The Summer Hideaway Read Online Free PDF

dramatic.”
    Growing up, first cousins Ross and Ivy had bonded over their drama-queen mothers. A few years younger than Ross, Ivy lived in Santa Barbara, where she created avant garde sculpture and wrote long, angsty e-mails to her cousin overseas.
    “And you’re certain Aunt Alice’s overreacting? There’s no chance she might be on to something?”
    “There’s always a chance. That’s how my mom operates—within the realm of possibility. She thinks Granddad is losing it. Everybody knows brain tumors make people do crazy things. When can you get to New York?” asked Ivy. “We really need you, Ross. Granddad needs you. You’re the only one he listens to. Where the hell are you, anyway?”
    Ross looked around the foreign airport, jammed with soldiers in desert fatigues, trading stories of firefights, suicide bombers, roadside ambushes. Transport here had been his last movement on the ground. He remembered thinking, please don’t let anything happen now. He didn’t want to be one of those depressing items you read about in hometown newspapers— On his last day of deployment, he died in a convoy attack ….
    He pictured Ivy in her bohemian guest house on thebluffs above Hendry’s Beach. He could hear a Cream album playing in the background. She was probably making coffee in her French press and watching the surfers paddle to the beach-break for an early morning ride.
    “I’m on my way,” he said. The homeward-bound soldiers had all been sitting at KAIA for hours. Time dragged at the pace of a glacier. Originally their flight was supposed to leave at 1400, but that had been delayed to 2145. They’d been ordered back to the departure tent and subjected to mandatory lockdown, which meant sitting in an airless tent with nothing to do until it was time to board: 2145 had come and gone, the delay surprising no one.
    “Ross?” His cousin’s voice prodded him. “How much longer before you’re home?”
    “Working on it,” he said to her. At the moment, he might as well be on a different planet; he felt that far away. “What’s going on with Granddad?”
    “Here’s what I know. He’s been in treatment at the Mayo Clinic. I guess they told him then…” She paused, and a sob pulsed through the phone. “They told him it was the worst possible news.”
    “Ivy—”
    “It’s inoperable. I don’t think even my mother would exaggerate that. He’s going to die, Ross.”
    Ross felt sucker-punched by the words. For a few seconds, he couldn’t breathe or see straight. There had to be some mistake. A month ago, Ross had received the usual communiqué from his grandfather. George Bellamy had a curiously old-fashioned style of writing, even with e-mail, starting each message with a proper heading and salutation. He had mentioned the Mayo Clinic—“nothing to worry about.” Ross had failed toread between the lines. He hadn’t let himself go there, even though he knew damn well a guy didn’t go to the Mayo Clinic for a hangnail. He hadn’t let himself think about…sweet Jesus…a terminal prognosis.
    Granddad’s sign-off was always the same: Keep Calm and Carry On .
    And that, in essence, was the way George Bellamy lived. Apparently it was the way he was going to die.
    “He finally told my dad,” Ivy was saying. There was still a catch in her voice. “He said he wasn’t going to pursue further treatment.”
    “Is he scared?” Ross asked. “Is he in pain?”
    “He’s just…Granddad. He claimed he had to go to some little town in the Catskills to see his brother. That was the first I’d heard of any brother. Did you know anything about that?”
    “Wait a minute, what? Granddad has a brother? ”
    The connection crackled ominously, and he missed the first part of her reply. “…anyway, when my mother heard what he was planning, she went, like, totally ballistic.”
    Fighting the poor connection and the ambient din of the airport, Ross listened as his cousin filled him in further. Their grandfather