That Summer Place by Susan Wiggs, Debbie Macomber, Jill Barnett - That Summer Place

walk back to the house, but stopped. She opened the boathouse door and went inside for just a moment.
    It was getting darker and the sunlight through the dirt on the windows was dull and lifeless. It smelled like damp wood and old canvas. She sat down on an old wooden bench that wobbled when she touched it.
    They had made love here, that very first time.
    Her mind went back all those years and she remembered something. She felt along the wood. Then she found the carved initials.
    M P + C W.
    She closed her eyes and just sat there. Her body was still taut and damp and ready. Her blood still raced through her, and her breath was not slow or even. She looked at those initials and wondered if she was nothing but a silly old fool.
     
    Michael motored the sailboat back to his place. He tied off the line and jumped on the dock. The air had changed, grown lighter, cooler, and was turning blue with the nightfall.
    He had always loved the island best at night, when he could stand there and watch the sky turn. It was that kind of night where the stars crawl above you in lazy patterns. The kind of night when the owl that lived in a nearby tree became silent, and you could make love all night long and still want more in the morning when the sun rose.
    In his mind, the years that might have been slipped by. Waking up with Catherine, making love to her for days at a time, marriage and fighting and making up. And making children. If not for a cruel twist of fate Dana and Aly might have been his daughters.
    Today had been something different for him. And he realized some things he hadn’t understood before. That very first night he had stood there in the fringe of the woods and watched her with her girls, watched her sliding across the lawn in the rain, chasing that umbrella. He had watched their banter in the house afterward. That night had marked the first time in his life he had thought about the children he’d never had.
    He knew now that it wasn’t just children he had thought he missed. It wasn’t some vague paternal instinct coming out in him when it was too late to do anything about it—not some kind of male emotional clock that was ticking away in his head.
    What he had wanted, what he had truly missed, was having children with Catherine. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stood there for the longest time, then laughed at himself, at his thoughts. He had Catherine on the brain. He was in the same state he’d been in for days—hard and ready for something that would probably never happen.
    “Eight years?” He shook his head. “Jesus…”
    Then he stripped off his clothes and jumped into the icy cold water.

Fifteen
    B y Thursday, when the boat arrived, not one of the Winslow women wanted to leave the island. The same was true on the next Sunday. By the following Thursday when the boat had come and gone again, her girls were sailing by themselves in the cove.
    Catherine and Michael had settled into an old routine, like the friends they found they still were. They talked about so much, and yet there was some part of him that he seemed to keep private.
    She wasn’t certain if he was ashamed of what he did for a living, but he always changed the subject, so she didn’t bring it up anymore. As a safety net she didn’t talk about her career either. They had plenty of other things to talk about. Sometimes it was almost as if there weren’t enough hours in the day.
    The noon day sunshine beat down on them, and it was warm and snug sitting on a huge rock at the water’s edge. They shared a lunch basket between them, while they watched the girls sail in the cove.
    “You’re spoiling them,” she said as he took a bite of fried chicken.
    He waved the chicken leg in the air. “You’re spoiling me. Lunch every day and dinner every night.”
    “Hmmm.” She ate a potato chip and tried not to ogle.
    He was sitting back on his elbows, a position that stretched his white polo shirt across his abdomen, which she knew from their