The Summer We Ran

The novel alternates between two timelines, following Tess Murphy as a seventeen-year-old in the summer of 1996 and as a Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia in 2021. A prologue set in January 1997 shows Tess hospitalized and heartbroken, hinting at a devastating loss whose full nature emerges only later.

In June 2021, Tess studies a newspaper photo of herself alongside her Republican opponent, Grant Alexander, tracing the outline of his jaw before her husband, Dean, a high school history teacher, walks in. Dean does not know that Tess and Grant share a past. That evening, Tess will stand across from Grant at their first debate and pretend they have never met.

The 1996 timeline begins when Tess and her mother, Genie Murphy, arrive at the Virginia estate of Madeline Milton, a wealthy Washington, DC, lobbyist who has hired Genie as a summer cook and house manager. Kay Alexander, Madeline's neighbor and lifelong friend, tests Tess's knowledge of roses, learned from Tess's late grandmother, and offers Tess a summer gardening job.

Kay's eighteen-year-old son, Grant, has been banished to the country by his father, Richard Alexander, a domineering financier, after nearly being expelled from boarding school. Grant and Tess fall in love over the following weeks. Grant reveals that Richard calls him a disappointment and has planned his entire future in finance, while Grant secretly dreams of making furniture. Tess, raised in poverty by a single mother, wrestles with the class divide between them.

Kay becomes a mentor to Tess, but Tess also witnesses the dark side of the Alexander marriage. She sees Richard grab Kay and squeeze her neck during a fight, and she watches Kay's drinking worsen. Kay discovers the young couple's relationship, gives Tess a photograph she secretly took of them, and warns Tess to protect her heart, telling her that "Alexander men are not kind, they are not honest, and they do not know how to love" (115). Tess treasures the photo all summer but tears it apart the day Grant leaves.

On the morning Grant is to leave for Princeton, he finds his mother dead in her bathtub. Richard calls not for an ambulance but for a favor, having the sheriff keep the circumstances of Kay's overdose on sleeping pills and wine confidential, and cruelly tells Grant that Kay's depression worsened because Grant was a disappointment. Grant runs to Tess, who holds him for hours. Days later, Tess tells Grant she is pregnant. Grant proposes they keep the baby and build a life together. Tess refuses, insisting she cannot raise a child at seventeen and does not want to replicate her mother's struggles.

Richard, who has observed enough to understand the situation, visits the Murphys' cottage after getting Genie fired from the Milton estate. He offers Tess fifty thousand dollars to have an abortion and cut off all contact with Grant. Tess, terrified and newly jobless, negotiates the sum upward, remembering Kay's advice. On the morning Grant leaves for Princeton, Tess tells him she is having the abortion. After she leaves, Richard tells Grant he paid Tess for the procedure, claiming girls like her always take the money. Grant leaves for Princeton convinced Tess chose money over their relationship and never contacts her again.

What Grant does not know is that Tess did not go through with it. At the clinic, she saw the ultrasound, heard the heartbeat, and walked out still pregnant. She waited for Grant to call; he never did. Tess and Genie moved to Charlottesville, where Tess selected a closed adoption and began preparing for the birth. At nearly seven months, she hemorrhaged while home alone. Her mother found her unconscious. An emergency C-section was performed, but the baby, a boy, did not survive. To stop the bleeding, doctors performed a hysterectomy. The prologue's hospital scene captures the aftermath of this loss.

In the 2021 timeline, the campaign forces these secrets toward the surface. Grant corners Tess before the first debate and insists they say nothing about their past, arguing that journalists' follow-up questions could destroy both their careers and families. Tess agrees. During the debate, she pointedly asks Grant whether he ever made teenage mistakes he was lucky enough to escape, and he edges ahead in the polls. Soon after, Tess's campaign manager, Mara, receives an anonymous email containing Kay's old photograph of the teenage couple. Tess reveals only that she once worked for Grant's mother and calls Grant to warn him.

Grant, meanwhile, manages a fraying marriage to Cecilia, a private woman who senses his emotional distance. Richard appears uninvited, taunting Grant and calling Tess "country trash." Grant's campaign manager and oldest friend, Stuart, pushes for opposition research on Tess, which Grant opposes. When Grant finally admits he knew Tess as a teenager, Stuart is furious at the deception. Cecilia overhears enough to confront Grant, who offers only the partial truth that Tess once worked for his mother.

Dean also grows suspicious. Searching for a recipe in Genie's old cookbook, he discovers the taped-together photograph and an ultrasound image hidden between the pages. He sends the photo to Mara, then gives Tess repeated chances to confess. When she cannot, Dean declares their marriage over. After the second debate, Cecilia follows Grant to Tess's hotel and confronts him in the parking garage. Grant admits an emotional connection to Tess and confesses he found his mother's body, something he never shared with Cecilia. She tells him he kept the most important parts of himself out of reach.

At Kay's house, Grant and Tess discover photographs hidden in Kay's vanity showing Richard kissing Madeline Milton, proving an affair that likely drove Kay's spiral. Grant realizes his father blamed him for Kay's death to deflect his own responsibility. Tess reveals the full truth: She never had the abortion, she lost the baby, and the resulting hysterectomy is why she told Dean she was not cut out to be a mother.

Days before the election, Stuart, collaborating with Richard and national party operatives, leaks clinic records to the press claiming Tess had an abortion at seventeen. Tess goes on television to correct the story: She made a clinic appointment, changed her mind, later lost the baby, and had a hysterectomy. Grant holds a press conference admitting the leak came from his team. He and Tess meet one final time; he tells her having her back in his life changes everything, but Tess says the pain may be bigger than the love and walks away.

On Election Day, an unexpectedly large turnout of women voters tips the balance, and Tess wins. She delivers a victory speech alone, acknowledging her mistakes and pledging to learn from them. Dean files for divorce the following day.

On Inauguration Day in January 2022, Tess surveys her new office. After the election, she wrote Grant letters describing every honest memory of their summer together. He wrote back, and they have been corresponding ever since. Grant has moved into Kay's house with his sons, left his hedge fund, and is learning to be a present father. Among the inauguration flowers, Tess finds a simple wooden vase of goldenrod, her favorite flower, with a card in Grant's handwriting: "Maybe someday." She clutches the note, allows herself to imagine a future together, then calls for Mara and turns to the work ahead.