The Best Summer of Our Lives, page 1
© 2023 by Rachel Hauck
Published by Bethany House Publishers
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-4213-3
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Author is represented by Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary.
Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.
To all the friends I’ve loved before, today, and tomorrow.
You’ve enriched my life. Thank you.
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1. Turn, Turn, Turn
2. We May Never Pass This Way Again
3. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?
4. Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh
5. Yes We Can Can
6. We Can Work It Out
7. Staying Alive
8. I’m a Believer
9. What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?
10. Hello Old Friend
11. You Can Go Your Own Way
12. One More for the Road
13. Just the Way You Are
14. Bridge over Troubled Waters
15. Always on My Mind
16. Reminiscing
17. Thanks for the Memories
18. Saturday in the Park
19. California Dreamin’
20. You Should Be Dancing
21. Jesus Is Just All Right
22. Fire and Rain
23. Photograph
24. Honesty
25. Both Sides Now
26. Good Hearted Woman
27. You’ve Got a Friend
28. Sing, Sing a Song
29. Reflections
30. That’s the Way of the World
31. Your Song
32. Baby I’m-a Want You
33. I Fall to Pieces
34. Haven’t Got Time for the Pain
35. If You Leave Me Now
36. I’ll Be There
37. That’s the Power of Love
Author Note
Acknowledgments
Discussion Questions
About the Author
Back Ad
Cover Flaps
Back Cover
1
Turn, Turn, Turn
Summer
JUNE ’97
The second Summer tumbled into Tumbleweed, Oklahoma, she’d arrived in the middle of the end. The beginning started three hours ago, when her manager, Clark, showed up at her Route 66 motel.
“The band left in the middle of the night,” he’d said. “The Sparrows flitted. And I might as well tell you, I’m moving to LA. Got a job with the Bergman Agency. So, here.” He handed her the keys to his ’87 Ford F-150 as some sort of redneck consolation prize. “To get you home. And you can have it. Pink slip’s in the glove box.”
Sure enough, the minibus Summer had rented for her band, the Sparrows Fly, was gone, and her gear was piled up outside her Shady Rest Motor Court door.
Son of a gun. So it’d come to this? Her bandmates escaping in the night? At least her previous bands respected her enough to tell her to her face “we’re done.”
“Am I so horrible? So mean? That they sneak off in the night?” She’d tried to live “all for one, one for all,” but she was really about herself. Besides, she should’ve let that phrase die twenty years ago. She could never recapture what had once been.
“Mean? No, I prefer terse,” Clark had confessed. “Look, Summer, you are the show—the heart and soul of every band you’ve created. Why don’t you just go it alone?”
Because she didn’t want to go it alone. She’d grown up with best friends, the Four Seasons, and being part of a team was in her blood.
She also didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder. But she was, even though technically “The Preacher” was Tracey Blue’s. The country great heard the demo Summer recorded and turned it into a hit of Bobbie Gentry proportions, winning Song of the Year and Artist of the Year. Summer got a nod in the songwriter category but lost to Lori McKenna.
Four years after Tracey’s release, country queen Aubrey James covered “The Preacher” because “she loved it,” and the song rode Billboard’s Top Ten once again.
Summer wrote fifteen new songs, formed Sparrows Fly, and hit the road again. At thirty-eight, dillydallying over any success was wasted success. But she failed, didn’t she?
Then, as a parting gift, along with his truck keys, Clark handed her a coffee and the morning newspaper.
“Did you see the headline? Twenty years since the Girl Scouts at Camp Scott were murdered. Wasn’t Tumbleweed near there? Where you were a camp counselor?”
Summer glanced at the headline and handed back the paper. Yeah, she was a camp counselor the year those girls were killed. Scared the heck out of the entire state.
After Clark said his good-byes, she sat on the edge of her bed and sipped the coffee. This was it. She quit. No more girl bands. No more this-is-my-shot-and-I-know-it business.
Face it, she couldn’t make it in country music if Chet Atkins himself took her into the studio and laid down his classic Nashville Sound licks.
She’d gone eighteen years and over a million miles only to find herself driving from Tulsa to Tumbleweed. The last town she ever wanted to see again.
Up ahead, a sign came into view. Tumbleweed. Population 2,883. The 3 was hand-painted on the sign above a crossed-out 2. A new millennium on the horizon and the folks of Tumbleweed were still adding their newborns one by one.
Tumbleweed, what am I doing here?
Except for in the theme of “The Preacher,” Summer didn’t even visit Tumbleweed in her memories or dreams.
It’s just that when Clark dropped all his bombs, then took a taxi to the airport, she didn’t know what to do besides stand in the motor court parking lot and look pitiful.
She’d hauled her stuff inside, called Bryson at the Broken Barrel to tell him she’d be a solo act for the night’s gig, and to keep occupied, she hopped into the white Ford and headed northwest. Her head did not want to return to Tumbleweed, but maybe, sort of, kind of her heart did.
Was she looking for him? Or the pieces of herself she left at Camp Tumbleweed on Skiatook Lake?
Arriving in town, Summer eased down the brick-laden Main Street and ached for the girl she used to be. The one who didn’t need a drink to fall asleep. The one who hadn’t had more lovers than she had fingers and toes. The one who didn’t believe a record contract and an Academy of Country Music Award would give her life meaning. The one who didn’t secretly yearn to impress people she’d left behind long, long ago.
She wanted to be the girl who loved her parents, who had three of the best friends in the world. A girl with hope, promise, and a future. A girl whose worst decision was a bad movie or crazy haircut. A girl who laughed at the memory of dumping concentrated car wash soap into the Florida State pool. A girl who spent a court-mandated summer with her friends as camp counselors at Camp Tumbleweed.
She missed the girl who’d so easily, so truly, fallen in love.
But it was too late, too late, too late. The emotional effort to even remember those days cost more than she wanted to pay.
Summer angled the truck into an open parking spot on Main Street and cut the engine. In the quiet cab, she glanced down the street. Tumbleweed had not changed in twenty years, except for new signs on the storefronts and a little more color on the façades.
At eleven in the morning, the town was alive with business. The pole at the old barber shop spun red, white, and blue, and a young man walked out, settling a hat on his newly shorn hair.
The hardware store advertised a sale, and Sue’s Cut-n-Curl—Sue had to be going on eighty—displayed a row of wigs on a sidewalk table with the sign Free to a Good Home.
The door to the laundromat—oh, good ol’ Tumble Time—was propped open, and a woman went in with her young son.
“Wellllll, you get the soap, I’ll get the washer, honey. You get the soap, I’ll get the washer, babe.”
The song played from way back in Summer’s memories. A sound from a time gone by. Eight weeks, eight Saturdays, and the summer of ’77 still defined her. Maybe because the summer of ’77 had broken her.
Had broken all of them.
Maybe she should just head back to the Shady Rest, get a nap—what a luxury—and redo her set list for the Broken Barrel.
Still, she was here, wasn’t she? Might as well grab some lunch from the best diner ever, O’Sullivan’s Diner & Drugstore.
If God cared about her one wit, O’Sullivan’s would still have the Number Five on the menu and Tank Tilly would be behind the counter. He’d be, what, in his sixties?
Summer jerked at the call of her cell phone. She’d never get used to the beck and call of a personal phone. She pulled the device from the truck’s console.
It was Clark. “You okay?”
“I’m sitting in Tumbleweed. You tell me.”
“Come on, Summer, it’s not that bad.”
“Yet here I am. After my life fell apart this morning, I thought Tumbleweed might be a step up.”
“Summer, don’t be so dramatic—”
“I had a hankering for a good burger, fries, and a shake. I’ve been all over the country, and nothing beats O’Sullivan’s.”
“I’m sorry, all right?” he said, his voice cracking from a weak connection. “But I had to take this opportunity with the Bergman Agency.”
“And you couldn’t take me with you?”
“I tried, but—”
“They don’t want me.”
“It’s just . . .” He sighed to the soundtrack of the airport. “No one doubts your talent. Everyone I talk to tells me you should write another ‘The Preacher.’”
“That song was special, Clark. The lyrics were raw and personal, birthed from a place I didn’t go to often.” In fact, she’d not revisited that place since the night she wrote “The Preacher.” The tune was simple but melodic with minor-seventh chords. “But after eighteen years in the biz with nothing to show for it but one song, I’m more of a liability than a possibility. Is that right?”
“You had more than a hit, Summer. You penned a future classic.”
“Never feel guilty for going for your dreams, Clark. I should’ve said this at the Shady Rest, but thanks for everything you did for me. You stuck around when everyone else left.”
She should be used to people leaving her. But the pain of it always felt fresh and sharp.
“I talked to Lucy Carter at Music Bomb. She said to give her a call and—”
“We’d kill each other. She’s lightning, and I’m thunder. She only said to call her out of pity. Or because she likes you.”
“Can I give you some advice, Summer?” She teared up at the tenderness in his voice. “Find a way to fix what broke you all those years ago. I have a feeling that girl will know exactly what to do with her life.”
“I have a feeling that girl is more confused than this one.”
“Trust yourself, that’s all I’m saying. You’ll be all right. You’ve got ‘The Preacher’ royalties, so there’s no need to rush into something else. Take the summer off. You’ve been touring nonstop for eons. Whatever you’re looking for ain’t out there, Summer. It’s in you. Sit still and listen.”
It wasn’t like her manager and friend to wax sentimental or personal, so his words hit hard and sank deep.
“I’ve got to go, Clark.” Summer ended the call and popped open the truck door. She’d driven to Tumbleweed for a good burger, not to rehash what went wrong in the past. She knew what went wrong. Lies and betrayal, like all good tragedies.
A car horn sounded as a late-model Cadillac pulled into a parking spot next to her. An older gentleman in a ten-gallon hat rose out of the car like a cowboy superhero. He wore a bolo tie under his button-down collar, crisp blue jeans, and a pair of dark, shiny boots that came to a sharp point at the toe. His blue gaze lingered on Summer for a nanosecond before someone called hello to him.
Levi? Levi Foley? Of course not. This man was her father’s age. Without a second glance, he disappeared through a glass door labeled Life, Health, Home, and Auto Insurance.
Is this what you’re doing here, Summer Wilde? Looking for Levi?
Because if she was, she’d best hop into the truck right now and head back to Tulsa. Besides, the cute cowboy from the summer of ’77 lived in California.
Hurrying across Main, she pushed her way inside O’Sullivan’s and stepped into the past. A piece of her burden lifted.
Built in the early 1900s, when the Dalton gang ran through the territory, O’Sullivan’s used to be the place where cowboys gathered. The decor of saddles, saddlebags, bullhorns, worn-out boots, spurs, cowboy hats, and a row of wagon-wheel chandeliers spoke of pioneers, of courage, of people not afraid to face the unknown to make a better life. She could use a bit of their courage and blind hope.
On her left was the drugstore. In front of her were the diner’s red leather booths with red-checked Formica tables and the eat-in counter with no fewer than twenty stools. Behind the counter, the kitchen.
A man in a white chef’s hat, black shirt, and large apron polished the countertop while Garth Brooks sang from the jukebox about a river of dreams. Tank Tilly. He was still here. A bit of gray showed from under his beanie, and Summer hoped for her sake he still dispensed unsolicited wisdom. She needed a dose.
She picked a stool and, without looking up, the man asked, “What’ll it be?”
“I’d love the Number Five, Tank.” She leaned back to review the chalkboard menu suspended above her on two fat chains. It’d been a while; the order of things might have changed. But no, the Number Five was still a cheeseburger with the works, fries, and a milkshake.
Tank scribbled on a pad of paper, then gave her a quick look before turning toward the kitchen. Summer sat up. Remember me?
He clipped the order ticket to the wheel at the service window, then slapped the bell. “Sooner, step lively, we got a special guest. Summer Wilde, famous country singer.” He greeted her with a warm smile and took her hand in his. “I knew it was you. Pretty as ever.”
“Ha. I don’t know about that, Tank.” The road life took a toll.
“I do. Know what I see? Some wisdom, some humility in those eyes.” Add stupidity and hurt and he’d have her whole number. “I bought your record when you were with Wilde, Heart, and Landon. Keep the CD in my truck for long drives. You got a voice, girl, you do.”
Wilde, Heart, and Landon was her second band, the one before the Sparrows. She tried to capitalize on her first success of “The Preacher” and drove the band hard. Toured nonstop. They almost strung her up and left her for the coyotes.
“So, your friends, what’d y’all call yourselves?”
“The Four Seasons.”
“That’s right.” He rapped the counter with his fist. “Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring.”
“Snow. Not Winter. Margaret Snowden, but everyone called her Snow.” Snow’s name felt weird on her tongue. She’d not spoken of her, or any of them, in ages. Eight, ten years?
“That’s right, that’s right. You’d think I’d remember that one. Anyway, I remember she had pale blue eyes. Y’all keep in touch?” He turned to the service window. “Sooner, how’s the Number Five coming? Don’t take all day, and give this girl your best.”
Sooner’s frowning face appeared in the window. “What in the world are you talking about? I always give my best.”
“Just checking, simmer down.” Tank turned back to Summer. “Can I get you a soda while you wait?”
“Diet Coke?”
Tank grabbed a glass and filled it with ice and soda. “So, you gals still in touch?”
“Um, yes, we, um, are.” So she fibbed a little. That was the least of her sins. It was what Tank wanted to hear. He seemed pleased to have remembered them. “Tumbleweed hasn’t changed much,” she said.
“Girl, we’ll go into the new millennium same way as we went into the last. A one-horse town. Folks like it that way.”
“Some things have changed from 1900. O’Sullivan’s has electricity and indoor plumbing.” Summer tipped her head toward the jukebox. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Trisha Yearwood singing, not Kitty Wells.”
Tank’s laughter caused her to drop another one of her morning burdens. She’d not felt like pleasant company in a long time. She might have treated the Sparrows like her employees. Or servants. It’s just she—no, they—were so close to a record deal.
“You got me there, Summer. But we do like to stay the same ’round here. We only got rid of all party lines two years ago, and some folks fought that, especially those out a ways on the ranches and farms. Said listening in on other people’s conversations was the only way to keep up with the news.”
“More like keep up with the gossip.”
“Gossip, news . . .” He shrugged his big shoulders. “Six of one.”
Sooner appeared at the window. “Phone for you, Tank.”
