A Different Kind of Summer. Caron Todd
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David had often seen the woman and child around the museum.
They came once a month, the boy eager, the mother patient, the two of them a perfect example of why he did this work. And now he’d scared them off. She’d asked the question, hadn’t she? How was he supposed to know she didn’t want an answer?
He didn’t have any reason to feel guilty. “Ma’am?” That sounded all wrong. Ma’am didn’t suit her.
Their rush out the door slowed, then stopped. She directed the boy to a cutaway view of hibernating insects and rodents before rejoining him.
“If you were going to apologise, it isn’t necessary. You were trying to do your job. My son will be fine.”
“I wasn’t going to apologise.”
That ticked her off. “What did you want, then?”
Her phone number, for one thing. The thought came out of nowhere. He had no business wanting her phone number. “The gift shop has a very good book about the mammoth, if you’re interested.”
“Does it? Thank you.”
A dismissive smile and they were on their way. The boy was speaking in an anxious tone, the mother trying to soothe. She was good at conveying a mother’s certainty. What she didn’t seem to realise was that it wasn’t helping.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caron Todd grew up surrounded by books, listening to her parents’ stories and watching her father, a journalist, working at his manual typewriter. She always liked writing, but became a nurse and then a library assistant before a family holiday in the Alberta badlands inspired her first romance novel. She was born in France, where her father was stationed with the Royal Canadian Air Force, and she now lives with her husband in Manitoba.
Dear Reader,
The premise for A Different Kind of Summer came to mind after I watched The Day After Tomorrow. Leaving the cinema, I was surprised to step into a warm, soft spring night instead of a hostile, icy world. If the movie had that effect on me, even for a second, I wondered how a young child would respond to it. What would happen if a single mother got home from work to find that the babysitter had let her five-year-old son watch the video?
I wasn’t sure how my editor, Laura Shin, would feel about the idea of a romance novel set against a background of climate change – after all, some of my relatives were asking me how that could be romantic – but to me, love found during troubled times is the most romantic of all. I was so glad when Laura told me to go ahead, because, like my heroine, Gwyn Sinclair, I had always preferred not to think about the problem and simply hoped it didn’t exist. This story gave me a chance to read about it as widely as time and my unscientific brain would allow. More happily, it took me back to my early motherhood years, with all their worries and joys.
It also took me back to Winnipeg, Manitoba, my home town. The area where Gwyn and David Bretton live is a composite of a few real neighbourhoods made graceful and welcoming by rivers, ageing houses and big, old trees. For a short time the story moves to another of my favourite places, Whiteshell Provincial Park. I’ve enjoyed so many afternoons and holidays there, hiking, canoeing and reading in the shade.
I hope you enjoy getting to know Gwyn and David, and the people who are important to them. Hearing from readers is always a pleasure. If you’d like to get in touch you can reach me at ctodd@prairie. ca.
Yours,
Caron Todd
A Different Kind of Summer
CARON TODD
To my children, with hopes that you’ll like the
view in 2050. Thank you for your support – your
patience with fast food during deadlines, your
insights and, of course, for making me laugh.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
My thanks to Dr John Hanesiak of the Centre
for earth observation Science at the University
of Manitoba for taking the time to provide
detailed answers to my questions about weather
and climate change. Without him, I wouldn’t
have known about David’s remote control plane
or rooftop weather station! of course, any
mistakes or misunderstandings that may have
found their way into the book are
completely due to me.
CHAPTER ONE
“OF COURSE IT COULDN’T HAPPEN, sweetie.” Gwyn sat on the bed and stroked her son’s cheek. When he didn’t lean away from her touch she felt even more annoyed with the babysitter. Then with herself for needing one. “It was just a movie.”
Now he did pull away, with an irritated wriggle. “I know it was a movie.”
Did he? He so often surprised her, expressing ideas that seemed advanced for his age one minute and showing a complete lack of common sense the next. Maybe all children were like that. Iris had told her about a boy down the street who was convinced Bruce Willis had really saved the planet from an asteroid.
What was Mrs. Henderson thinking? If she wanted to rent a video instead of playing or taking a walk, what about Shrek for a five-year-old? Or Aladdin? Not a disaster movie, especially one that showed the poor kid’s entire country getting flash frozen. Chris knew where Winnipeg was on the map. He knew that according to The Day After Tomorrow he and his house were under ice right now. No, from what he’d told her, it was worse than that. He and she and everybody else in the neighborhood were ice right now.
He looked so small in his bed, nearly edged out by stuffed animals. The boy-size giant panda from his grandparents had pretty much taken over. It was his favorite. He liked the realistic ones the best, the panda and the tiger and the polar bear. Anything related to nature and science got his attention. Animals and plants, earthquakes and volcanos, rocket ships and the solar system. None of it had scared him before.
“You know,” she said, “the hero in the movie wasn’t really a scientist. He was an actor saying his lines. The way you did in the play at Christmas.”
“Somebody wrote the lines.”
“Sure, but not a scientist. A screenwriter, making up a story. Just like somebody made up Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Do you think mother and father bears really live with their children in pretty cabins with furniture and porridge?”
He almost smiled. “Maybe.”
“An ocean couldn’t flood a city so quickly. Could it?”
“Maybe it could.”
“All that water, freezing in seconds? It doesn’t make sense.”
“They said there’s a mammoth, a real-life mammoth, frozen solid with grass in its mouth.” He emphasized the last words. Grass in its mouth. “A real mammoth, Mom. That part wasn’t make-believe.”
Her feet were aching, and she really wanted to have a cool bath and change her clothes. She knew there was a point she was supposed to be getting about this animal but she just wasn’t. “So it died during dinner. These things happen. Maybe it took too big a mouthful and choked.”
“Then it froze.” He tried to snap his fingers. They