Excerpt: 'Summer Roses'

June 29, 2005 — -- Luanne Rice returns with her 20th novel, "Summer of Roses," which revisits the characters she introduced in her best-seller "Summer's Child."

On the isolated coast of Nova Scotia, Lily tries to let go of painful memories from the past and tries to build a new life for herself and her 8-year-old daughter, Rose. Along the way, Lily and Rose's lives intertwine with several unforgettable characters.

You can read an excerpt from "Summer of Roses" below.

How does a person reenter a life she left nine years earlier? Knowing that there had been a relentless search for her, that her picture had been plastered on the front pages of every newspaper in Connecticut and beyond? Understanding that every local police department remained on the lookout for her? Realizing that all but one of her friends and family have given her up for dead?

The answer is, she walks right in the front door.

That's what Lily Malone did in the very-early-morning hours of August ninth. Just past 1 a.m., Liam Neill parked his truck in the turnaround at Hubbard's Point, lifted Rose -- sleeping, after the long drive from Nova Scotia -- and followed Lily down the stone steps.

Lily glanced at the arch over the wishing well -- there was the house name, Sea Garden, its letters just a little more rusty, a bit more filigreed from the salt air, than they had been nine years earlier. The sight gave her a pang so deep, she gasped out loud. Lily was really home. A breeze blew off Long Island Sound -- salt water, just like the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Maritime Canada, where she had lived and hidden these last nine years. But this night breeze was warm, gentle, filled with scents of marsh grass and sandy beaches -- instead of the fjord's arctic cliffs and cold, clear water flowing straight off the pack ice.

"Oh my," she said out loud, alive with the thrill of finally coming home. The roses greeted her -- their perfume filled the air, and if the ones growing up the trellis beside the front door were slightly less well tended than they'd been nine years ago, they were still profuse and extravagant. Lily reached up, through the thorns, to feel underneath the shingle just beside the dark porch light, and there it was -- the key her grandmother had always kept hidden there, guarded by the roses' foliage and thorns. "She didn't move it," she whispered.

"Of course she didn't," Liam said in her ear, standing behind her with Rose. "She never stopped hoping you'd come back."

"Maeve is coming home too," Lily said, opening the squeaky screen door, holding it open with her shoulder, fumbling with the key in the rusty old door lock. "Right? Tell me she's going to be okay -- "

"She will be, Lily," Liam said.

Lily felt the key turn. Nine years later, the door made the same bump as it opened, one of the hinges hanging just slightly. Stepping into the kitchen...smelling beach-house dampness encroaching from the absence of its owner. Yet someone--Clara, obviously--had opened a few windows. Lily walked through the first floor as if she were a ghost, haunting her most beloved, familiar place on earth.

Lily began to smile. "It's all the same," she whispered. The moon had risen out of the Sound, casting a gleaming white light on the calm water, its pale light flooding the room. Lily saw the familiar slipcovers, braided rugs, pillows she had needlepointed for her grandmother. She ran her fingers over her old shell collection, books in the bookcase, moonstones gathered at low tide on Little Beach.

She had to see everything, yet she couldn't turn on a lamp yet. If she turned on a light, it would mean she was committed to this. "This" meaning that she was really here, that her exile was over, that she had returned to the land of the living. Neighbors would see the light and come over. People would know that she was back.

Edward would find out.

"Where does Rose sleep?" Liam asked.

"In my room," Lily whispered. She led him up the narrow stairs. The second floor had four small bedrooms--beach-cottage in size and feel. Lily's heart was racing as she entered her old room. Under the eaves on the north side, it had funny ceiling angles, a twin bed, and her old Betsy McCall paper dolls right there on the bureau. Pulling down the covers, she choked up to see the sheets--imprinted with tiny bouquets of blue roses--and a pink summer-weight blanket. She bent down to smell the bedding--it was fresh.

"My grandmother knew we were coming," she said. "Somehow, before she went to the hospital, she made up the bed for Rose."

Together they tucked Rose in. The little girl stirred, opening her eyes, glancing around the unfamiliar room in dream-state wonder. "Are we here?" she asked.

"Yes, honey. You'll see it all tomorrow morning. Good night."

"Night," Rose murmured as her eyes fluttered shut.

Lily and Liam went back downstairs. Moonlight was dazzling on the water in front of the house. Lily had watched countless moonrises from this room, through the wide, curtainless windows overlooking the rocks and sea. Everything seemed so open compared to the pineshrouded cabin she'd lived in at Cape Hawk, Nova Scotia--she had hidden in a boreal forest, with hawks and owls as sentries.

Liam had been one of the first people she'd met, arriving in the distant, unfamiliar town--disguised by cropping her long dark hair, dying it light brown, wearing the old horn-rimmed spectacles her grandmother had given her. He had been her friend and savior, even though she had rejected him every step of the way. She had to, to protect herself and her unborn baby.