Summer Hours Read online

  a secret affair

  the summer it unravels

  the sparkling reunion a decade later

  Becc was the good girl. A dedicated student. Aspiring reporter. Always where she was supposed to be. Until a secret affair with the charming Cal one summer in college cost her everything she held dear: her journalism dreams; her relationship with her best friend, Eric; and her carefully imagined future.

  Now Becc’s past is back front and center as she travels up the scenic California coast to a wedding—with a man she hasn’t seen in a decade. As each mile flies by, Becc can’t help but feel the thrilling push and pull of memories, from infinite nights at beach bonfires and lavish boat parties to secret movie sessions. But the man beside her is not so eager to re-create history. And as the events of that heartbreaking summer come into view, Becc must decide if those dazzling hours they once shared are worth fighting for or if they’re lost forever.

  Set in the mid ’90s and 2008, Amy Mason Doan’s Summer Hours is a warmly told novel about the idealism of youth, the seductive power of nostalgia, and what happens when you realize you haven’t become the person you’d always promised to be.

  Acclaim for

  Amy Mason Doan’s first novel

  The Summer List

  Named a Best Book of Summer 2018 by

  Coastal Living * Family Circle * PopSugar * The Globe and Mail

  Named a Recommended Read by

  First for Women * Bustle * HelloGiggles * BuzzFeed * Brit + Co

  _____________________________________

  “A sparkling debut novel filled with nostalgia that will make you long for your childhood friends and carefree summer days.”

  —PopSugar

  “This is a lovely debut by Doan, exploring themes of motherhood, daughterhood, and first love with tenderness and humor. The writing is fresh and charming, a perfect read for anyone who spent her teenage years reading the racy bits of cheap paperbacks out loud to her best friends.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “If this Portland writer’s debut novel were a beverage, it would be a glass of frosty sweet-tart lemonade, sipped with that one friend from way back who knows you better than you know yourself. It’s an ideal summer read.... [A] compelling blend of love, betrayal, secrets and reconciliation.”

  —The Oregonian

  “This accomplished debut novel from Doan cleverly blends a coming-of-age tale, the story of a long-simmering mystery, and a thoughtful study of relationships between childhood friends.... Doan’s characters leap off the page, believably struggling with the conflict between resentment and tenderness. With lovable characters and a scenic small town, Doan’s pleasant mix of mystery and high school nostalgia will please readers who grew up with the novels of Judy Blume.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[An] engaging beach read about friends reconnecting.... This story made me realize that no matter where you are or how much time goes by, the important people will always find their way back into your heart.”

  —First for Women

  “With a vivid sense of place and characters as real as your high school besties, this debut novel is sure to please fans of Kristin Hannah and Elin Hilderbrand.”

  —Library Journal

  “One of the best books I’ve read all year, The Summer List by Amy Mason Doan is a tear-jerking story of the bonds that connect us, and the lies that tear us apart. From their joyful childhood memories to their current fractured friendship, readers are presented with a beautifully woven tale of nostalgia and suspense.”

  —Arizona Foothills Magazine

  “There’s not a word or plot line out of place in this fabulous debut about two girlhood friends from a small lakeside town who reunite as adults to try to salvage their broken relationship. Dive beneath the surface and you’ll find a complex and finely wrought story as full of mystery and vitality as the lake itself. These characters and their stories are going to stick with you for a long, long time.”

  —Meg Mitchell Moore, author of The Admissions and The Captain’s Daughter

  “A trip down memory lane becomes a hunt for long-buried secrets in Amy Mason Doan’s gripping and poignant debut about the bond between two compelling outsiders. The Summer List is an evocative tale of family, first love, and the unique and lasting gift of a friendship formed in girlhood.”

  —Meg Donohue, USA TODAY bestselling author

  “A poignant tale of mothers and daughters finding their ways home to each other.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “[A] character-rich tale about what could have been and the difficulty of facing what is makes for a satisfying beach-vacation read. A twist underscores what we already suspect: that life is too short for if-onlys.”

  —Stanford Magazine

  “Fantastic. You’ll stick with The Summer List until the very end.”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  “In her mesmerizing debut, Amy Mason Doan challenges everything we think we know about family and forgiveness. Readers will be swept up in this haunting story of buried secrets and lost love.”

  —Lynda Cohen Loigman, author of The Two-Family House

  “With its exquisite detail, The Summer List wouldn’t let me go and the unexpected ending gave me chills. An irresistible novel of friendship and home.”

  —Jennifer S. Brown, author of Modern Girls

  “A tender novel about friendship lost and rekindled and uncovering the truth of the past.”

  —Polly Dugan, author of So Much a Part of You and The Sweetheart Deal

  “The Summer List is the perfect summer read. Impossible to put down!”

  —Molly O’Keefe, USA TODAY bestselling author

  Amy Mason Doan is the author of The Summer List. She earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MA in journalism from Stanford University, and has written for The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, and Forbes, among other publications. She grew up in Danville, California, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and daughter. Find her on Twitter, @amyldoan, and on Instagram, @amymasondoan.

  AmyMasonDoan.com

  Also by Amy Mason Doan

  The Summer List

  Summer Hours

  a novel

  Amy Mason Doan

  For my mom

  Contents

  Southern California, July Early Thursday morning

  Chapter 1

  June 10, 1994

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Cha
pter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Film Page

  Acknowledgments

  Reader’s Guide - Summer Hours

  Questions for Discussion

  Author Q&A

  Excerpt from The Summer List by Amy Mason Doan

  Southern California, July

  Early Thursday morning

  We’re in a rented convertible heading north on Pacific Coast Highway.

  It’s not yet dawn, so the ocean is only a string of white boat lights floating on darkness. Like a fallen constellation.

  It’s beautiful, but my passenger can’t see it.

  And I can’t see him. Everything below his forehead is hidden by the gift wedged between our seats.

  I didn’t expect the box to be quite so big. I’d asked the eBay seller to pack it carefully, and she went to town on the Bubble Wrap. So this was the only way it would fit, the front end lashed to the cup holders with bungee cords to keep it in place.

  “Seriously?” he murmured in the driveway before we left San Diego, laughing softly in the way I’d always loved. “Can we even get to the e-brake?”

  “It’ll be fine!” I assured him.

  My words hover in the air over the convertible, zooming north with us: It’ll be fine!

  Not exactly an electrifying motto to launch a road trip. But I’m trying to embrace it.

  Wrestling the giant wedding gift into the car last night, I’d said it to myself: It’ll be fine, Becc.

  I’d ticked reassuring items off my mental list:

  The sporty red rental car. Hotel reservations for four nights. Big Sur tonight, then San Francisco, then Saturday and Sunday at the wedding venue, a gorgeous place on the beach in Oregon, just past the California border.

  We’ll have Sleep Number beds, robes, balconies. I found the perfect outfit to wear to the ceremony on the beach Sunday afternoon. The long blue, bias-cut sundress is rolled in tissue paper inside my suitcase, next to my travel steamer.

  I brought wrapping paper, scissors, and tape for the present. I agonized over ribbon options, finally settling on something called a Bling Blossom—a $7.99 silver pouf bigger than a head of lettuce.

  There’s nothing left to do but drive.

  Press my sandal on the slim, racing-style pedal, breathe in the chilly wind off the Pacific, and keep my expectations low.

  But when we approach the off-ramp for Orange Park I can’t help it. I want more. I want him to speak, to smile at me over our absurdly large present, to at least look out his window as we pass. Anything to prove the words on the green sign still matter.

  Orange Park Road, 1 mile

  I want him to show he remembers where we met, and how we used to escape together, years ago, when we were so sure we could steal time before it stole us.

  But he faces forward, silent.

  And I can’t see his eyes when we fly past those familiar gold hills, the sun just beginning to rise behind them.

  1

  Welcome to Orange Park

  March 20, 1994

  Dear Application Committee,

  Thank you for considering me for the Francine Alice Haggermaker Scholarship for a University of California Undergraduate Pursuing a Media Career.

  I have wanted to be a newspaper journalist ever since sixth grade, when I wrote a report about the fearless 1890s reporter Nellie Bly. She said of her legendary investigative work that “energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything.” Her words stirred me when I was 11, and they still do.

  As editor in chief of the Orange Park High Squeeze, I uncovered a $339 discrepancy in the South Field Astroturf Fund and wrote a three-part series on snack bar waste. Compared with Bly’s undercover stories for the New York World about corruption at Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum or her defiant trip around the world in seventy-two days, these articles may sound small. But Orange Park High has a new Beautification Committee chair who keeps detailed spending records. We started a partnership with a local food pantry, and fruit that would otherwise spoil is now donated over the weekend so that it can feed the homeless.

  Is the truth ever small? Nellie Bly didn’t think so. And neither do I. As Joseph Pulitzer, the owner of Bly’s newspaper, said, “Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together!”

  I know that you have a talented pool of applicants. But my 4.3 GPA, 99th-percentile SAT scores, extracurriculars, 100 percent attendance record, and passion for uncovering the truth show that I am a tireless worker who “applies my energy” every minute.

  If you select me for this honor, I promise that I will live up to your expectations.

  Sincerely,

  Ms. Rebecca Reardon

  June 10, 1994

  One week before high school graduation

  2:28 p.m.

  WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | Health and Human Behavior, back corner window desk

  WHERE I WAS | Health and Human Behavior, back corner window desk

  My seat overlooked the side parking lot, where I had a prime view of kids sneaking off school grounds. Heading for pools, the beach, blissfully chilly movie theaters.

  Discreetly, I reached inside my drenched T-shirt sleeve and tugged up my strapless bathing suit. I’d worn it under my clothes to save time, but it only made me sweatier and reminded me of my failure.

  I was supposed to be out there.

  The three of us had planned to ditch school together all year. Just once, to prove we had it in us. For months, Eric and Serra and I mapped exit routes and rendezvous points, calling Serra’s wood-paneled Pinto station wagon “the getaway car.” The Stay Wag had psoriasis-like patches of oxidation damage on its hood and shuddered if Serra drove over forty.

  In our sketches it grew Pegasus wings.

  But in April I won the Haggermaker Scholarship. Four years of tuition, housing, and books. Mrs. Haggermaker and her late husband were both Berkeley alums, and he’d made a fortune as a film studio head in the 1950s. So every four years, one lucky student became her six-figure pet.

  She’d handed me the heavy bronze plaque herself at the Senior Awards ceremony, up on the auditorium stage. She’d leaned close, all seventy-five-year-old bony corners, and whispered, “I’m sure you’ll do me great credit, my dear.”

  When the paperwork had come, my mom read the morals clause aloud. Stern paragraphs about “due regard to conventions” and “acts reflecting favorably on the Foundation.”

  “Really,” she’d said, smiling over her mug of Sleepy Time tea. “As if they’d ever have to worry about you.”

  So I couldn’t cut.

  Not even one afternoon so close to summer, after eighteen years of good behavior. Tutoring and volunteering and racking up a perfect transcript.

  I didn’t feel perfect. Only stuck.

  2:38 p.m.

  “Rebecca, could you?” Mrs. Gaukroger held up the VHS tape of Red Asphalt, the gruesome drunk-driving movie we’d watched.

  I was her girl Friday, trusted to return supplementary multimedia materials to the library. I was not a flight risk.

  My flip-flops slapped the green linoleum in the empty hall as I passed the countdown-to-graduation banner, drawn in rainbow bubble letters (7 DAYS LEFT!!), a sign-up for the ten-year reunion committee (no, thanks), a poster advertising the bottomless sundae bar at Grad Party.

  The door of the teacher’s lounge swung open and Mr.
Singleton emerged, popping a Coke can.

  Coke was Mr. Singleton’s thing. He swigged it all through AP Chem, sighing exaggerated aahs, and in October he did a whole week of Coke science experiments. He mixed it with Mentos mints, causing a reaction like a geyser, and in a less exciting one he dropped a nail into a beakerful of Coke so we could watch it decay. Once he pretended to sip from it, to a delighted chorus of eews.

  He pointed the can at me, stopping an inch from my sternum. “It’s the famous scholarship winner! You majoring in chem up at Berserk-ley?”

  So he’d read the grad edition of the Squeeze. Eric, the only one going to an Ivy, had put that he planned to “ride the rails.” His dad was pretty pissed.

  “I don’t have to declare yet, so—”

  “Why aren’t you in class? Don’t tell me I have to write you up for truancy.” He trilled the r, drew out the oooo. Everything he said had a faint tone of mockery. Even mole and titration—as if he’d have named them differently. I found him exhausting.

  But I smiled. “I’m returning this for Mrs. Gaukroger.”

  “That’s the Girl Scout way.” He grinned, passing me with bouncy little steps and pivoting so he was still facing me. I turned, too, like we were dancing a reel. “Be good, now,” he said, walking backward.

  “Always.”

  My bantering-with-the-teacher smile collapsed as I dropped the tape on the faculty return cart in the library and checked the big silver-and-white wall clock. It was the centerpiece in a construction-paper design that said:

  TIME IS PASSING. WILL YOU?

  FOCUS!

  The O in focus was the clock.

  2:51. Nine minutes till the bell. Would Mrs. Haggermaker yank my award for a nine-minute transgression? Probably.

  You’ll do me great credit, my dear.

  So I waited by a hall window, watching a distant figure cut across the baseball diamond. Loping walk, baggy jeans riding so low they must have been held up by invisible suspenders of cool: Donny Chambliss. He ditched all the time, as casually as if he held a pink dismissal slip for a teeth cleaning.