Read Online The Summer Hideaway by Susan Wiggs - Free Book Online Page B

more out of habit than any real fear she’d encounter trouble on the lakeside trail.
    The beauty of her surroundings seemed almost unreal, as though she had stepped into a dream.
    This morning, she tried to clear her mind. It was exhausting, always trying to think ahead, plan the next move, anticipate disaster. She pushed aside the constant tension and sank into her enjoyment of the woodland trails of the resort. One couple jogged past, nodding at her, and there was a single person in a kayak out on the lake, out for a morning paddle.
    Birds flickered in the trees, and she spotted the occasional deer or rabbit. Sunlight glimmered on the lake, and the willow trees at the shore gracefully dipped their fronds in the water. Such a beautiful world. Too beautiful, she thought with a familiar twinge of yearning. She wished she had someone to share this moment with. Yet the fact was, she had no one to bear witness to her life. Sometimes that realization was overwhelming.
    Over time, she had taught herself to tolerate the self-isolation. There really wasn’t any other choice.
    The rhythm of her feet on the pavement alternated with the cadence of her breathing. She tried to imagine absorbing the beauty of the day through her pores, somehow keeping it with her. Maybe that was the magic of this place—that even after you left, you could take it with you. Maybe that was why George still thought about it even after half a century had passed.
    We haven’t spoken in fifty-five years.
    A lifetime, she thought. George and his brother had let a lifetime slip by. Last night, she’d suggested they call Charles Bellamy—he was listed in the local phone book. George had balked and looked tired. “When Ross comes,” he’d said.
    Ross. The favored grandson. She hoped like hell the guy was on his way. For that matter, where was the rest of George’s family? According to George, his sons and daughters-in-law expected him to return to the city in a matter of days.
    This morning, George had been out of sorts. He’d stayed close to the house, only venturing to the porch or dock to catch the sun’s early rays. There was no further talk of Charles Bellamy, and Claire didn’t bring it up. For the time being, George was in no shape to face the emotional turmoil of a reunion with his long-lost brother.
    Her plan for the day was to let each hour unfold at a pace that seemed to suit her patient. In the resort’s eclectic library, she had read up on Camp Kioga, trying to fill in the blanks for herself. There was a multivolume scrapbook filled with photos of people and events connected to the resort. It had started out as a big agricultural parcel at the north end of the lake, deeded to the Gordon family to settle a debt. The camp itself had been founded by Angus Gordon in the 1920s. Kioga was, as far as anyone knew, a fake Mohawk word which Angus claimed meant tranquility .
    The campground was later run by Angus’s son and then inherited by his granddaughter and her husband. The current owners’ names had leaped off the page at her: Jane and Charles Bellamy.
    Exploring the woodland trails that wound throughthe area, Claire imagined the past here, and wondered if she would ever learn the reason for the brothers’ estrangement. A brother shared a person’s history and background the way no one else ever could. Yet something had torn George and Charles apart. Something had made George walk away and stay away for fifty-five years.
    She was so lost in thought that she didn’t notice someone approaching from an oblique angle behind her. At the last second, she spied a shadow—large male, baseball cap, arm outstretched—and reacted instantly, with all the force and decisiveness she’d learned in her self-defense training. In a fluid movement she turned, right leg kicking out at groin level, the heel of her left hand crunching upward into the assailant’s face. In less than a second, he was down, doubled over, and she was running for her life, her