Читать книгу Summer By The Sea - Cathryn Parry - Страница 12
ОглавлениеSAM LOGAN’S SUMMER plans were turned upside-down in a single phone call.
Twenty-four hours later, his eleven-year-old daughter, Lucy, stood in his tiny bachelor kitchen, surrounded by her suitcase, her iPad, and a ragged and well-loved stuffed bear that he hadn’t even known she still slept with.
Sam stared at it—and her—in shock. Seeing that teddy bear made him realize he really had no idea what was going on with his daughter. He felt completely inadequate to the task of being Lucy’s full-time dad.
Ironic, considering Sam worked with kids her age every day. He taught environmental science to middle school students. Sam was known as a laid-back teacher. A guy who could handle whatever came his way without getting his feathers ruffled or ruffling feathers. It was his great strength, his inner Zen.
But the panic rose from deep in his chest and clutched at his throat, affecting his ability to breathe. This must be what swimmers felt like when they were caught up in a giant, sucking rip current.
Sam had never been caught in a rip current himself. As a professional lifeguard at Wallis Point beach in summer, he knew the signs and avoided the trap. A few times per season, he rescued people caught in the grip. He even taught the younger guards—college-aged men and women—to notice the signs so they could warn others, too.
Avoidance of danger had always been key in Sam’s world.
Sam wiped sweaty palms on the back of his shorts. Lucy was here, sitting at his kitchen table, pushing her light brown hair from her eyes and staring at her luggage, probably as uncomfortable as he was. Her mother had decided to head to Alaska for the summer to work as a singer on a cruise ship, so Sam was now responsible for her. For ten long weeks. Alone. During lifeguard season.
Shaky, he wondered what he should do with her—feed her lunch, maybe? Usually she came to his house for two Saturday afternoons per month—had ever since she was a toddler—and before they left for whatever fun activity he’d planned that day, Lucy always sat and ate a peanut butter sandwich and drank an orange soda. That was their tradition.
So he opened his refrigerator door. No orange sodas. Instead, one whole shelf was filled with a batch of craft brew he’d made earlier in the week. He bent and felt past the beer bottles, finding two cold cans in the back of the fridge. “Luce,” he said, straightening, “I’m out of orange soda. Would you like a ginger ale?”
His daughter regarded him stoically. “Yes, please. I’ll make my own sandwich.”
“Okay. Good.” Feeling a little more hopeful, Sam popped the two cans open then passed her one. Without any drama, she stood, got a plate, bread, peanut butter and knife and began making lunch for herself.
He should calm down. He and Lucy would be fine—they could figure out this new arrangement as they went. He saw her often enough to know the basics of caring for her according to the rules Colleen had insisted upon since Lucy was a baby.
Sam had been blindsided when she’d been born. Though he and Colleen hadn’t been together anymore and Sam had been a young father—just twenty-one at the time—he had coped. He would have preferred to see Lucy more often, but the lawyers had told him what was best for the three of them, and Sam had rolled with it. He would roll with it now.
He seated himself across from Lucy and took a long drink of the almost medicinal-tasting ginger ale. Even if he had no idea what he was going to do with her for the next ten weeks—and he couldn’t take Lucy to a movie or a museum or a theme park or even his brother’s house near Boston every day, like he usually did when he had her—he wasn’t going to freak out. Neither was he going to put the burden on Lucy. The situation wasn’t her fault. Sam didn’t want to be like his own parents and force inappropriate decisions on her the way they had with him and his brother when they were kids negotiating a difficult divorce.
Be Zen. Be detached. Stay cool.
That’s what Sam had learned young. Dealing with other people’s kids in the public school system reinforced the lesson for him daily. It was best to keep calm under pressure. Have non-emotional and non-threatening conversations. Use humor whenever possible.
Sam gave Lucy his easiest smile. “It’s all good, Luce. There are worse places we could be stuck together for the summer, right?”
She gazed up at him with her serious brown eyes. “Maybe,” she replied calmly. Then she went back to cutting her sandwich precisely in half with a serrated bread knife.
The most grown-up kid I’ve ever known, Sam’s brother had once said. Sam had been proud of it at the time. But now he glanced at Lucy’s teddy bear leaning forlornly against her adult-looking black luggage, and he wondered if there was more to her stoic behavior than was apparent on the surface.
Too bad he couldn’t just let her be a free-range kid like he and his brother had been during their carefree, predivorce summers on the beach. But nowadays, the powers that be frowned on unsupervised kids, especially in a high-traffic tourist town. Even at eleven years old, Lucy needed somebody to watch her and be responsible for her. He worked as a lifeguard full time. What was he supposed to do?
Sam gazed over Lucy’s head and out the window toward the seashore where he’d spent most of his life working and playing during the short-but-sweet New England summers. He loved his summers here. He would never live anywhere else. He liked waking up to the smell of salt water outside his bedroom window and the sounds of rolling waves and cawing seabirds. Beyond a long expanse of sand was the deep blue Atlantic Ocean, and all he had to do was stare at that horizon whenever he needed to find peace.
“Do you remember when you were little, and you used to sit up on the lifeguard chair with me?” Chair ten, right outside his window. It wasn’t set out for the season yet, but it would be soon. “You used to love spending time on the beach.”
Lucy stopped chewing and stared at him. “I can’t sit on the beach with you while you’re working, Sam.”
Sam. That about killed him. He smiled anyway. “Yeah, I know. And I know this isn’t what you had planned for your summer vacation, either, but don’t worry, we’ll figure it out and make it work for us.”
He took another long drink from his ginger ale can. “Are there any day camps you might be interested in for the summer?” He figured he should ask—maybe she had something in mind that he didn’t know about. As a local teacher, maybe he could use his connections to get her a last-minute slot. “Wallis Point has a swimming program and a sailing academy. Then there’s always tennis lessons—”
“No, thank you, Sam.”
He winced and glanced back at the beach. His friend Duke drove by on one of the two open-roof all-terrain vehicles that the Wallis Point lifeguards employed. During the school year, Duke was vice principal of the high school in town. In summer, Sam often drove with Duke on patrol. Today, though, was the day after classes had let out for the summer, and if not for Lucy, Sam would have been flying out of Logan Airport for his yearly backpacking vacation before he started his lifeguard job. This year, trekking through Scotland for a week.
“I like the library,” Lucy suddenly said.
Sam turned around. “The library, in summer?”
“Yes, please.”
She really was a serious student. If he was honest with himself, he was worried about that. Lucy was eleven years old, and she didn’t have fun easily. It occurred to him that she was a throwback to his own mother. That was the only conclusion Sam could come up with.
Lucy finished the last bite of her sandwich, so Sam reached for his sunglasses. He gave her another bright smile. “Okay, Luce. How about we take a walk on the beach and discuss this some more?”
“No, thank you. I’m going to see Cassandra,” she said simply, and stood. Lucy never asked permission. She just did whatever the inner force inside her told her to do.
“Okay, sure,” he said reasonably. Cassandra was Sam’s next-door neighbor. Seventy-something and eccentric, she was a bona fide working artist—an internationally famous children’s book illustrator. Lately, Lucy had taken to ending their Saturday visits with a stint at Cassandra’s cottage. Sam hadn’t interrupted them. The relationship was good for Lucy, he thought. Lucy seemed to love visiting Cassandra, and that was what mattered to him. Besides, a couple of hours every two weeks hadn’t seemed as if it would be a burdensome interruption for his neighbor.
He leaned back, watching Lucy clear away her lunch dishes and load them neatly into his dishwasher. Lucy just did things like that. She was independent and capable, but there was no getting around it. Somebody needed to be here for her full time, and that somebody needed to be him.
And wasn’t this his opportunity to get closer to her, scary as that seemed?
He slipped on his sunglasses and stood. He might ruffle feathers for what he was about to say, but... “I’ll walk over with you. I need to see Cassandra, too.”
Lucy looked him straight in the eyes and nodded. “Okay.”
“Just so you know, if it’s all right with Cassandra that you hang out with her a little more often than usual this summer, then it’s cool with me.”
“Good.” Lucy seemed more animated and hopeful than she’d been when she first arrived. “Last time I saw her, Cassandra said she would be home today.”
“Great.” Sam opened the glass slider that led to the porch. “Before we go over there, though, could I ask you something?”
Lucy slipped her hands into her jacket pockets as if bracing herself.
“We need to figure out something for, ah...” He didn’t want to say “childcare,” but that was the only word he could think of, so he swallowed his reticence. “Someone to take care of you. I, ah...” He took a breath. He’d never wanted to face this. And it pained him to say so, but he’d made a monumental decision. He was going to sacrifice something for her, his only child, that he’d never thought he could ever sacrifice for anybody. He needed to resign his lifeguard job. There really wasn’t any other way out of it.
“Sam, I want Cassandra to watch me this summer.”
He blinked in surprise. “Do you really think it’s fair to ask Cassandra to do that?”
“We already discussed it, she and I.” Lucy set her chin.
How was that possible? “Cassandra doesn’t have a phone,” he pointed out.
Lucy used the toe of her sneaker to outline the edge of his breakfast bar in the kitchen. “We talked about it the last time I was here.”
He willed himself to breathe easily, in and out. He would not care. Would not get upset.
“You were here almost a week ago.” Four days before Colleen had called him. “We didn’t know then that your mother was going to go off to Alaska for the summer.” He’d tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, he really had.
“Mom knew she was going,” Lucy said in a small voice.
“She told you?” he asked softly.
“No.” Lucy shook her head vehemently. “I heard her on the phone with the cruise ship people.”
“By accident?”
Lucy moved her wispy bangs to one side. “I listened on the extension because I thought it was a call from my teacher.”
Okay, should he be concerned? With his students, he only rarely called their homes. Usually because there was a problem with the child. “Why do you think your teacher would be calling your mom?”
“That’s not important,” Lucy said.
Yeah, it was. And he was going to lose his patience if he wasn’t careful. “Okay. We’ll go see Cassandra,” he said simply.
He grabbed his windbreaker from a hook and put on a ball cap. They stepped through the sliding door onto his deck overlooking the beach. In mid-June, it was windy and cool. Cassandra’s cottage was only about twenty yards away, but despite the nearness, they didn’t talk often. They usually just waved when they saw each other. Most days, he caught glimpses of her working on her paintings. A bit of a bohemian, the lady often dressed in Indonesian batik and straw hats. She smoked imported cigarettes that smelled like clove and cinnamon spices, and she seemed more detached and easygoing than even he was. Every now and then she stopped by Sam’s house parties in summer, and nothing seemed to faze her. Yet she didn’t seem irresponsible. She taught art classes to teens regularly at the local library, and she was a popular teacher.
Lucy adored her.
She always had. The first time Lucy had toddled over to greet Cassandra, she’d been three, and Cassandra had given her an ice pop and let her play with her paint brushes. His serious, stoic daughter had been hooked on the woman ever since.
They walked through the beach sand together, he and Lucy. When she was little, he’d held her hand, but now that she was older, they didn’t do that.
When they got to Cassandra’s door, Lucy gave a small, hesitant knock on the glass.
Cassandra answered immediately. She radiated “earth mother” authority, her billowing, colorful pants as bright as her smile. Reading glasses sat atop her head of white-gray hair, and in her right hand was a cane—solid metal of some type and vividly purple.
“Come in, come in.” She opened the door wider, smiling broadly at his daughter. “Welcome, Lucy.” Then Cassandra looked directly into Sam’s eyes. “You’ve brought your father with you this time. That’s good.”
Sam nodded to his neighbor. “Good to see you, Cassandra. I don’t mention it often enough, but thanks for everything you’ve done to help Lucy over the years.”
“I enjoy her company very much.”
He glanced over to find that Lucy had taken up a perch in a vintage, lime-colored beanbag chair. A small black-and-white tuxedo cat wandered over to investigate her on silent cat feet. Lucy scooped him up into her lap and pressed him to her cheek.
Yet again, Sam was taken aback. Lucy had never been cuddly with him. Other than the worn teddy bear he’d been surprised to see in her luggage, he hadn’t realized she had this side to her.
Cassandra shuffled over to her kitchen and bustled with a plastic grocery bag on the counter. The front half of the cottage was one big room—a combination art studio/library/kitchenette and seating area. A stereo on one of the shelves played a jazz song from the thirties or forties, sung by a woman with an emotional, raspy voice. Sam felt unsettled by the unfamiliar environment and the strange new revelations his daughter had given him.
Cassandra brought over a snack for Lucy.
“Blueberry cake!” Lucy said, excited.
Sam remained standing, not sure what to say.
“Cassandra gave me The Witch of Blackbird Pond to read,” Lucy told him, her tone serious again. As she contemplated him, that studious look came over her and she turned silent once more.
He instinctively touched the doorjamb. “What’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond?” he asked Cassandra.
Cassandra smiled at Lucy. “Shall you explain the story to your dad, or should I?”
“It’s an old story,” Lucy said, settling the plate on a table beside her. “It’s a novel about a teen who has to travel to a new place in the 1600s, and it isn’t anything like what she’s used to, and she gets upset because she doesn’t fit in. So she runs away and meets a kindly Quaker lady who lives by herself on a pond, and she takes her in and feeds her blueberry cake and lets her play with a kitten every time she comes to visit.”
He just stared at Lucy. “So you’re saying you’re upset when you come to see me, and that every time you visit Cassandra’s you eat blueberry cake and play with a kitten?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. It’s not literal, Sam.”
But there had to be some truth to it. And Cassandra appeared to be watching him closely. He wasn’t sure he liked the scrutiny.
It bothered him that his neighbor seemed to know more about his daughter than he did.
But he shook the feeling off. Decided to get right to it. Giving Cassandra his charming smile, the one that usually got him places with women, he said, “Lucy’s mom is going to be away for the summer. It looks like she’s going to be staying with me for a couple months.”
“Yes, I heard that from Lucy last week,” Cassandra said noncommittally. “You must be very excited.”
The back of his neck tightened. He’d momentarily forgotten that his neighbor had known about the change of plans before he had.
But he kept smiling. Folding his arms, he said quietly to Cassandra, “I am excited that she’s here. In fact, I’m resigning as a lifeguard supervisor in order to spend as much time as possible with Lucy.”
As he said it, he knew it was the right thing. Years ago, he’d never expected he would one day have the privilege of living with his only child. Maybe this summer was a gift to him.
But evidently, Lucy didn’t think so. Her face drooped as if he’d dropped a depressing bit of news on her. He felt his own sadness in the hollow of his breastbone.
Outside, the new lifeguard recruits were being drilled. Wind sprints.
Cassandra took her cane and thumped her way across the room. Picked up a paintbrush from a jar on the table. Based on the chemicals and rags spread on a piece of newspaper, she appeared to have been cleaning her painting implements when he and Lucy interrupted her.
Lucy was gazing down at the cat in her lap, stroking his black fur, saying nothing.
It hit Sam, all at once, that while he’d thought he and Lucy were doing okay together all this time, they really weren’t. Lucy was as remote and detached from him as anybody he’d ever known.
He’d lived this way for years. On the surface, he welcomed his daughter to his home two Saturdays a month. They did something interesting and fun together—a movie, a trip to a marine wildlife reserve or a museum, a visit to his brother’s house where she played with her two cousins’ electronic toys to her heart’s content.
But always she ended the visit at Cassandra’s cottage. He’d considered Cassandra a warm grandmother figure to Lucy, filling a role that was missing in Lucy’s life, but it was becoming clear to him that Cassandra had been more to her than he’d realized.
Cassandra connected with Lucy. He didn’t.
He was a piece that didn’t fit in Lucy’s story.
And he didn’t want that to be true any longer.
He glanced back at Cassandra and caught her studying him. She relinquished the brushes and slowly made her way back toward him. Thump, thump, thump.
“Isn’t this usually the week that you take a backpacking vacation?” Cassandra asked him softly. “School got out yesterday.”
“It did.” He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. “And I cancelled the trip yesterday.”
“Because Lucy needs you.” Cassandra said it as a statement and not a question, and he gave her a short nod. He wasn’t even attempting the charming smile anymore.
“Where were you going this year?” Cassandra’s voice was very low, meant as a conversation between two adults, with Lucy left out of it.
He frowned. “To Scotland. Hiking.”
“Ah, with the Scottish lassies.” She exhaled.
The older woman couldn’t know. Nobody did. It was his own personal secret. The day after school let out, every year, Sam chose a different place in the world to escape to, alone. Someplace interesting to him. And there, wherever “there” was, he nearly always met a woman, though they never exchanged last names. For a week they would get closer, and it was intimate, yet anonymous. That vacation lasted him for a year. For the other three hundred and forty-odd days, he lived his life separate, detached, not really opening himself to anybody. Not even, he realized now, his own daughter.
“This is a small town,” he said to Cassandra, falling back on his old excuse. “A bad idea for a single male teacher to...” To date, and therefore to provide gossip for the mill, he was going to say. But he didn’t want to get into it in front of Lucy.
“Hmm.” Cassandra left it at that. “Your job is very important to you,” she finally said.
He shrugged. Honestly, teaching was interesting and it was a paycheck. That was about it.
Cassandra glanced sharply at him as if reading his mind. “I meant being a lifeguard.”
He blinked. It was true, he looked forward to his lifeguard job all year. He liked the keeping-people-safe aspect of it. He liked sitting in his chair, looking out over the ocean and feeling calm and at peace with the world.
“Well, yes, it’s a good job. But my daughter is more important to me. I’ll take care of her, Cassandra, you don’t have to worry about her being here all the time while you have work to do.”
“Please, Dad!” Lucy interrupted. “I don’t want you to quit your lifeguard job to take care of me!”
She’d called him Dad, not Sam.
He felt himself grinning like a fool.
“Cassandra says you’re really good at what you do.” Lucy continued. “She says you’re the only lifeguard trainer she’s ever seen who teaches the lifeguards how to meditate to stay calm. And you show them the best way to return lost children to their parents. And...to defuse tense situations.”
That was the most Lucy had said to him in a long time, and Cassandra smiled sheepishly at him. “Your lifeguard station is right in the line of sight of my workspace. I’ve been listening to you lead morning training sessions for years.”
Cassandra had obviously been talking him up to his daughter, and he appreciated that. “Thank you, Cassandra,” he said quietly.
She folded her hands and slid a sideways look at him. “I wonder if you could do a favor for me this summer.”
“Oh?” He felt his smile tightening.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Cassandra hastened to explain. “I have a young houseguest coming here from the West Coast, on sabbatical from her demanding job. She’s looking for someone to tutor her in meditation. I wonder if you could teach her some techniques?”
He almost burst out laughing. He would just bet this “young houseguest” was single, a sweet young thing, and Cassandra was attempting to fix him up. He was thirty-two and unattached, and his fellow teachers tended to do that to him, too. Cassandra he couldn’t get mad at because she was Lucy’s friend. Plus, he could see the irony in her request.
Cassandra noted his amused expression and tsk-tsked him. “You know how important meditation is, Sam. Sarah asked me to find her a class, and I thought of you. I never saw anyone teach neophytes at work like that until you came along. The other lifeguard supervisors scream at the recruits and blow their whistles. Run, swim, practice mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
“Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is quite important,” he teased.
“Staying calm and responding appropriately to stressful situations is more important.” She nodded at him.
He agreed with her, but that wasn’t the point. “How old is your houseguest?” he asked.
Cassandra didn’t bat an eye. “Sarah is in her thirties, like you, and she’s quite pretty. She returns to California after Labor Day.”
So here was this summer’s anonymous yet intimate fling—was that what she was implying?
“No, Cassandra. Sorry.” Honestly, the morning’s uncomfortable realizations about him and Lucy not having an emotional connection were making him not want to have his yearly fling. It seemed pathetic now. Maybe he’d only thought he’d been connecting with these women, just as he’d thought he’d been connecting with Lucy during their twice-monthly Saturday outings. Lucy had made him see that it hadn’t been true, at all.
“Please, Dad, help her!” Lucy’s voice was a shriek. He nearly jumped, it surprised him so much.
“Luce, I’m going to be busy with you. You and I can hang out and do stuff together. We can go to the library and read books together all day, if that’s what you want.” He would miss his job, and money would be tight, but at least the time spent together would bring them closer.
“But, Dad, you don’t understand...” Lucy got up and shrugged out of her backpack. She riffled through a stack of books and papers and pulled out a magazine.
Business Roundup. He stared at her, confused. This was an adult publication, and not something he or her mother read, that was for sure. He couldn’t quite picture bohemian Cassandra reading it, either.
Lucy flipped the pages open to an article she’d marked with a yellow sticky note and showed the pages to him. One featured a huge, glossy picture of a severe, unsmiling woman.
He blinked and looked up at his daughter.
“This is Sarah Buckley,” Lucy said. “Haven’t you heard of her?”
Should he have? He shrugged and held up his hands.
“She’s one of the most important women in Silicon Valley,” his eleven-year-old informed him.
He studied the picture again. Sarah Buckley wore a black suit jacket with a white shirt and had dark chin-length hair. Her fighting gaze made her look like she battled and scrapped for what was hers and never gave up trying.
“I didn’t know you were interested in business,” he said to Lucy.
“She’s a woman of substance. That’s what it says. Read the article.”
He took the magazine from her and flipped through the piece. It was five pages long. When he heard his daughter loved the library, frankly, he’d thought she meant the young adult section. Cassandra had all kinds of artsy friends who wrote literature for kids and teens, but seriously...business magazines?
“Sarah Buckley talks about setting life goals and making daily progress and moving above the limitations of your background.” Lucy set her chin as she spoke, and in that moment, there was no question, she absolutely reminded Sam of the driven woman profiled in the piece.
He moved away from the magazine with the photograph of the intense Silicon Valley executive that Lucy so admired. He strode over to a couch across the room and sank deeply into the cushions. The whole day so far had been staggering to him. What other parts of herself had Lucy kept hidden from him? He had such a gap to bridge with her that it felt overwhelming.
Lucy settled back in the chair, rereading the article about the woman she obviously idolized. Cassandra wore a thoughtful expression that Sam couldn’t place.
“She’s my niece,” Cassandra said quietly. “My deceased sister’s only daughter. She’s in trouble with her job and she’s coming here to destress for the summer.”
“Sarah Buckley is your niece?” He stood up and glanced over Lucy’s shoulder at the photograph again. He saw no family resemblance to Cassandra.
A movement out the window caught his attention. On the beach, a crew on a town dump truck was delivering freshly painted lifeguard stands to each of the assigned stations.
A pang went through him. As much as he wanted to improve his relationship with Lucy this summer, the reminders of what he was giving up for that made Sam think again of all the good things he loved about his job that he would miss once he tendered his resignation. He would miss the early morning swims with the lifeguard teams, being calmed by and at peace in the vast, powerful ocean, his refuge since he’d been able to walk. Being one with the ocean was a feeling he couldn’t easily describe, a home to him. It was his peace and his anchor. He’d hoped Lucy would feel this way too, but she didn’t.
Not everybody loved the ocean, he reminded himself. Lots of people couldn’t swim or didn’t know how to manage the powerful rip currents that could drown even strong swimmers in seconds if they didn’t know how to read and navigate the tide’s unique signals. Sam loved the rescue teams, the camaraderie of the other lifeguards, his older bosses and the younger men and women, still in college, that he trained and mentored. He loved helping lost kids find their families and he loved diffusing tensions between beachgoers who’d sat too long in hot summer traffic.
He was good at it. He would do it year-round if the wages were good enough and he lived in a region of the country that supported it. Because of Lucy, he had stayed in Wallis Point, a town close to her home. It had now become his permanent home, too.
“Dad, you shouldn’t quit your lifeguard job,” Lucy pleaded again. “Please let me stay with Cassandra.”
She must have been watching him stare wistfully at the beach. The magazine was slack in her lap, and her serious brown eyes seemed sorry for him.
“She’ll be in good hands here,” Cassandra added softly.
“What about your work?” he asked Cassandra.
She resumed washing her brushes. “Don’t worry about me. I always take care of myself.” She glanced up at Sam with an expression he couldn’t quite read. “I’ve never told anyone this, but I do have regrets from Sarah’s childhood.”
Both he and Lucy had given her their full attention. They waited for her next words with rapt curiosity.
“Her parents both died when Sarah was twelve.” Cassandra paused to scrub at an especially tough stain on one of her brushes.
“I know this story.” Lucy jumped in eagerly. “Sarah talks about it in the article. She said that facing tragedy and then a difficult home life in her younger years helped hone her focus and showed her the importance of hard work in creating her own destiny.” She read from the magazine. “‘Because only in creating one’s own destiny can one ever be free.’” She put the magazine down. “She won a full scholarship to study engineering at university, where she started developing her own patents and inventions. She started her own company, and now I think she’s really rich. Nobody can push her around anymore.”
Sam stared at his daughter, confused on all kinds of levels. Money was what was important to Lucy? He hadn’t had an inkling that she placed so high a value on wealth. He certainly hadn’t passed that onto her. Business and power had never been important drivers to him. He was more of a helper, and he liked to live simply. Humbly. Sarah Buckley’s world just wasn’t his kind of place.
Cassandra shuffled over, bringing the platter of blueberry cake with her. She plunked it down before him. “Some refreshment, Sam?” she asked drily.
“That is just like what Hannah the witch gave to Nathaniel, too!” Lucy exclaimed. “Dad, you can be Nat!”
Cassandra raised an eyebrow at him.
“Let me guess,” he said, realizing he would have to get used to living with Lucy on her terms and not just spending two afternoons per month on a fun, distracting outing he’d dreamed up. “I’m living in The Witch of Blackbird Pond?”
“Nathaniel was Kit’s love interest. They both needed blueberry cake and kittens to find their happily ever after,” Cassandra explained.
“They get married in the end,” Lucy piped up. “Neither of them see it coming. But it’s true love and a happy ending.”
“Mm-hmm. Right.”
“Cynical about love, are you?” Cassandra asked him with a smile.
He laughed. “I’m not cynical about anything.” Actually, he was amazed that Lucy was talking so much, and about things she never talked about with him. With Sam she was always so serious and polite. This afternoon’s conversation was a revelation, even if much of it was disturbing to him. A reminder of how much he’d let himself off the hook as a parent.
He shook his head. It was bewildering, sometimes, that he was even a father to a daughter.
With a sigh, Cassandra sat beside him on the couch, patting his knee with her hand as she did so.
“Lucy will be safe and happy here, Sam. Let me watch her during the days for you—this is what she wants. And my cottage is close by—you can glance back at it any time of day from the beach, and here she’ll be. Except when we’re at the library, of course. And, yes, I do have an ulterior motive in wanting to keep Lucy around for the summer. It plays to my own guilt.”
“I don’t understand.”
“As I was saying before, I wasn’t there for Sarah when she needed me,” she said in a low voice. “After her parents were killed in an automobile accident.”
“So, where were you?”
Cassandra glanced at Lucy, who now had two cats on her lap. The second was a huge guy who looked part Maine Coon, with big bushy ears and a thick black coat. He blinked his green eyes slowly and purred while Lucy petted him.
“That’s Simmonds,” Cassandra said. “The smaller male in the tuxedo fur is Becker.” She turned back to Sam. “Let’s you and I step outside for a minute. Lucy will be fine with my two boys to keep her company.”
He nodded and rose with Cassandra. Lucy barely noticed, so busy was she talking to Becker, who actually seemed to be “talking” back.
“Becker rules the roost,” Cassandra said, as she crossed her small porch and sat in a blue metal seat. Sam sat across from her on an Adirondack chair. “He’ll be out here squawking in an instant if anything happens with Lucy. Have I ever told you the story about Becker waking me up when the kitchen was filled with smoke? A wire shorted and I didn’t hear the smoke alarm, I’m such a heavy sleeper.”
Sam smiled politely. He wasn’t a cat person himself.
“Ah, well.” Cassandra settled back and closed her eyes. The breeze stirred her gray hair and she sighed. “About Sarah. She was left alone after her parents died, and I wasn’t aware that she didn’t have anybody else except me to rely on until months later. I was in Naples, you see.” Her mouth twisted. “And back then...” She lifted her hands and shrugged. “The authorities in the States didn’t know where I was. They tried after the funeral, but couldn’t locate me in time.”
“What happened to Sarah?”
“She was put into a foster home. Maybe two.”
Oh. Hell.
That made Lucy’s situation look like a walk in a park. “Are you okay with your relationship now?” he asked.
Cassandra leaned forward on her cane and stretched out her legs in front of her. The legs of her batiked pants billowed like flags in the breeze.
“It’s certainly affected her and how she feels toward me, I can’t deny that. I’m not sure she ever forgave me for my initial choice to skip the funeral. The truth was, I couldn’t bear to face it. And by the time I realized what had happened to her and flew back to the States to fetch her, she’d managed to win herself a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school in California and was building her own life for herself. I didn’t stop trying to make it up to her, but...” Cassandra paused. “I had my own problems at the time,” she admitted. “There...was a reason I was in Naples to begin with.”
“And what was that?”
She waved her hand. “It’s not important now. The important thing is that Sarah reached out to me and she’s coming here to relax on her sabbatical.” She gazed out to sea. “I’m hoping the slower pace can help her.”
A summer by the sea could do a lot to help heal people. He’d seen it himself.
“When is the last time you saw your niece?”
“In person?” Cassandra turned her face to the sun. “It must be since she graduated from college.”
“That long?”
“She’s usually quite busy with her job, Sam.” Cassandra crossed her legs. “My thought is that Sarah and Lucy can each be good influences for one another. I confess—I was the one who told Lucy about Sarah. A young girl needs female role models. And for Sarah, getting out of her own head and teaching Lucy what she’s learned would distract her from the stress of work she’s dealing with.”
“I thought your goal this summer was to improve your relationship with Sarah.”
“It is. If she and Lucy click, it could help us all quite a bit. I want to create a good environment for both of them.”
He still felt skeptical. Was this really the best thing for Lucy?
“I had my choices to make, Sam,” Cassandra said softly. “I did the best I knew how.” She placed her hand on her cane and leaned closer to him. “So, will you help me? Will you bring my niece into a class or two with your lifeguards? Encourage her to take Lucy to the library now and then? They could talk about their common interests. Topics that you and I don’t have the passion for or knowledge of but that they seem to share.”
When Cassandra put it like that, it didn’t seem so harmful. A relaxed childcare and niece-helping arrangement that just might make sense for everyone.
Most important, it was what Lucy wanted.
“Well, okay. Sure. As for the meditation lessons, we’ll play it by ear once your niece gets here—that’s the best that I can do.”
Cassandra nodded, obviously relieved. “Sarah is coming at the end of next week. Sam, I can start watching Lucy for you immediately if you’d like. I would enjoy taking her to the library as she pleases. I don’t have any contracted commitments for the next month at least, so this would fill my time and give me great pleasure.”
Having Cassandra provide childcare for Lucy while he worked would help Sam with his finances. And he did love his job.
Plus, he would still see Lucy in the mornings and evenings, at lunch time and around his shifts...
“Fine. I’m off work already this week, and I don’t start lifeguarding until Monday morning. I’ll walk Lucy over to your cottage then. You can bring your niece over to my lifeguard station when she arrives, and I’ll talk to her about the classes.”
Cassandra gave him a relieved smile. “That sounds lovely.”
The wind was kicking up again; they should go back inside soon. “So...we’re set with our plan for summer? Lucy rejoins her mother on Labor Day weekend. Or is there a problem with your schedule for the month of August?”
Cassandra hesitated. “No, not a problem, but...”
He waited.
“My gentleman friend in Naples...we’ve kept in touch all these years, and there is a possibility he might visit for a week in August. We haven’t decided on that yet. It depends how well things are going with Sarah and me.”
“Is this gentleman friend the same reason you were in Naples when Sarah’s parents died?”
“It was.” A sad expression crossed Cassandra’s face. “But before he commits to visiting, I’m waiting to see how Sarah feels about it.” Cassandra looked quickly at Sam as if to reassure him. “If he does come, I’ll have him stay at the Grand Beachfront Hotel while he’s here. My cottage is so small.”
Sam couldn’t help asking, “Was it a love affair that kept you from Sarah?”
“It was.” Cassandra turned her face to the wind, and he’d never seen a woman so grief stricken. “I told you I had regrets, Sam.” She swallowed.
“Yes,” he said, thinking of his regrets with Lucy. He and Cassandra both had relationships to mend.
They sat companionably, side by side. With her faraway look, Cassandra seemed to be revisiting memories. He turned his own face to the sun. It warmed him even though the wind was brisk, and the rolling ridge in the beach blocked the worst of the gusts. It struck him that maybe this summer could work out well, after all, and be beneficial to all of them.
“We’ll keep Claudio’s visit between us,” Cassandra suddenly said. “For now. Until Sarah arrives.”
“Sure,” he agreed. He didn’t see how Cassandra’s secret could possibly affect him and Lucy.
“Well,” Cassandra sat up and patted his knee, then reached for her cane. “Come. Let’s go see what your very bright and imaginative daughter is up to now.”
Yes. He was curious about that himself.
He stood, opened Cassandra’s cottage door for her and held it while she made her way back inside.
“Be patient with my niece when you meet her,” were Cassandra’s final words on the subject that morning. “She’s had a hard life.”
Sam just nodded.
A week later, he regretted everything he’d agreed to with Cassandra for his and Lucy’s summer.
