quietly.

  Ella cups her mouth and glances away. She swallows, pushing down the knot expanding in her throat. “Thanks,” she whispers.

  “How’s Damien handling this?”

  She clears her throat, surprised for a moment that he knows of Damien, but of course he does. She wears a wedding band. He’d know she’s married. She would have mentioned him. “We haven’t really talked about it.”

  “Denial?” he asks, and Ella shrugs a shoulder. “You can talk to me, if you want. You did before.”

  Ella blinks at him. “What did we talk about?”

  “Damien. Your parents.”

  “I told you about my parents?” she says in a small voice. She rarely talks to anyone about her parents. She and Andrew hardly speak of them.

  “What did I say about them?” she asks Nathan.

  “You told me they died in a car accident when you were six and that you blamed your mother.”

  Ella feels the world falling from under her. She weaves. How could she have ever shared such personal information with an interviewee?

  “Hey, hey.” Nathan grips her shoulder. “Here, drink this.” He hands her his metal water canister.

  She guzzles a quarter, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Ella did blame her mom, but she can’t fathom why she would have told Nathan. Aside from Damien, the only other person she admitted that to was Aunt Kathy. A few weeks after her parents’ death and after the neighbors had helped Aunt Kathy clear out her parents’ apartment and moved their belongings to Aunt Kathy’s garage, Ella came across her mom’s Lladró collection of porcelain figurines, gifts from Ella’s grandparents her mom had received every year for her birthday. There were only eighteen figurines, even though her mom was twenty-four when she died. The figurines stopped when Ella’s mom married her dad. Her mom was devastated
that her own parents wouldn’t accept Ella’s dad into their family, but she still treasured her collection.

  They’d been displayed in the antique curio cabinet in their tiny apartment. But after her parents’ death and after their belongings had been packed away, Ella despised everything that had belonged to her parents because she hated them for leaving her. And she especially hated anything her mom loved.

  One evening Aunt Kathy was cooking dinner, and Ella, missing her parents, sneaked into the garage and snooped through their boxed items. But when she came across her mom’s Lladrós, a rage Ella had never felt before consumed her. Blistering hot anger poured down her face in the form of heavy tears. She picked up one figurine after another and hurled them against the wall.

  The sound of shattering porcelain brought Kathy to the garage just in time for her to witness the last figurine, an angel with white wings, explode into miniscule fragments. Porcelain dust sprinkled the garage like new-fallen snow.

  “Ella Skye, what do you think you’re doing?” Kathy had shouted.

  Ella couldn’t answer. Anger spent, a deep sadness filled her. She’d just destroyed her mom’s prized collection.

  Her mom would have smacked her with a spatula and sent her to bed without dinner. But her aunt Kathy only sank to her knees and pulled Ella against her ample chest in a tight bear hug.

  Aunt Kathy smelled of apple fritters and warm bread. She’d been baking nonstop since Ella and Andrew moved in. Ella knew she baked the treats to keep her and Andrew happy. But right then, Ella just wanted to keep crying. She’d been holding in her tears for too long.

  “There, there.” Aunt Kathy patted her back. “Tell me, Ella. Why did you break your mommy’s statues?”

  “Be . . . be . . . because,” she stuttered. Ella swiped off tears and, wiping her hands on her shirt, tried again. “Because . . . I don’t know.” She shrugged a little bony shoulder.

  Aunt Kathy pursed her lips. “I think you do know but are afraid to tell me.”

  Ella looked at her dirty sneakers. They used to be white. Now they were gray. She twisted her shirt in her hands.