And Sam agrees. “It’s time.”
Sam heads to the rear while Charlie stays in the driver’s seat, watching his brother remove the lid and brace his legs against the back of the boat. Sam looks at us over his shoulder, first at me and then at Charlie, and nods.
“Hit it,” he says.
Charlie pushes the throttle down, and the boat takes off across the water. Sam raises the urn up and out, tipping it so Sue’s ashes fly through the air behind the boat, a faint gray streak across the bright blue water. And in seconds, she’s gone.
We head back to the house in silence, Charlie leading the way and Sam beside me, his arm around my shoulders. We can hear the music and laughter before we’ve made it halfway up the hill.
There will be a few dozen people inside the Floreks’ home—a big party, just like Sue would have wanted. There will be Dolly and Shania over the speakers. There will be an excess of food and beer and wine. There will be pierogies made by Julien, who bought the Tavern at a “family discount” from Charlie and Sam. There will be dozens of guests—all the people who loved Sue, including my parents, and some who didn’t get the chance to but would have, like Chantal. And there will be a flash of red hair. Because one of the hardest things I did over the last year was apologize to Delilah. I expected her to be polite but unaffected when I met her at a coffee shop in Ottawa—it was all so long ago. I didn’t expect her to circle her arms around me and ask what the hell took so long.
And later tonight, when everyone has left and it’s just Sam and me in our pj’s in the basement, there will be popcorn and a movie playing in the background and a ring in an old wooden box with my initials carved on top. It will be made from twisted threads of embroidery floss that match the faded bracelet on my wrist. And I will get down on one knee and ask Sam Florek to be with me. To be my family. Forever.
Acknowledgments
In July of 2020, I decided to write a book. This had long been an ambition of mine, but one I shoved deep in the caverns of my heart and mind. I didn’t think I’d ever get around to doing it, and I was convinced that if I did try, I wouldn’t be able to finish it. Besides, I was an editor—my job for fifteen years had been to help make other writers’ words shine. But that summer the pandemic had me asking Big Life Questions, and I decided not to put it off any longer. I gave myself two goals: to draft a novel by the end of the year and to make it good—not perfect but something I was proud of. I didn’t know that writing Every Summer After would be the most satisfying project I’d ever undertaken. I didn’t know that it would bring me such joy during difficult times. And I didn’t know that it would become an actual book and myself an author along with it. For that, I have many people to thank.
The first is Taylor Haggerty, my dream agent. I fought back tears when Taylor offered to represent me. She is a true superhero, one who comes equipped with sharp instincts, impeccable editorial judgment, and endless patience for a rookie novelist with a lot of questions. There is no one I’d rather partner with on this journey. Taylor, thank you for believing in me and this book.
From our first conversation, I felt Amanda Bergeron was meant to be my editor. I will be forever grateful (and a little gobsmacked) because that’s exactly what happened. Amanda and I were both pregnant while we worked on Every Summer After, and I love that we brought it into the world along with two tiny new humans. Amanda, thank you for your bottomless passion for Percy and Sam’s story and for everything you’ve done to bring it to life.
I was gifted with the talent and guidance of a second brilliant editor, Deborah Sun de la Cruz. Deborah, thank you for your whip-smart line edits and for rallying the Canadian troops around the book. I am incredibly fortunate to have you on my team.
To Sareer Khader, Ivan Held, Christine Ball, Claire Zion, Jeanne-Marie Hudson, Craig Burke, Jessica Brock, Diana Franco, Brittanie Black, Bridget O’Toole, Vi-An Nguyen, Megha Jain, Ashley Tucker, Christine Legon, Angelina Krahn, and the sales team at Berkley, as well as Jasmine Brown and the Root Literary team: Thank you for your enthusiasm for this book and for your hard work in putting it out into the world.
Thank you to Nicole Winstanley, Bonnie Maitland, Beth Cockeram, Dan French, and Emma Ingram at Penguin Canada for giving both myself and Every Summer After a loving home in Canada. Thank you also to Heather Baror-Shapiro for making Every Summer After a truly global book. And to Anna Boatman and the team at Piatkus for bringing the novel to the UK, New Zealand, and my other homeland, Australia.
To Ashley Audrain and Karma Brown, thank you for your astonishing kindness, support, and invaluable words of wisdom in navigating the publishing world and life as an author.
Meredith Marino, Courtney Shea, and Maggie Wrobel: Thank you for being my earliest readers and for your insightful feedback (on my two-week deadline, no less!). I am lucky to count such brilliant, encouraging women as friends. In the early stages of writing, I sent Meredith the first ten pages of the manuscript, and she promised to be honest with me about what she thought. Very soon after, I got a text from her that read: “I think you’re going to be a real author!!!!!!!!!!!” Meredith, you were right, as usual. Thank you for giving me the confidence to carry on.
I was terrified to let my husband see my first draft. I didn’t think I could live in the same house while he read the thing beside me, hating every word. Marco spent several days convincing me to get over myself and give him a copy. When I finally did, he read it at breakneck speed and deemed it to be “a real book” that he very much enjoyed. He also said it was full of typos. Thank you, Marco, for copyediting the manuscript before I sent it out into the world. Thank you for not balking when I suddenly announced that I was going to write a book and devote time to the task every single day. Thank you for taking care of Max while I got my words in. And thank you most of all for helping me find the courage not to let fear stand in my way.
READERS GUIDE
EVERY SUMMER AFTER
Carley Fortune
Behind the Book
I moved to the lake the summer I was eight. In my parents’ own whirlwind love story, my mom, a Canadian, and my dad, an Aussie, met in Scotland, got engaged three months after that, and settled in Toronto to start a life together. When I was three, we moved to Australia; when I was eight, we came back. But instead of buying a home in the city, they decided to put down roots in Barry’s Bay—a tiny town in Eastern Ontario—where they owned a small cottage on Kamaniskeg Lake.
I grew up on the water, down a narrow dirt road in the bush. I spent summers in damp bathing suits, reading on the dock, and when I was older, working at my family’s restaurant in the evening. (Although the inspiration for the Tavern in this book comes from the beloved Wilno Tavern, one town over from Barry’s Bay.)
My parents sold our home on Kamaniskeg well over a decade ago, but because a lake is my happy place, my husband and I have continued renting a cottage just outside Barry’s Bay for a couple weeks every August. The owner is an American and in 2020, when the border between Canada and the United States closed to travelers, he let us squat there for the summer.