The Forgotten Summer (Book 3 Newport Beach Series)
Chapter 1
Abigail sat on the floor, her legs folded underneath her, across from Cleo as they sorted through the stack of papers and photographs they had discovered just a few hours ago in a hidden safe inside the wall of her childhood home.
To say that it felt surreal would have been a disservice. Cleo, who had already been exhausted when she showed up on Abigail’s doorstep that afternoon, twisted in her seat and stretched her hands up high over her head as she yawned. The urge to do the same strained in Abigail’s throat, and despite fighting against it, a similar yawn took hold, and she, too, took the opportunity to stretch.
“What’s the time?” Cleo asked sleepily.
With a glance at her phone, Abigail winced, “nearly three.”
Cleo groaned loudly. “I’m so glad I have tomorrow off—if I hadn’t swapped shifts this week, I’d be starting in an hour.”
“That sounds dreadful,” Abigail said, “do you want tea instead?”
Her friend nodded and moved to stand, pausing to carefully arrange the papers she’d had on her lap.
“You’ve been so organized,” Abigail commented, gesturing to her own piles of scattered papers.
As the pair made their way towards the kitchen, Cleo shrugged and began explaining her logic.
“It all seemed so haphazard, you know? Everything with the same name has been placed together, and the photos are grouped into people who could be the same person. I’ve only seen the Givens’ name once, though, and their name isn’t on any of the papers.”
Abigail nodded. “Yeah, I haven’t seen them again either. The ones I’ve gone through are mostly, like, invoices it seems… and inventory lists, but they don’t make a lot of sense...”
“Me too!” Cleo exclaimed, turning to face Abigail in the warm light of the kitchen. “Like this one guy ordered a hundred and eighty seven egg incubators, but also over a thousand reams of paper...”
This was, by far, not their first cup of tea for the evening and so all of the supplies were out on the counter. Abigail made her way through the packets, breathing in deeply as she went.
“I think this one,” she said, offering it to Cleo for a vote.
“Hmm?” Cleo intoned as she breathed in the scent, “Well, sure, but that’s definitely a sleepy tea—are we trying to stay awake?”
Abigail laughed. “I don’t even have to try and stay awake, but I do think we should probably get some rest. You said you’d be starting work soon—that means it’s been like, at least 24 hours since you slept.”
Cleo laughed and pointed at Abigail with both hands. “You’re not the only one accustomed to sleep deprivation babes.”
“Accustomed or not, you and I both know we should try and sleep...”
She trailed off as she realized that if she wanted to sleep, she was going to have to lock the gun away—there was no way she could sleep knowing it was just there, even tucked away into the shadows of the gun safe. Abigail shuddered; it wasn’t like she’d never seen a gun before but those had always been holstered and on the hips of people who were supposed to have them like security guards or police—not hidden in her dad’s walls.
“True,” Cleo said, pausing as she boiled the kettle. “I did notice, in the photos, some weird stuff changing. Like the wallpaper and the fabric of the couch... Do you remember what was in there before?”
Abigail shrugged as she admitted she didn’t as she leaned her weight on the cool countertop, shifting her shoulders from side to the other to help stretch out her spine.
“Not really. You know, it’s like every time I try and focus on it, the details shift, and I know that’s normal and whatever but it’s frustrating. Honestly, I don’t even think it’s my specific memory issues—I really never went in there except for a few times as a kid. The flashes I have are mostly from the doorway… I do know the flooring changed. It was carpet at one point when I was younger.”
The gentle scent of lavender and chamomile hit her nose and she instantly felt sleepier. It grew stronger as Cleo poured the tea carefully into the waiting cups, and Abigail sank down onto her elbows to get her face closer to the delicious smell.
“I’ll show you what I mean tomorrow, or whenever,” she said, “they are all definitely from that camera, though... Which makes me think they probably didn’t know their photos were being taken.”
A roil of emotion twisted her stomach and Abigail flinched, “yeah... I know. I can’t think of a reason why my dad was filming his clients... Or if the other drill holes also held cameras and if he was actually watching the whole house...”
Cleo gave an exaggerated shudder, her whole body wriggling, “yeah... Or when he started... Do you remember your seventeenth birthday party that wasn’t supposed to be a party?”
“Oh my God!” Abigail stood upright abruptly, remembering exactly what had happened that evening.
She could feel her face turning red and her eyes began to prickle in retrospective embarrassment. Cleo’s giggle broke her horrified reverie.
“It’s not funny Cleo!!” she wailed exasperatedly, “Not only might my parents have known about it at all—but my DAD might have seen... Oh my God… I can’t even think about it.”
“Oh come on, you were seventeen with a long-term boyfriend,” Cleo said, sliding a cup towards her. “I think you two making out on a couch in the sitting room for five hours straight, while remarkable in an endurance sense, would hardly be surprising to the parents of any teenager.”
“Stop!” she held her hand up, “I cannot—I will not—think about the possible implications of that right now. Equally because I may die retroactively of embarrassment, but also because my daughters are going to be teenagers soon and—just no.”
Cleo leaned across the counter and patted Abigail’s hand, “Your girls have a few years until that’s something for you to worry about.”
Abigail nodded. They were about to be twelve and both were a lot more reserved than she or Cleo had ever been at that age... But the deeply buried worry still gnawed at her. She gestured towards the comfier seats by the window and Cleo nodded, moving to follow her.
“They’re good kids,” Abigail said, “I miss them...”
“How are you doing, with them being away?”
If she told the truth, that her kids being in London while all this was happening in her life was actually kind of a relief, she was a little worried Cleo would think she was a bad mom. She missed them like crazy, obviously, but... Something about what she was doing in Newport felt riskier than she would want her daughters involved in.
“I miss them,” she repeated, “they’ve dealt with me and their dad divorcing pretty well until now to be honest. We’ve worked really fricken’ hard to make it easy on them.”
“But?” Cleo prompted.
Abigail laughed and recounted Sid’s latest update on her ‘community service’ consequence for disposing of her father’s new bottle of whiskey.
“...and did the girlfriend care?” Cleo asked, “I mean, if I’d bought my date a thousand dollar bottle of scotch and his kid flushed it because she didn’t like me? I’d honestly probably split...”
Abigail laughed, “I don’t know, I haven’t actually met Erika in person, or on a call or anything. I don’t know much other than what he’s told me about her. But, you know, Liam and I trust each other and the fact that he wanted her to meet the girls told me enough about her. She’s extremely well off, not just a lawyer with her own career but she started some company when she was like, a teenager, and when she went to law school, she sold forty-nine percent of it to three different people so she retained the controlling share... And now it’s got a bunch of stores worldwide. I actually don’t think a seven hundred quid bottle of whiskey really tightens her belt much.”
She did not miss the slow rise of Cleo’s left eyebrow and Abigail pulled a face.
“Okay! I may have... Stalked her online a little bit. A tiny bit! And only at first,” she exclaimed, “I just... Was curious. We’d been separated for ages, so it wasn’t like, a surprise or anything. I just wanted to know who was apparently good enough to meet my kids.”
“Mmhmm,” Cleo hummed. “Sure, I get that. I looked up a few of Freddy’s flings after we split, but weirdly, the wives all sought me out. It was a bit creepy actually. They found me basically to ask if he’d always been like that.”
Talk of Cleo’s high school sweetheart, then husband, then philanderer, and now on his fourth divorce, always made Abigail want to hug Liam for being a baseline good person as well as having been thoughtful and considerate throughout the ending of their relationship.
“So, anyway, yeah, she was annoyed and I’m sure angrier personally than she was towards the kids,” Abigail said, bringing the conversation back to a more comfortable ground, “but Sid is still hyper aware of what she calls the ‘begrudgingly hilarious poetic justice’ of her community service consequence being that she has to clean both bathrooms in the house daily.”
Cleo snort laughed, “She called it that?”
“She did,” Abigail smiled as she sipped her sleepy tea, “you know, she’s all about her art but I could definitely see her being a writer.”
“Did you teach her to draw?” Cleo asked, not realizing the sore spot she had pushed by doing so.
“No,” Abigail said, “she’s always been scribbling away, but I stopped drawing for a long time. In fact, the only reason I picked it up again was because a few months ago, Sid needed a parent or guardian to go with her to a life drawing class because the models were going to be semi-nude—you know, strategically draped sheets and all that.”
“Oh, right,” Cleo said with a laugh, “bet that was confronting for her.”
Abigail laughed, too. “It was quite funny. She was bright red to start with but eventually it was just her ears. The drawings she came away with were better than anything I’d ever made. She’s got a real talent.”
“And a very supportive Mom and Dad who make sure she’s getting the best,” Cleo said, smiling at Abigail meaningfully.
The pair fell into silence as Abigail’s thoughts turned back to her own parents. She had always felt that they’d been great parents, supportive and caring. Finding out that they’d lied to her about so many things—hidden her sketchbook from senior year, told her she’d stopped drawing that summer when she clearly hadn’t, whatever was going on with the cameras in the house, and the gun.
Her dad had never owned a gun or been the kind of man who wanted to, or at least she’d always thought that.
“Cleo...” she said, “Can we just, um, keep the whole... Gun thing to ourselves for now? I don’t really know how I feel about it.”
Cleo nodded, “of course, this is all your business Abby—no one else’s. I know you’ve talked to Bee a bit and I agree she’d probably be a great source of local true crime knowledge. Byron too, he’s a good guy and I think he’d be more than happy to help you out. Just remember that you call the shots, though, okay? This is your life, your memories, and your family that we’re talking about here.”
Abigail’s smile was sad, but Cleo’s words resonated within her as she turned them over in her mind. A quiet clink drew her attention and she looked to see that Cleo had fallen asleep in the chair across from her, tea cup and saucer sitting loosely in her lap. She smiled properly then, at the perfect image of the beautiful and exhausted nurse. Glancing into the teacup, she saw that it was empty and not at risk of spilling. So, instead of moving it to the table, Abigail silently grabbed the notebook she had been using, settled back in her chair, and began to sketch Cleo’s serene face.