The Dead of Summer (6 page)

I eyed that laptop suspiciously, wondering if after six years of widowhood, my mama was finally dipping her toe in the online dating pool. I shuddered at the thought. There were some real creeps out there and my mama wasn’t the most experienced in the dating world.

She had met my daddy when they were still in high school and were married right after, so she wasn’t exactly a worldly woman. Not that I was either, but the world had changed drastically since my mama was fifteen and I was worried for her. Because the woman didn’t voluntarily leave the house, the computer was her only link to the outside world (besides little ole me) and I certainly did not want to see her ensnared by an online predator. (Yes, maybe I read too many books, but you could never be too careful.)

“Maybe I should be asking
you
if you feel okay,” Mama said as she cocked her head to the side, eying my water bottle suspiciously. “You’re rather flushed. Please tell me that isn’t your first bottle of water today.”

I offered her a sheepish grin before I took a hearty swig. “Sorry, Mama, I forgot.”

My mama sighed audibly as she reached out to touch my cheek. I didn’t back away as I usually would, making a joke about her violating my personal space. “You got to take care of yourself, Kennedy. We can’t risk you ending up back at the hospital…” She started wringing her hands.

“I am,” I insisted. “I wasn’t even outside for that long. I was mostly at the library all day,” I lied. It was one of the many white lies I would tell her to keep her anxiety at bay. Otherwise, she would spend the entire day clucking over me like a mother hen. It was upsetting, not to mention completely annoying.

“Well, keep drinking water. It’s nearly a hundred out today. Did you eat a morning snack? And lunch?”

I nodded and rolled my eyes as I lied. “Yes, Mama. I ate at Lindy’s.” I didn’t mention the fact Lindy wouldn’t even let me eat a cinnamon bun for fear my thighs would explode.

Mama scrunched up her face at the mention of Lindy. I could tell Mama wasn’t a fan of Lindy even though she was always very hospitable and polite when my friend was around. When Lindy
wasn’t
around, however, Mama made a point to remind me that there were other girls in school that I could be friends with.

“Why don’t you go lie down in my bedroom with the air conditioner on? That way, you’ll cool down some,” she said with a smile as if she just told me Santa Claus was actually real and he was married to the Tooth Fairy.

I waved off her suggestion. “Mama, I’m fine. I’ll just head down to the basement and grab some ice pops out of the deep freezer—”

“No!” Mama yelped. She jumped up and actually dropped her laptop on her toe. Her face was flaming red as she stammered, “The freezer broke.”

I stared at her. “What? It’s only two years old!”

Mama had ordered that deep freezer online after I pretty much took over the grocery shopping. Her theory was I only had to go to the grocery store and the butcher once a month or so if we stocked up on meats and frozen things. She felt badly about me being the one to do all the grocery shopping for the household and wanted to make my life easier. Of course, she didn’t feel badly enough for her to step foot outside the house, mind you.

She shook her head sadly. “Yes, I went down there to take a roast out for tomorrow’s dinner and I found it was leaking all over the place. I called the repair service because it’s still under warranty, but they can’t come out for, um, a few days.”

“Well, then we need to get all that stuff up here in this freezer—” I started to say. I stood and headed toward the door to our dank and dingy cellar, but Mama grabbed my arm.

“Already done!” she told me cheerily. “Nothing left for you to do but relax. So upstairs with you!” She playfully swatted my behind, lightly shoving me in the direction of the stairs. This was quite contradictory behavior for my mama. Household repairs that required the assistance of a repairman usually sent her into a tizzy for days, dreading the stranger that was going to come to our home. Under extreme duress, she would reluctantly let deliverymen or repairmen in. . .scratch that, she would have
me
let them in while she cowered in her bedroom or in the kitchen.

“Are you sure you got it all?” I asked, eying her suspiciously. That freezer had to be pretty full; I had only gone to the market two weeks ago.

“Absolutely certain,” Mama told me. “So go lie down, read a book, and I’ll bring you some of that sweet tea that Mrs. Harris brought over.”

Ah, my mama sure knew how to tempt me. Mrs. Harris was about the only other living soul Mama let through that front door. Mrs. Harris was different from the neighborhood busybodies, and my mama sensed that straight away.

Mrs. Harris had lost her own husband—quite a long time ago though—when her children were still small. She had raised three kids by herself in the seventies, when that was a lot more difficult than it was today. There was a lot more stigma attached with being a single parent then, too, even if your spouse had dropped dead from lung cancer at a ripe old age of thirty-two.

Mama and Mrs. Harris bonded over recipes and the agony of raising children by themselves. All of Mrs. Harris’s children had moved to far-off places like Florida and California, and one even lived in Canada. She didn’t get to see her kids much and her grandbabies even less. In fact, I overheard Mrs. Harris telling Mama once that she and one of her daughters were estranged because the daughter didn’t like Mrs. Harris and blamed her for all the troubles she had gotten into in high school. I think the place she lived at in Florida was for drug or alcohol rehab, but I wasn’t a hundred percent positive.

I personally liked Mrs. Harris. She was a teeny little thing, getting wrinkled and shriveled up, and I couldn’t imagine that she could be responsible for her daughter being a booze head druggie. Hell, if I could be somewhat normal with my mama as wacky as she was, well, I’m pretty sure Mrs. Harris had been a fine mother who had done the best she could and her daughter was simply an ungrateful brat. I had overheard Mama mutter something like that after Mrs. Harris had left one day.

But anyway, Mrs. Harris made the best sweet tea I had ever tasted (she had grown up in Georgia, the land of the sweet tea) and Mama knew I would just about forget anything for a glass of that delicious stuff. So I headed to the bedroom on the second floor of our small house, but when I was halfway up the steps, I turned around to ask what was for dinner. Mama was standing off to the side of the big picture window in the living room, just staring at the street, nervously chewing at her fingernails. Half wondering what had gotten into her and half not caring, I turned on my heel without another word and went upstairs to the cool air.

The next morning, right after breakfast, there was a gentle tapping on my front door. I glanced up at the ceiling and heard Mama bustling around in the bathroom, the sound of the shower doors being slid open, and the shower turning on.

I parted the curtains in the living room to catch a glimpse of who could possibly be rapping on our door this early in the morning. Even though it was after nine o’clock, didn’t think Lindy would be out and about yet. Her morning beauty regiment took quite a long time. And even if she was ready, she certainly wouldn’t be tapping timidly on the front door. More likely she would send me a text along the lines of,
hA btch Im w8N outside.
And she’d be waiting in the car with her driver standing outside the door while she buffed her nails in the backseat.

My heart almost fell to my knees when I saw who was standing on the front porch. With his unruly hair tucked under a baseball cap, Carson held Colt on a leash as he curiously sniffed the bushes in the front of the house. Colt sniffed. Not Carson.

Crap!
I glanced down at the pair of ratty pajama shorts I had slept in and tank-top I had layered over them. It would have been okay except for the fact I had no bra on and it was quite obvious. My hair was piled onto my head in a messy bun and slumping to one side. I could probably get away with it if I quickly gathered it up and. . .

Damn, my breath! Oh dear Lord, my breath.
I cupped my hand around my mouth and exhaled; a noxious odor assaulted me. Plus, there was yellow gunk at the edge of my lips from my breakfast cereal. I rubbed at it feverishly with my hand as Carson tapped on the door once more. At the same time, I heard Mama slide back the shower doors and the water turn off.

Christ, is she going for a world record or something?
Mama had never taken a shower so quickly. But today she was all hover-y and didn’t want to leave my side even when I told her to go shower so I could get ready.
Ugh, she probably wants to have one of her infamous mother-daughter days today.
No, we wouldn’t go for pedicures and then high tea at the palace; our mother-daughter days usually consisted of mama making me sit next to her on the couch and watch videos of puppies falling down and eating baked goods all day. I was definitely not in the mood for that.

“I’ll be right there!” I shouted to Carson as my eyes darted around furtively, searching for A, something to cover myself with and B, something to rid myself of the morning breath I was clearly suffering from. I threw open the hall closet just as I heard Mama pad into her bedroom. She’d be down in no time flat and nothing says
lonely teenager who will never have a boyfriend until she’s forty,
like a nosy mom.

Desperate, I grabbed a hoodie that had been flung into the closet a few months ago. I slipped it over my head and opened the front door.

There stood Carson, beaming and looking sheepish at the same time.

“Um, hi,” I mumbled, shoving a wayward strand of hair up into my bun as I stepped onto the porch.

“Hi yourself,” he remarked, still smiling in that cockeyed way.

“What are you, um. . .doing here?” I was also wondering how the hell he knew where I lived. It seemed stalkerish. Not that I would mind in the
least
if Carson Tyler was stalking me. He was definitely not like Jerry Newman who stalked every girl in my grade with his humpback, nostril hairs, and unibrow.

“Waiting for you to show me the town,” Carson said, eyebrow cocked.

“Show you the town?” I tried to prevent my voice from sounding like a trumpeter swan, but I failed miserably.

“Yeah,” he replied with a cocky smile. “You promised me yesterday that you’d show me around.”

I did?
I couldn’t remember this particular statement on my part. Maybe it was when I was blubbering like a fool in front of him. Oh wait, that was the
entire time
I was with him yesterday.

“Um, sure,” I replied, shoving my hands inside my hoodie. For some reason, they were suddenly ice cold, like my blood had stopped pumping through my body. It was an almost welcome feeling after the constant flushing I had been doing in front of Carson for the past twenty-four hours or so. I couldn’t imagine what menopause would be like. I don’t remember a ton about Mama Grace, but I do remember her flapping about in her housecoat, fanning her arms around (her great big bat wings), and tittering on that those “damn hot flashes will be the death of me”
.

“Colt can get his walk in, too,” Carson said.

At the mention of his name, Colt perked up his ears, his neck snapping to attention. I could have sworn he even made a Scooby-Doo-like noise.

“Kennedy!” I heard my mama calling from inside the house. “Is there someone at the door, Kennedy?”

Crap! She’d be down here in no time, dying to know who Carson was and acting all overprotective and everything.

Without even thinking, I shoved Carson off the porch and stuck my head inside the house. “No one, Mama!”

“Are you sure?” she asked, her footfalls rapidly descending on the stairs. “I could have sworn I heard someone tapping on the front door.”

In the shower? What is she? A bat?

Carson was staring at me with a questioning expression on his face. I shook my head slightly at him. Now was not the time to introduce him to Mama, patron saint of crazy shut-ins.

“It’s just Lindy, Mama,” I called, pulling the heavy door shut behind me. “I’m going out,” I added as an afterthought. I shooed Carson down the sidewalk with my hands. “Go!” I whispered loudly.

He tugged on the leash for Colt to follow him, and I shuffled down the front walk quickly in my flip flops, praying Mama would take my Lindy excuse and settle down with her laptop without checking on me.

I gently pushed Carson toward the line of hedges at the end of our property and then dropped to the ground, pulling on his arm. He collapsed in a heap next to me on the grass. I knelt down and poked my head ever so slightly over the top of the hedge.

“Are we spies?” Carson whispered in a joking tone.

“No, I…” And then I realized that I would have to explain what an oddball my mama was. I chewed the inside of my cheek, my brain racing to come up with an excuse. “My mama doesn’t want me talking to boys.”

How lame, Kennedy.
But I was gonna have to take lame over
My mama is a nutball recluse who would fire off questions at you like you were being interviewed for a job with the FBI, and then make you stay for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Carson accepted my explanation with a shrug. “Oh. Well, I’m not an axe murderer or anything if that makes her feel any better.”

I laughed, snorting what just might
have been orange juice, out my nose. Quickly, I covered my nose and mouth with my hand.

“Excuse me,” I said sheepishly, wiping the moisture up with the back of my hand.
Awesome, Kennedy. You’re a real charmer.

Carson leaned his back against the shrubbery. Colt took it as his cue to drop to the ground and start nibbling on his paws. They both looked comfy.

I stared at them, aghast. “We can’t stay here!”

“I know,” Carson said. “I thought we were going for a walk.”

“Um, yeah, of course. We are,” I said.

“I was just wait for you to be done spying,” Carson said, that delicious grin covering his face once again.

“Um, I am,” I stammered.

Careful not to stand erect, I waddled to the edges of the bushes in a squatting position until I reached the sidewalk in front of the neighbor’s house. I’m certain I looked like a duck, but given the choice being embarrassed by Carson watching me walk like a moron, to the absolute mortification of Carson meeting Mama, I choose the moronic walk.