Summers End

Chapter One

Several years later…

Thomas

“Heading Out?”

“Yeah, my ride will be here any minute,” I replied and slipped into my blazer. 

“You’re going back to Nantucket?”

“That’s right.  When’s your flight?”

“Not until this evening.  Why aren’t you flying?  Isn’t it like a five hour drive?”

“Mrs. Lodge doesn’t like to fly,” I explained.

“Is she picking you up?”

“Well, no…she just likes things the way she likes them.”

“Ok.” Tyler rolled his eyes then crossed our small dorm room and gave me a brotherly sort of hug.  “Have a good summer, Dufrain.  Oh and happy birthday!”

“Thanks Ty, see you in the fall,” I replied and then picked up my bags and trotted out into the hall.

It was the end of another semester at Choate-Rosemary Hall and the dorms were abuzz with activity.  Students came here from all over the country and the world; the last day of any term was always crazy.  Tyler was a good roommate and my best friend.  Later that day he’d be returning to California and I had to admit I’d miss him over the summer.  I said goodbye to several other friends, dorm mates and guys I knew from the baseball team, and walked out into the early summer breeze just as James arrived. 

In a school full of spoiled rich kids the Lodge Family’s vintage Rolls Royce limousine always drew attention.  James pulled up right in front of Knight House, cutting off Ginny Watson’s mother in her Mercedes, before he hopped out to collect my bags. 

“Hey, Tommy, happy birthday,” James exclaimed as he took my suitcases. 

“Thanks, James.” He hadn’t changed much in the years I’d known him.  When he and Mrs. Lodge picked me up from the hospital the night my mother died he’d been 35, tall, slender and energetic.  Ten years later he was just as energetic but had started to grey at the temples.  When my bags were securely in the trunk, James opened the rear door for me with an exaggerated flourish. 

“It’s a long drive; couldn’t I sit up front with you?”

“You trying to get me in trouble kiddo?  You know Mrs. Lodge wouldn’t like that.”

“No, you’re right.” I sighed and climbed into the plush backseat.  I took off my blazer and folded it neatly while James ran around the big car and took the driver’s seat. 

Mrs. Lodge treated her servants with dignity, respect, and in her way, kindness.  She was also very traditional and didn’t like members of the family fraternizing with the help.  It took me a long time to figure out my place in the Lodge home.  I wasn’t family, Mrs. Lodge had been friends with my maternal grandmother and when my mother died she took it on herself to raise me.  I wasn’t a servant either.  Mrs. Lodge raised me to be a gentleman.  She sent me to the same exclusive schools her sons had attended and I spent my summers taking lessons in skills she thought every young man should learn.  At the same time she was never very affectionate, in fact, she rarely used my name.  It was always, “Boy this or Boy that.”   Some days I felt like a favored grandson, other’s I felt like nothing more than a stray she’d taken in.  In the end I realized the only way to be comfortable in the Lodge home was to go with the flow and never try to read her moods.

My boarding school is in Western Connecticut and Mrs. Lodge lived in an expansive mansion on Nantucket Island.  It was a short flight; you could even make it by helicopter, but since Mrs. Lodge didn’t like flying I couldn’t fly either.  Everything always had to be her way.  Traveling by car made the trip excruciatingly long as we had to first travel northeast towards Boston and then southeast towards Hyannis Port and the ferry that would take us out to the island.  It was my 15th birthday, I was experiencing a growth spurt and I was glad for the space the backseat provided.  I would have gone nuts if I’d been unable to stretch my legs for so long.