The Goodbye Summer (Large Print)

Chapter One

The first Caddie Winger ever heard of Wake House was when she was helping her grandmother get her drawers on over the cast on her leg.

It was Nana's second day back from the hospital. "If I was at Wake House," she said, lying flat on the sofa and holding her bunched-up nightgown over her lap for modesty, "somebody who knew what they were doing would be doing this."

"What house? Awake?"

"Wake House. That place on Calvert Street across from the thing. The thing, where you go with papers. To get signed."

"The notary? Put your good foot in here, Nan. Are you talking about that old house with the tower and all the porches? I think it's a boardinghouse."

"Before. Now it's an old folks' home."

"Oh, you don't need to go to a place like that, I can take care of you fine."

""Ow."

"It's a learning curve."

Nana mentioning a nursing home, imagine that. For the rest of the morning Caddie pondered what it might mean. When the old lady across the street went dotty and her children put her in a nursing home, Nana was aghast. "Shoot me if you ever want to get rid of me that bad, you hear? Take me out in the backyard and fire away." Caddie assumed the subject of nursing homes was off-limits forever.

That afternoon, though, out of the blue, Nana brought up Wake House again.

They were on the front porch, Nana slumped in her rented wheelchair, resting her broken leg on a pillow on top of the low kitchen stool. Caddie stood behind her, braiding her hair. Nana had long, pretty, smokegray hair and, before it softened with age, a long, bony, sharp-featured face. She loved it when people told her she looked like Virginia Woolf. Nobody ever added, "If she'd lived toseventy-nine instead of walking into the river."

"What's-her-name died there," she said, breaking a drowsy silence.

"Who died where, Nan?"

"Wake House. What's-her-name, you know. Pink hair, Tuesday nights."

Hm. Back in Nana's Buddhist period, when she'd led a chanting service in the dining room one night a week, an elderly lady who dyed her hair pink had shown up occasionally. "Mrs. Pringle?"

"Inez Pringle, thank you."

"She "died at Wake House?"

Nana shrugged. "You have to die someplace."

Caddie leaned over to see if she was joking. Her eyes were fixed on something out in the yard — Caddie followed her gaze to what was left of "George Bush in Love. That's how she'd broken her leg, by falling off the stepladder while putting a final cowboy boot on top of her phallus-shaped, seven-foot-high lawn sculpture. Nana was an artist.

"Are you serious?" Caddie asked.

A moment passed. "About what?" Nana said dreamily.

Caddie smiled and went back to braiding her hair. How were they going to wash it? This old house had only one bathroom, upstairs, and right now Nana couldn't stand up at the kitchen sink for longer than a minute or two. Maybe one of those dry shampoos, they were supposed to ...

"About Wake House? Damn right I'm serious. Call 'em up, find out how much it costs to stay there."

Her next pain pill wasn't for forty minutes. She'd broken her leg in two places, but luckily the breaks were simple, so her recovery was supposed to be long and tedious but not tricky or dangerous. The pain made her irritable, though. That's all Caddie could think of to account for Nana's sudden interest in recovering anyplace except the house on Early Street she'd lived infor fifty years.

"Wake House. I even like the sound of it."

"You do?" It made Caddie think of a funeral home.

"It's not like one of those places, it's not a mick ... mick ..."

"McNursing Home," Caddie guessed.

"This place is going to the dogs."

"Our house?"

"The whole neighborhood. It's not even safe anymore."

"Yes, it is."

"No, it's not."

Caddie stopped arguing, because she never won, but Nana was exaggerating.

Early Street might not be what it used to be, not that it had ever been that much, but it still had decent, hardworking families with fairly well-behaved children, plenty of old-timers rocking out their afternoons on the shady, crooked front porches. Crime was still pretty much in the vandalism category, boys breaking things or writing on things. It was getting older, that's all. Everything got older.

"Wake House," Nana resumed. "I bet it's got an elevator. Ramps, wheelchairs with motors. People giving you massages."

"Oh, boy."

"I'm a senior citizen, I deserve the best. This place is a death trap."

"Only about half an hour till your next pill, then you'll feel better. Want me to play the piano? You could listen through the window."

"Look it up in the yellow pages. Better yet, take me to see it — I always wanted to go inside that place. It's not just for old folks, you can get well there, too. Conva ... conva ..."

"Nan, I know you don't want to, but if you would just go "upstairs, this whole thing would be a lot simpler. I really think."

"No way."

"You'd be near the bathroom — you know how you hate that climb up the stairs four or five times a day. You could sleep in your own bed instead of the lumpy couch. You wouldn'thave to move every time one of my students comes over for a lesson. You could have a bell or a whistle, and I'd come up anytime you needed something, I wouldn't mind a bit. It just makes so much more --"

""No."

"But why?"

"I told you, I'm not going up there."

"But why "not?"

"Once you go up, you never come down."

"Nana, you only broke your "leg."

"That's it, I've made up my mind. Wake House. I used to know the family, you know."

Maybe Caddie could take one of Nana's pills for the headache she was getting ...

How much change can one summer bring?

If you're Caddie Winger — thirty-two years old, still living with her grandmother, and giving piano lessons to neighborhood children — one summer can make the whole world look different.

Caddie's mother died when Caddie was nine, and the child was raised by her grandmother. Now Caddie takes care of Nana. When Nana breaks her leg and insists on going into a convalescent home, Caddie is pulled out of her comfy, self-made nest. Living alone for the first time since college, she uncovers some startling truths from her past.

Jolted, she looks at the world with new eyes and begins to take charge of her future. As she makes a new best friend, takes risks she never dreamed she could, and navigates the depths and shallows of true love and devastating heartbreak, Caddie learns how to trust other people and, ultimately, how to trust herself.

How much change can one summer bring?

If you're Caddie Winger — thirty-two years old, still living with her grandmother, and giving piano lessons to neighborhood children — one summer can make the whole world look different.

Caddie's mother died when Caddie was nine, and the childwas raised by her grandmother. Now Caddie takes care of Nana. When Nana breaks her leg and insists on going into a convalescent home, Caddie is pulled out of her comfy, self-made nest. Living alone for the first time since college, she uncovers some startling truths from her past.

Jolted, she looks at the world with new eyes and begins to take charge of her future. As she makes a new best friend, takes risks she never dreamed she could, and navigates the depths and shallows of true love and devastating heartbreak, Caddie learns how to trust other people and, ultimately, how to trust herself.

Patricia Gaffney was born in Tampa, Florida, the younger of the two children of Joem and Jim Gaffney.With her brother Mike, she grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and graduated from Walter Johnson High School.She earned a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, and also studied literature at Royal Holloway College of the University of London, at George Washington University, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

After college, Gaffney taught 12th grade English at East Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, "for one excruciating year.The kids were great, but they were bigger than me and I was scared of them."Returning to Chapel Hill, instead of finishing her master's degree in education, she took a job as a freelance court reporter, and pursued that career in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., for the next fifteen years.

In January of 1984, Gaffney discovered a malignant lump in her breast."I was positive I was dying; I gave myself five years.Time to decide, and fast, what to do with the rest of my too-short life."In the end, the decision was easy because it was what she'd always wanted to do: write books and live in the country.In 1986, she and her husband left Washington and moved to rural southern Pennsylvania, where they live today.

There Gaffney began the first of what would be twelve published historical romance novels.The first, Sweet Treason, appeared in 1989 and won the Romance Writers of America's Golden Heart as well as other first-book awards.Six of her novels have been nominated for RWA Rita awards, and Wild at Heart (1997) was among ten finalists for the reader-nominated Favorite Book of the Year Award.

After a dozen books, Gaffney says she began to feel restless."I'd run out of stories I wanted to tell in the context of historical romance.And I had an urge to put more of myself in my novels.I'll always tell stories, but now I wanted to change the truth/fantasy ratio, weight it more toward my real life."

In June of 1999, HarperCollins published The Saving Graces, Gaffney's hardcover fiction debut."Real life" definitely played a part in this story of four women friends, one of whom battles a cancer recurrence."I've belonged to the same women's group for almost 20 years.Eight years ago, we lost one of our members to breast cancer.The Saving Graces tells her story, not mine."More than that, it explores issues of love, friendship, trust, and commitment among women.Gaffney says she hopes it speaks to the universal experience of women blessed with the gift of close friendships.

The Saving Graces enjoyed bestseller status on the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and other national lists.

Circle of Three was Gaffney's second hardcover novel, published by HarperCollins in June of 2000.The protagonist is a member of the "sandwich generation," a woman who both has a mother and a daughter and is a mother and a daughter.Gaffney explores the reality of women's lives in the context of three generations, grandmother, mother, and daughter.Told in alternating viewpoints, the women wrestle with issues of grief and guilt, aging and growing up, reconciling with old loves and finding new ones.

In July of 2002, HarperCollins will publish Flight Lessons.Set in a small town on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Flight Lessons is the story of 30-something Anna Catalano who comes home, after a long self-exile, to help run the Bella Sorella, the family Italian restaurant.Once again the focus is family, both Anna's real one as well as the Bella Sorella's steamy, chaotic, metaphorical family.Sins are committed and forgiven, hearts broken and healed.Gaffney explores favorite themes in this book about food, family, and forgiveness.

Patricia Gaffney is currently at work on her fourth novel for HarperCollins.