Fleeting Summer

Independence Day has come and gone. Summer is half over. I hate that. I haven’t had time to sit by the pool or catch fireflies or sip wine on a night when the air is like velvet and the stars are so close I could pick them from the sky if only I could find the energy.

All too soon my oldest will take off for college and my youngest will return to high school.

How do the days pass so quickly?

If I blink, will I miss another year?

If I take a nap, will I miss their weddings?

Does every mother feel this way?

I suppose I’m lucky, their exploits are fodder for the teenager, Grace, in the Country Club Murders. 

Twenty years from now, I’ll be able to read Cold as Ice and remember the party at my house that got out of control. I’ll be able to remember their time on the knife’s edge between being a girl and a woman. I’ll be able to remember the bittersweet pain of watching them leave me.

Here's hoping the rest of your summer is filled with wonder...or at least fodder for a book.

Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of The Country Club Murders. 

She is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean--and she's got an active imagination. Truth is--she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions.

Her next book, Cold as Ice, releases October 17, 2017.