These Summer Storms

Franklin Storm’s death forces his four children to reunite on Storm Island and confront not only the logistics of his will but also decades of secrets that shaped their upbringing. The resolution isn’t just about claiming their inheritance but also about the resurfacing of old wounds, and the siblings must decide whether to cling to the patterns that their parents instilled in them or to forge new ways of relating to each other.

Greta confronts the fallout from her secrets, Sam wrestles with falling short of his father’s expectations, Alice faces the secret ways that her father influenced her life without her consent, and Emily comes to terms with the truth of her parentage. The memorial service amplifies these tensions, bringing every conflict into the open and forcing the siblings to choose between continued estrangement and a tentative step toward unity. The text notes the Storm family’s struggles with vulnerability: “Empathy wasn’t a family trait for the Storms. It had never been rewarded” (35). Once the children overcome sibling rivalry by recognizing that the villain isn’t external but internal, and stop tearing one another down, they weaken their parents’ control and step into their roles as independent adults.

The inheritance game and the backdrop of the memorial explore the central question of what the siblings owe their family versus what they owe themselves. At the story’s start, the Storm siblings’ ties to one another are fragmented by years of manipulation and secrecy under Franklin’s domineering influence. Each has learned to survive the family differently: Greta by aligning with their mother, Sam through dependence on his allowance, Alice by building a life she considers separate from the Storm legacy, and Emily by finding peace in acceptance. However, these initial dynamics stem from self-protection rather than connection. Franklin’s will forces them into close quarters and compels them to confront unresolved grievances.

At first, their interactions are fraught with mistrust as they fall into their old patterns of bickering; for example, when Alice’s clothes go missing, she assumes Sam did it as a childish prank, despite being a grown adult. Alice dreads her family’s scrutiny: “The path [isn’t] as easy now as it [was] when she was a kid. When she [gets] back to the house, there [will] be a different test” (157). The revelations of Greta’s past and Emily’s parentage rupture the family’s carefully maintained facade. Instead of further splintering the family, however, their revelations bring them closer together, as if the truth sets them free. In the end, the family reckoning doesn’t erase the pain of the past, but it does shift the balance of power. Instead of remaining pawns in their parents’ plans, the siblings begin to assert agency, accepting that while they can’t change their history, they can redefine their future. The Storms’ journey explores how families can fracture under the weight of secrets, but how, in some cases, this helps them begin to heal.