Every Summer After

Chantal is deeply committed to Sunday brunch. Right now she will almost certainly be in her favorite booth at her favorite restaurant, splitting the paper with her fiancé. She will take Arts first and he will have Opinions, and then they’ll switch. They will have their coffees, and her eggs Benny will be on its way. I would be disturbing her ritual. She’s barely verbal, let alone ready to deal with my crisis, until she’s had at least two cups of caffeine. At least that’s what I tell myself as I quickly write a message to her, delete it, and then put the phone on the bed beside me. Again. I shake my head at myself. Fifth time’s the charm, right? I pick up the stupid thing and type out another text, punch send, and then throw the phone down. I sit and wait—for one minute, then five—and when no reply comes, curse myself for sending it in the first place and shuffle off to the bathroom.

I run the shower until it steams up the mirror, then step under the hot spray and put my head against the tile, letting the anxious stream of thoughts billow around me like mustard gas. What the fuck is wrong with me? What kind of a person takes advantage of their former (newly single!) boyfriend on the day of his mother’s funeral? Sam is never going to let me stay in his life. And why should he? I’m a shitty, selfish person who is clearly incapable of being his friend.

I don’t register that I’m crying until I feel my shoulders shaking. Disgusted with my own self-pity, I push off the wall, scrub myself roughly with soap, wash my hair, and dry off.

I arrive at the church ten minutes early, and the lot is already full with dusty pickup trucks and well-used sedans. A young man is directing cars to park in the adjoining field. I leave the car at the end of a haphazard row, and walk toward the church, the heels of my black pumps digging into the grass, making me look as off-kilter as I feel.

Sam is standing in a small cluster of people in front of the church steps. I stop short at the sight of Taylor beside him, legs as long as a giraffe’s, hair as golden as a sunbeam. Even though Sam and Charlie had mentioned she was coming, I somehow didn’t expect to see her. I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to steady myself. When I open them, Charlie is looking at me from across the parking lot. He raises his hand, and the whole group turns my way.

As I move closer, I immediately recognize the thin, middle-aged man as Julien. There’s an elderly couple who must be Charlie and Sam’s grandparents on their dad’s side. Sue’s parents aren’t around anymore. There’s another couple, who I think are Sue’s brother and sister-in-law from Ottawa. I take a deep breath and paste a warm smile on my face, though my stomach is roiling.

“Everyone, this is Percy Fraser,” says Charlie as I join them. “You probably remember her. She and her parents had the cottage next door when we were kids.” I greet the family with hugs and condolences, pretending that this is a funeral like any other and that I don’t feel Sam watching me intensely.

“You look well, Percy,” Julien says, giving me a loose hug. I rub his upper arms with both hands as he pulls away. His eyes are red and he smells like stale cigarette smoke.

I turn to Sam and Taylor last. He shut down so quickly this morning after what happened, because of course he did. Who wants to open up the you left me brokenhearted conversation the morning of their mother’s funeral? I’m afraid to meet his eyes now, afraid of what I’ll find there. Regret? Anger? Hurt?

So I fix my gaze on Taylor instead. Her hand is resting on Sam’s shoulder, in a way that screams mine. Sam may have ended things with her, but she is clearly not done with him. In reply, I glue on a serene smile that says, I didn’t just make your ex-boyfriend come in his pants, and keep it there, though bile is rising up my throat. She’s stunning in a tailored black jumpsuit, her hair in a glossy low ponytail. My black sheath dress feels drab in comparison. She’s wearing very little makeup and no jewelry and somehow manages to look intentionally minimal. If I walked around wearing only mascara and lip gloss, I’d just look tired. As it is, I spent five minutes alone applying several layers of concealer around my puffy eyes and red nose.

When I finally look at Sam, it’s like seeing him for the first time. He’s standing as straight as a red pine, wearing a crisp white shirt and an expensive-looking black suit that’s cut close to his body. He’s freshly shaven and his hair is combed and held in place with some kind of styling product. He looks like an actor who plays a doctor on TV rather than an actual doctor.

Sam and I were always bumming around in bathing suits or work clothes, and I’ve only seen him in a suit once before. Now he looks like such an adult, such a man. A man who should have a gorgeous lawyer on his arm instead of a basket case around his neck. He and Taylor make a striking couple, and it’s hard not to feel that they’re designed to have smart, successful, impossibly gorgeous babies together.

I lean in to give him a hug, and it feels like coming home and saying goodbye and four thousand days of longing.

“We should probably head in,” Taylor says, and I realize I’ve been pressed to Sam’s chest for a second too long for polite company, but just as I pull back, he squeezes his arms around me a little tighter, just for a second, before releasing me with an unreadable look on his face.

This is the biggest church in town, but it’s still not large enough to seat everyone who’s shown up this morning. People are standing in rows behind the back pews, crowding around the doorways, and spilling outside. It’s an incredible show of love and support. But it also means the church is hot and stuffy. By the time we get to the front pew, my neck and thighs are already damp. I should have worn my hair up. I sit between Charlie and Sam, where a large photo of a smiling Sue stares out at us, surrounded by arrangements of lilies, orchids, and roses. I wipe at the sweat on my upper lip then rub my hands on my dress.

“You okay, Pers?” Charlie whispers. “You seem twitchy.”

“Just hot,” I tell him. “How about you?”

“Nervous,” he says, holding up a folded piece of paper that I assume contains his eulogy. “I want to do her proud.”

When it’s time for Charlie to speak, he grips the edge of the podium with white knuckles. He opens his mouth, then closes it again, looking out into the crowd for several long seconds until he starts to speak, his voice audibly shaking. He stops, takes a deep breath, and then begins again, steadier now. He talks about how Sue held the family and the business together after his dad died, and though he has to pause a couple of times to collect himself, he makes it through, no tears shed, an obvious look of relief in his green eyes.

To my surprise, as Charlie returns to the pew, Sam rises. I hadn’t realized he was speaking today. I watch him as he strides confidently to the front of the church.

“Many of you will find this scandalous, but Mom didn’t really like pierogies,” he begins with a small smile across his lips, and the room rumbles with low laughter. “What she did love, however, was watching all of us eat them.” He keeps his eyes mostly on his page, but he’s a beautiful speaker; while Charlie’s eulogy was earnest and reverent, Sam’s is gently teasing, breaking the sadness in the room with lighthearted stories about Sue’s struggles and triumphs in raising two boys. Then he looks up and scans the crowd until he settles on me briefly before looking down again. I can see Taylor observing me from the corner of my eye, and my heart laces up its running shoes and takes off in a sprint.

“Mom lived without my dad for twenty years,” he says. “They had been friends since kindergarten, started dating in ninth grade, and got married after high school. My grandfather will tell you that there was no way to convince either one of them to wait just a little bit longer. They knew. Some people are lucky like that. They meet their best friend, the love of their life, and are wise enough to never let go. Unfortunately, my parents’ love story got cut far too short. Just before she died, Mom told me she was ready. She said she was tired of fighting and tired of missing Dad. She thought of death as a new beginning—said she was going to go spend the rest of her next life with Dad, and I’d like to think that’s exactly what they’re doing now. Best friends together again.”

I’m mesmerized by him. Every word is an arrow to my soul. I’m about to throw my arms around him when he sits, but then Taylor pulls his hand onto her lap and holds it between hers. The sight of their intertwined hands slaps me with reality. They make sense together. They are a carefully wrapped gift with crisply folded edges and a satin bow. Sam and I are a trash fire with more than a decade of time and a big fat secret between us. Tomorrow I’ll head back to Toronto, away from this town, away from Sam. It was crazy to come back, to expect I could make things better. Instead, I threw myself at him at his most vulnerable. And as right and perfect and good as it felt with his lips against mine again, I shouldn’t have let this morning happen without being honest with him first. Despite everything I’ve done to move on, I’m right back where I was at eighteen.

Charlie offers me his arm as we amble out of the church, and then I walk slowly back to the car with a heaviness pressed against my chest. I rest my head on the steering wheel.

I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have come.

But I can’t leave now, not when there’s a wake to get through, so I wait for the heavy feeling to lift a little and then I drive to the Tavern.

THE RESTAURANT IS more boisterous family reunion than post-funeral gathering. I watch the smiling relatives and friends mingle with plates of Sue’s pierogies. The tables have been cleared out of the way to make room for the crowd, and someone has made a mix of Sue’s favorite country songs. It doesn’t take long before a group of children forms a dance circle, hopping and flailing to Shania Twain and Dolly Parton. The scene is so sweetly wholesome, and I am an impostor standing within it.

I ignore the phone vibrating in my purse and take a glass of wine from the young server behind the bar, trying to find a friendly face to pass an acceptable amount of time chatting with before I can skulk back to the motel. Charlie is holding court with the smokers who congregate outside on the patio. Sam and Taylor are nowhere to be seen, and Julien has been either hiding in the kitchen or refilling the chafing dishes on the buffet table. I head back to help him, but the space is empty, the back door propped open. I step toward it to see if he’s out back smoking but hesitate when I hear voices.

“You’re nuts, man,” says a deep voice. “Are you sure you want to go down this road again?”

“No,” I hear Sam reply. “I don’t know.” He sounds confused, frustrated. “Maybe I do.”

“Do you need us to remind you what a mess you were last time?” a third voice asks. I know I should leave. But I don’t. My feet are stuck to the floor while my phone starts buzzing again.

“No, of course not. I was there. But we were just kids.” And now I know it’s me they’re talking about. I stand there in my dress, damp with perspiration, holding still for the firing squad.

“Don’t give me that bullshit. I was there, too,” the first guy spits. “Just kids? You were pretty fucked up for just being a kid.” I don’t want to hear the rest. I don’t want to hear about how badly I broke Sam.

“Sam,” the other voice says more gently, “it took years, remember?”

I am going to be sick.

I turn and dart through the swinging doors into the dining room and run right into Charlie.

“Whoa! Got somewhere better to be?”

Charlie’s dimples fade once his eyes focus on my face. “You look pale and kind of sticky, Pers. Is everything okay?”

I can’t seem to find enough air to reply, and my heart is beating so rapidly I can feel it pulse against every inch of skin. Maybe this time it actually is a heart attack. I might die. Right now. I try to breathe, but the edges of the room are going fuzzy. Charlie leads me back into the kitchen before I can tell him not to. I hear an awful wheezing gasp and realize it’s coming from me. I bend over, trying to catch my breath, then crumple onto my hands and knees. I hear muffled voices, but they sound far away, like I’m swimming beneath mud and they’re up on the shore. I squeeze my eyes shut.

There’s a featherlight pressure on my shoulders. Through the mud, I can hear a voice counting slowly. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. One. Two. Three . . . It keeps going, and after a little while, I start to adjust my breathing to its pace. Four. Five. Six. Seven . . .

“What’s happening?” someone asks.

“Panic attack,” the voice replies, then it continues counting. Eight. Nine. Ten.

“Good, Percy,” it says. “Keep breathing.” I do. I keep breathing. My heart starts to slow down. I take a deep, long breath and open my eyes. Sam is crouched in front of me, his hand on my shoulder.

“Do you want to stand up?”

“Not yet,” I say, embarrassment replacing the impending-death feeling. I take a few more breaths, then open my eyes again, and Sam is still there. I slowly kneel upright and Sam helps me off the floor, his hands clutching my elbows and his forehead wrinkled with concern. Behind him stand two men, an extremely handsome Black man, and a stretched-out pale guy with inky hair and glasses.

“Percy, do you remember my friends, Jordie and Finn?” Sam asks.

I start to apologize to them, but then I notice Charlie off to the side. He’s looking at me closely like he’s worked something out, connected dots that didn’t quite fit together before.

“It was a panic attack?” he asks, and I know he doesn’t mean what’s just happened.

I reply with a slight nod.

“Do you get them a lot?” Sam asks, brows pulled together.

“Not in a long time,” I tell him.

“When did they start, Percy?”

I blink at him. “Um . . .” My eyes flash to Charlie for a split second. “About twelve years ago.”