The Summer We Came to Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

it’s fascinating stuff. And let’s face it—otherwise, kiddo, we’re stuck with Rose Eynden’s “So You Want to Be a Medium.” Ha-ha.
    Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you, for doing this for me, and give you a little reminder to never give up. I mean, move on, be happy, but keep trying to find me. Just in case.
    I’m not ready, Sam. I’m not ready to leave you guys.
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    I looked out across the city, and gradually up at the clouds. Why did I stop looking, really? Why did I stop believing? I looked back at the journal. I flipped toward the back to the page that held the drying maple leaf. Twirling the leaf by its stem, I went back to the entry.
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    P.S. Call Kendra. I know she hates being so far away in New York. It’s ridiculous how much that girl works. But she does it to herself, now doesn’t she? LOL
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    I wiped my nose and went to look for my cell phone. What was the deal with Kendra? I smelled a big fat decomposing rat on that one. Initially, maybe I was surprised that she’d agreed to come on a moment’s notice, her being so easily offended by anybody’s lack of planning. But Kendra worked for a clothing distribution company where the absent owner, off gallivanting, compensated her handsomely and let Kendra make all the decisions. Kendra worked seven days a week, whether she was in the office or not. She’d assured usshe could still get work done in Honduras, and had even said it was good timing because a lot of her clients were on vacation, too.
    Then she suddenly changed her mind, something Kendra didn’t do.
    I fired off a text and waited. When no response came, I sat on the balcony cradling the maple leaf in my left palm and stroking it with my right.
    Just me and the city and the leaf.

CHAPTER
8
    ISABEL WANDERED OFF TO FIND COFFEE WHILE I stood near the welcome gate at the airport, one of the few gleaming new buildings in the city. I shivered in the air-conditioning and realized how excited I was for the vacation club to arrive.
    Mina and I had struck out in the family department; it was our greatest bond. A mother that dies versus the one that runs away. It’s hard to measure which is worse.
    I was two, so I can’t say if my mother left the man I know as my father, or if my father turned into that man once she left. My dad is a brilliant surgeon. Once I read about a child he miraculously saved, about how he wept at her bedside. I cut that article into fifty pieces and burned them one by one, because I never knew that side of my father at all. When he was home, which was rarely to never, he asked me about my grades and that was about it. He dismissed any discussion of my mother or her whereabouts. No photographs remained. As I got older, I postulated mental illness, love affairs, cultbrainwashing. My father would pull off an amazing feat of glaring at me while looking straight through me, and say only, “Better left alone, Sam.” I hoped she was dead. Otherwise, she’s a monster.
    In any case, that’s why the vacation club was never just summer camp for me. Isabel’s mother, Jesse, loved to tell how she scooped up Mina and me like two stray kittens, two lost little girls trying to be each other’s parents. Of course, after Arshan Bahrami, Mina’s father, became Jesse’s bridge partner, it wasn’t such a nice story to tell anymore. You don’t call someone a bad father to his face.
    â€œIsabel, they’re here!” I pointed to a cloud of blond hair and laughter emerging from customs.
    Clicking heels and a squeal, and Jesse Brighton was charging through the crowd toward us. Typical Jesse—her long ash-blond hair flowed over her leopard-print shirt tucked into skinny jeans, tucked into five-inch leather boots.
    â€œOh my stars! Look at those two gorgeous women! Those are my girls!” she shouted into the ears of the poor passengers she plowed over to reach us. “Hug me quick