Chasing Summer

Robert's Visit

Chapter 2: Robert's Visit

Robert Hart showed up in person two days later, which was unusual enough that Summer nearly dropped the box of new arrivals she was unpacking when the bell above the door announced him instead of a customer.

"You drove all this way for a phone call you could've made from home?" she asked, setting down the box, equal parts wary and pleased.

"The Castellanos people called again," Robert said, not bothering with pleasantries, which told Summer immediately how seriously he meant to take this conversation. "They've upped the offer. Significantly. I told them I'd talk to you in person this time, because I don't think you're hearing me when I call."

"I hear you fine, Dad. I just don't agree with you."

He wandered the shop as he spoke, running a hand along the same shelves he'd helped Eleanor build decades ago, before Summer was born, before her mother had died, before any of the quiet erosions that had hollowed out their family one absence at a time. "This building needs a new roof within two years. The foundation's got water damage on the north wall I noticed just walking in. You're three months behind on restocking the bestseller wall because the margins don't support it. I'm not trying to take something from you, Summer. I'm trying to keep you from drowning slowly in something you're too stubborn to let go of."

"It's not stubbornness. It's love." Summer crossed her arms, bracing for the argument she'd had with him, in one form or another, a dozen times over the past year. "This is the only place I have left that still feels like her. You don't understand that because you ran the first chance you got."

The words landed harder than she meant them to, and she watched something flicker across her father's face — not anger, exactly,

but a wounded recognition, like she'd accidentally pressed on a bruise she didn't know was still tender.

"That's not fair," he said quietly.

"Isn't it, though? You left two states away the year after Mom died and called it opportunity. You call every Sunday like clockwork, like punctuality can make up for not actually being here. And now you want me to sell the one thing that still connects me to the version of this family that existed before everyone I loved either died or left."

Robert was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working, and when he finally spoke, his voice had lost its earlier brisk authority, replaced by something rawer. "You think I don't know that? You think I haven't spent every Sunday call wondering if this is the week you finally say exactly what you just said?" He sat down heavily in the reading chair near the window, suddenly looking older than Summer had registered in months. "I'm not going to pretend I handled any of it well. I didn't. I ran because staying here, in this town, surrounded by every place your mother and I ever built a life together, felt unbearable. I told myself I was doing it for the job, for stability, for you. Some of that was even true. But mostly I just couldn't stand still long enough to feel it."

Summer's anger softened slightly, surprised by the admission. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because I think you're about to make a choice — about the shop, and maybe about something else going on in your life that you haven't told me much about — and I don't want you making it the way I made mine. Running from grief, or running toward something that just looks like control because the real situation feels too big to hold onto." He studied her carefully. "Mia mentioned you've been distracted. Said there's a guy."

"There's a guy," Summer admitted, deciding, for once, not to deflect. "It's complicated. He's not from here. There's a lot I don't fully understand yet."

"Complicated how?"

"Complicated in a way I'm not ready to explain over a conversation about real estate," Summer said, and something in her tone must have communicated enough weight that Robert, to his credit, didn't push further.

"Okay," he said simply. "I won't pretend I'm not worried, about the shop and about whatever this is with this guy. But I'm trying to get better at trusting you to make your own choices, even when I don't fully understand them. I'd like to actually be part of your life again, Summer, instead of just the man who calls on Sundays and shows up with bad real estate news."

Something in Summer's chest loosened slightly, an old, guarded hope she hadn't realized she was still carrying. "I'd like that too," she admitted. "I'm not selling the shop, Dad. Not now. Maybe not ever. But I'd like you to actually be here sometimes — not just to talk me into things, but just to be here."

Robert nodded, something almost emotional crossing his usually composed face. "I can do that," he said. "I'll tell the Castellanos people no. For now, at least."

They spent another hour in the shop after that, Robert helping unpack the new arrivals in a silence that felt, for the first time in longer than Summer could remember, comfortable rather than strained — two people who loved each other clumsily, learning, slowly, how to actually show it. Robert asked about the illustrations she had pinned above the back register, the three she'd done over the past month that she was most pleased with, and she found herself explaining them in more detail than she expected, telling him not just what they were of but what she'd been trying to capture — the quality of light on a specific kind of water, the way longing looked from the outside, the difficulty of drawing someone's stillness without making it look like sleep.

"These are very good," Robert said, studying them with the careful attention of someone who didn't know much about art but understood when something was communicating more than its subject.

"Thank you," Summer said, and meant it differently than she usually did when she said it — less deflection, more genuine receipt of the compliment.

Before he left, he paused at the door, his hand on the frame, and looked back at her with an expression she hadn't seen on him since she was a child, something undefended and a little raw. "For what it's worth," he said, "your grandmother would be proud of how hard you're fighting for this place. I think I forgot, somewhere along the way, that fighting for something instead of running from it is its own kind of strength. I'm sorry it took me this long to remember that."

He drove off into the late afternoon light, and Summer stood in the doorway of Hart & Pages for a long moment afterward, something unfamiliar and hopeful settling in her chest — the small, fragile beginning of a relationship she'd assumed, for years, was simply broken beyond repair, now showing the first signs of something that might, given enough time and patience and showing up, become something solid again.

She didn't know yet how much she'd need that same lesson — fighting for something instead of running from it — in the weeks that followed. But some part of her, watching her father's car disappear down Cedar Street, suspected she was about to find out.