Later in Life Romance

Forty years ago, Melanie McMillan wrote a love letter to a boy. By the end of the day, half the school had heard it read aloud. She was fourteen. Humiliated, heartbroken, and grateful when her family moved away that summer, Melanie did what people do with the things they cannot change: she got on with her life.

Robin Fawley never did. Now fifty-four, Robin lives alone on Lake Muskoka, in a carefully ordered world that asks very little of him. Then a family rents the cottage next door for the summer, and Melanie steps off his boat. She doesn't recognize him.
Robin recognizes her immediately. He tells himself there is no reason to reopen something that happened in Grade Eight. Melanie has forgotten him. The summer will end. She will leave.

Instead there are early-morning coffees on the dock. Dinners that last too long. A boat, a woodpile, a kiss neither of them quite knows what to do with. And somewhere between June and August, the woman Robin has spent forty years remembering begins to fall for the man she believes she has just met. There is only one problem. Robin has never told her that he was there that day. And the longer he waits, the more dangerous the truth becomes. Because Robin and Melanie have spent forty years remembering the same afternoon.