The Summer Man

EPILOGUE



They decided to drive to California, to where Chelsea lived with her mother; Amanda suggested it. She thought they could get to know each other a little on the way. The first night, he’d driven and she’d slept, stars passing overhead, their headlights eating the dark, spitting out dotted lines and the hum of the engine. She woke when he pulled into a hotel parking lot, a nice place. He rented a single room with two beds, but after he’d crashed on one of them, she’d curled next to him, sleeping deeply and without dreams in the silent, semisterile quiet of the dark room, pressed against his back. She woke a few hours later and showered and changed, going for breakfast and cigarettes while he slept on.

She sat in the restaurant across the parking lot from the hotel, a chain diner, and ordered pancakes and coffee. The waitress had three kids and a mother with cancer, but she was OK, worried and stressed out but basically OK. Her name tag said “Wendy,” but she thought of herself as Dee. Amanda smiled sincerely at her, feeling brave and alive, feeling like the world was different, like she was different in it. She thought of David, asleep, and remembered his arms around her in the early morning, and thought that things might go that way, someday, if she wanted. She might go to school, she thought; he had money, although for the first time in forever, that seemed unimportant. For now, the possibility was one among a billion, and there was nothing to decide, not today.

They were somewhere in Oregon. Maybe they could stop in Portland and she would see Devon…or maybe that was a trip for another day. It was somehow wonderful, not knowing for sure.

Amanda gazed out at the parking lot, the midday sun glinting off car mirrors and into the blue sky. She watched the people go by and listened to her heartbeat and waited for her order to arrive.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS



This book would not have been possible without the support of my friends and family and the occasional very helpful helper. They are, in no particular order:


The entire Perry clan—Steve, Dianne (love you, Mom!), Dal, Rachel, and all the boys. Special thanks to my father and brother for reading the first draft—as did my good friend (and renowned teacher of kids with ASD, by the way) Sara Vanzee. I’d also like to thank my occasional collaborator Britta Dennison, on general principles.


Big shout-out to my previous editor and all-around awesome dude, Marco Palmieri, for giving me so much work through the years; to my swim friend Karen Berning and her granddaughter, Ashley, and Ashley’s friend Brittney, for letting me ask them questions (I hope I spelled your names correctly, girls!); to Jennifer Weltz for agreeing to read my first non-tie-in book; thanks, too, to her editorial advisers, Wes Miller and Laura Biagi, for their excellent suggestions. Thanks to David Pomerico for buying and Christopher Cerasi for editing and the whole Amazon team for listening to me stutter through my first conference call. Also a howdy-ho for supercool Quinn Kaylor-Gaunt for standing by and to Tamara and Leslie for existing…and to my own boys for making me feel things more deeply than I thought a person could stand: Cyrus Jay and Dexter Alexander.


I would like to thank a few of my favorite writers for the inspiration: Stephen King, Dan Simmons, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, and Ramsey Campbell. And thanks to my father, Steve Perry, for teaching me how to make a sentence work.


Last but most, I’d like to thank my honey-bunny, Myk Olsen, for watching the boys so I could work and for being my first reader and greatest support. We got together when we were still cool, and we’ll be together still when we’re old and fat (OK, older and fatter). I love you, Kabuki.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR



S. D. Perry was born in California and grew up in Louisiana and Oregon. The child of a best-selling science-fiction writer, she is the author of more than two dozen movie tie-in novels, her imagination fed by her love of horror movies, zombies, and Victorian ghost stories. She lives in Portland, with her husband, children, and two dogs.