This, That, and the Other

“Summer died that night,” Amanda said to her son, Clint, who was staring blankly out across the lake as the sun was slowly setting.

“You mean that night two years ago, the last time we were here at the lake house?” Clint asked. “We’re doing okay you and I, aren’t we, Mom?”

“Yeah,” Amanda said. “We are. But I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was a night just like this one.”

“It was a hot, sticky night, I know that,” Clint said. “I still can’t believe she texted you. What kind of shithead would do that?”

“She was never one who could deal with confrontation,” Amanda explained. “In fact, for a successful editor of popular romance novels, she was abysmal when it came to communicating how she was really feeling inside with real people.”

“But to send you a text telling you that you that had to kill Summer, the wildly popular heroine of all of your novels, in your next book,” Clint said, “I mean that’s just cold.”

Written for Rachel Poli’s Time To Write Picture Prompt and for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie First Line Friday prompt where the first line is “Summer died that night.”