Текст книги "What I Thought Was True"

Автор книги: Huntley Fitzpatrick

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Chapter Seven

After we stop at the bridge for my clothes, we head down High Road and pass the Field House, where the mowers are stored—and where the yard boy’s summer apartment is, right over the garage. But for sure Cass wouldn’t be staying there—he’d be going home to that sailing ship of a house. Just in case, I scrunch lower in my seat, the peeling vinyl scraping my thighs.

Nic shoots me a look, but says nothing. I sink farther down, yawning for extra authenticity. Soon I’ll be skulking around my own island in a wig and a trench coat.

“So the bonfire’s on Sandy Claw tonight,” Nic says. “Bo Sanders. Manny and Pam and a few more. Hoop wants to hit it, but he doesn’t wanna drive home, so Viv’s picking us up.”

“You can drop me off at the house.”

“No way, cuz. You’re coming. The recluse bit is getting old. You know you love these things.”

And I do. I mean, I always have. Just . . .

“You’re coming,” Nic repeats firmly.

“Yes, sir, Master Chief Petty Officer, sir.” I salute him.

“You mean Admiral, Ensign,” he corrects, elbowing me in the side. “Show some respect for the uniform I don’t have yet.”

I laugh at him.

No one can say Nic is unambitious. Since career night freshman year, he’s had One Big Dream. The Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. He’s got pictures of it—their sailing team, their wrestling team, on the wall of the bedroom he shares with Grandpa Ben and Emory, the Coast Guard motto—WHO LIVES HERE REVERES HONOR, HONORS DUTY—scrawled over his bed in black Sharpie, he does the workout religiously, obsesses about his grade point average . . . basically a 180 from the laid-back Nic of old, the guy who could never find his homework binder and was always looking up with a startled “Huh?” when called on in class. It’s the same raw focus he’s had with Vivien since childhood. One can only hope that that discipline someday extends to picking up and washing his own clothes.

“Seriously, Gwen. If I have to drag you. I can bench nearly my body weight now.” He cracks his knuckles at me threateningly, then shoots me his sidelong, cocky grin.

I elbow him back. “For real? Does Coach know? How long till you can bench him?”

“Only a matter of time,” Nic says smugly.

I burst out laughing. Coach is huge. “You really need to work on your inferiority complex, Nico.”

“Just calling it like it is, cuz.” Nic’s smile broadens. It’s quiet for a second. Then his face sobers. “I want that captain spot so bad I can taste it. It’s gotta go to me, Gwen.”

“Instead of Cass or Spence, who always get what they want?” A note Nic hits a lot. He was by far the star swimmer before they transferred in last September.

Nic shrugs.

I bump his shoulder with my own. “You leave them both behind every time, Admiral.”

We ditch Hoop’s truck in his pine-needle-covered driveway and reach our house on foot just as Vivien pulls up in her mom’s Toyota Corolla. She beeps at us, waving Nic over. He leans through the window, kisses her nose, then her lips, hands slipping down to gather her closer. I look away, squeeze the dampness out of the fraying hem of my shorts.

Viv. The first serious Nic Cruz Goal I can remember.

We were eleven and twelve. I decoded the scribbly cursive in his I WILL notebook, this goal journal he kept hidden under his mattress—not a safe spot when your cousin is hunting for Playboys, wanting to bribe the hell out of you. But the I WILL journal proved even more useful than porn, most times.

Kiss Vivien.

I figured Hoop had dared him. Despite the wedding ceremony when we were five, I didn’t think of them as a couple. It was thethreeofus. But there it was, spelled out in red pen right in the middle of his other goals: Be next Michael Phelps. Own Porsche. Climb Everest. Find out about Roswell. Make a million dollars. Buy Beineke house for Aunt Luce. Kiss Vivien.

For some reason, that one I didn’t tease him about.

Then a few months later the three of us were sitting on the pier at Abenaki, enjoying the post–Labor Day emptiness of the beach. Nic reached into his pockets, pulled out a bunch of flat rocks.

“Pick me a winner,” he’d said to Vivie. She’d cocked her head at him, a little crinkle between her eyebrows, then made a big show of finding the perfect skipper, handing it to him with a flourish.

“One kiss,” he’d said softly, “for every skip.”

The stone skated over the water five times, and my cousin claimed his reward from my best friend while I sat there still and silent as the pile of rocks, thinking, I guess Hoop didn’t dare him.

“Gwen’s trying to bag out on us, Vee.” Nic’s voice breaks into my thoughts.

Vivie shakes her head firmly. “Miss the first bonfire of the season?” she calls through the open window. “Not an option!” She reaches over, holds up a supermarket bag, shakes it at me. “I got the gear for s’mores!”

Nic has already climbed into the front passenger seat. He ducks forward, flipping it so I can climb in the back. “C’mon, cuz.”

I sigh and tell them to hold up while I change my soggy clothes. When I get inside, Mom’s got the phone to her ear, frowning. She holds a finger to her lips, jerking her head at the couch. Grandpa’s fast asleep, head tipped back, mouth open. Emory is curled like a cashew nut, his head in his lap, snoring softly.

“Yes, I understand. Yuh-huh. Extensive cleaning. Yes. Top to bottom. Of course. By four o’clock tomorrow? Oh, well, that is a Saturday and—uh-huh. Okay.” Mom sighs, rustling the pages of the book on her lap. “Allrighty then.”

When I come back out in a baggy shirt and an even older pair of shorts, Mom’s off the phone and buried in her latest bodice buster. She carefully marks her spot with a finger. “You’re going out?”

I shrug. “Beach with the guys. What was that? Someone already giving you hell?”

Mom sighs again. “It’s those Robinsons.”

I’d already turned toward the door, but stop in my tracks.

“They’re back?”

“Renting the Tucker house again for the next two weeks. Some wedding in town—cousins of theirs. Want the house to sparkle. By tomorrow.” She rubs her thumbs over her temples. “Here for only a few weeks every few summers, and I swear, they’re more trouble than half the regulars put together.”

“Can you pull that off? By tomorrow?”

She shrugs. “No choice, really. I’ll manage.” Mom’s theme song. Her glance drops to her book once again and she smiles at me wickedly. “I’ll think about it later. I’m pretty sure this Navy Seal is about to find out that the terrorist he’s been sent to capture is his ex-wife—and she’s pregnant with his triplets . . . and married to his brother.”

* * *

When I slide into the backseat of the car, there is the necessary interval of waiting while Nic and Vivien make out. I hum under my breath, trying to ignore the kissing noises and rustle of clothes. After a couple of minutes, I lean forward, tap each of their shoulders. “I’m right here,” I whisper.

Nic looks back, wiping Vivien’s shiny peach lip gloss off, winks at me. Vivien just smiles in the rearview mirror, eyes bright. Then she reads my face. “What’s wrong?”

“The Robinsons are coming back,” I say flatly, digging in my pocket for the mascara I grabbed from the bathroom.

She blows out a breath, ruffling the little strands of hair stealing out of her pigtails. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Shit,” Vivie says, turning the key in the ignition, squealing backward with a jolt. Nic and I brace ourselves, his hand against the dashboard, me with my feet flattened against the back of the driver’s seat. Viv jerks the car forward and revs the motor like she’s in the Indy 500. She flunked her driving test three times.

“Yeah,” I mutter.

Nic’s leaned back now, his elbow resting on the sill of the open window. “Don’t worry about it,” he says.

I swallow, shrug, scratching at a mosquito bite on my thigh. Vivien roars into the driveway of Hooper’s house, narrowly missing the mailbox, and leans heavily on the horn, blasting so loudly I expect it to blow leaves off the nearby trees. Without looking, Nic reaches over, lifts her hand, and kisses it. “I think you’ve made your point.”

Hoop bounds down the steps, his hair sticking up in all directions. As usual he looks like he dressed in the dark—plaid shirt, ratty striped shorts. He whacks Nic on the back, then slides in next to me, too close. “Yo Gwenners!” he says, nudging me with a pointy shoulder.

“Hey, Hoop, whoa, can I have some space?”

“Sure, sure.” He slides a fraction of an inch farther away, then smiles at me goofily. We peel down the hill, headed for the less ritzy of the Seashell beaches. The summer people stick to Abenaki, which is shielded from the open sea, has gentler waves and a less rocky beach. That’s where they moor their boats. But Sandy Claw is where the local kids go, the place for illegal fireworks and loud music from someone’s car speakers. In fact, the sound of the music as we drive close is so loud Vivien has to shout to be heard. “This catering thing, tomorrow? It’s got a black-and-white theme. The uniforms work fine for us, Gwen, but Nico, you’ll need a dinner jacket.”

Nic groans. “Tell me no tux. Please, Vee. I lose half the cash I make renting the damn thing.”

“If I have to wear a monkey suit, I’m out,” Hoop says. “Turns off the ladies.”

Vivien’s eyes widen at me in the rearview mirror, comically large. Five-foot three-inch, clothing-challenged Hoop, the chick magnet. Maybe if he’d stop calling them “the ladies.”

Sandy Claw’s already crowded when we get there, kids we’ve grown up with milling around the bonfire and the shore.

Hoop springs out of the car and heads for the cooler, brushing aside the cans of Coke and orange soda with single-minded purpose, rummaging for the beer. Vivien hauls a plaid picnic blanket from the back of the truck. She hands it to Nic, giving him her glowing, mischievous smile. After laying out the blanket, they immediately begin doing their thing. It’s a testament to . . . something about Nic and Vivie that no one even bats an eye at them macking all over each other. Nic calls to me as they lie down, “Grab me a brew, cuz?”

“To drink or should I pour it on you?” I call back. He ignores me, all wrapped up—literally—in Vivien.

Pam D’Ofrio walks over next to me, says only, “Really keeping it PG tonight, aren’t they?” in her flat, deadpan voice.

We’re joined by Manny Morales, Marco’s—the head maintenance guy’s—son.

We talk for a few minutes about summer jobs—Manny’s doing dishes at this place called Breakfast Ahoy, Pam’s working at Esquidaro’s Eats, one of Castle’s rival restaurants.

“It beats babysitting,” Pam says. “Last year I sat for the Carter twins. They were four and so crazy their mom insisted I put them on those leash things when I took them out. My first day, we were walking to the playground and they wrapped their leashes around a telephone pole, tied me up like a spider with a fly and ran off. Took me ten minutes to undo the knots. Little SOBs.”

“Didja quit?” Manny asked.

Pam shakes her head. “No guarantee what I quit for wouldn’t have been even worse.”

Manny asks, “You gonna rat me out to my dad if I snag a beer?” He’s sixteen and Marco’s strict.

We shake our heads.

He comes back, settling down heavily next to us against the waterlogged old tree trunk that’s been on the beach forever. Nic and Vivien carry on like our own private floor show.

“Must be nice,” Pam says. “Being comfortable doing that. In public.” She shakes her head. “Can’t imagine.” Pam has been with Shaunee, her girlfriend, since eighth grade.

Manny drains half the bottle, wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “At least they’re putting a ring on it,” he says, lifting his elbow at Nic and Vivien.

“What?” I ask.

“Getting hitched, right?”

I scoot back in the sand, staring at him. “What?” I say again. Then laugh. “No way. Why would you think that?”

“My brother Angelo works at Starelli’s Jewelers, in the mall. Nic and Vivien were in this weekend, checking out engagement rings.” Manny scratches the back of his neck, looks uncomfortable, like he just said more than he should have.

I peek over at Vivien and Nic. He’s smoothing her hair back and giving her these nibbling kisses along her jawline.

It can’t be true. Vivien’s incapable of keeping anything to herself about Nic (way more than I want to know about my cousin). And Nic, while he doesn’t tell me everything . . . he’d never keep a thing that big from me. Ever.

Manny’s pushing at the sand with his feet, avoiding my eyes, and I realize I should have said something in return, but I can’t even find words.

Getting married?

That’s crazy.

I mean, I imagine they probably will eventually. Eventually. Vivien is seventeen. Nic just turned eighteen last month. . . .

Mom and Dad were seventeen and eighteen when they got married. But look how that turned out. And that was years ago. A whole different time. Nic and Viv . . . now?

“Not that crazy. It happens,” Pam comments quietly. I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud. “Dom married Stace right out of SBH.”

Yeah, and Stacy took their one-year-old and moved to Florida two years ago.

What about senior year? What about the Coast Guard?

Is Vivien pregnant? No, impossible, she’s on the Pill and Nic is hyper-responsible.

I lie back on the blanket, rest my arm across my eyes, listen to the general blur of conversation. It’s still warm, but the angle of the sun has that flat, end-of day slant. When I peer through the canopy of my arm, I can see that Vivien has temporarily disentangled herself and is toasting a marshmallow, carefully turning it to the perfect puff of brown on each side, just the way Nic likes it. At cookouts this summer, I know he’ll nearly burn her hot dog—Viv likes it charcoal-briquet style—and load it down with ketchup, mustard, mayo, relish. After the Fourth of July parade on Seashell, when everyone eats Hoodsie Cups, she’ll snag two but eat the chocolate half of both, swapping with Nic so he gets both vanillas.

Now he’s watching her lazily, sifting through the sand next to him, probably in search of another flat skipping stone.

But . . . an engagement ring?

Hooper is attempting to get Ginny Rodriguez to give him the time of day by asking her to bet on whether he can drink five beers in ten minutes without barfing.

Manny scratches the back of his neck again, red-faced and uncomfortable. The flush could be the beer, but he seems to know he put his foot in it. “Gwenners,” he starts, then looks up and jumps to his feet. “Dude. You came.”

I shield my eyes and peer over at the newcomer.

Great.

I mean come on. Three times in one day!

“Sure I did,” Cass says easily, lifting a hand to greet Pam. He gives me a quick glance, then looks down, lashes shielding his eyes. “I’m an island guy now, right?”

“You are not,” I practically growl, “an island guy.”

Manny straightens, startled. Pam’s eyebrows rise and she looks back and forth between us.

“Course he is, Gwenners. He’s working for my dad. He’s an honorary Jose, aren’t you, dude? Nab something from the cooler and take a load off. The first days are killers.”

“Ah, it’ll be okay,” Cass says, “once I figure out the whole horizontal thing.”

That’s it. I feel suddenly exhausted. Cass. Nic, Viv, engagement ring. The Robinsons. The lobsters. I clamber to my feet, feeling as though I weigh about a thousand pounds—and, let’s face it, probably looking like it in my baggy, so-attractive clothes. I walk over to Nic and Viv, nudge Nic sharply with my toe, jerk my thumb toward the pier. “Let’s head out.”

Like Pam and Manny, Nic does a quick double take at my tone, checking Vivien for translation. She glances over at Cass, wrinkles her nose, then stands up, pulling Nic with her. We walk to the edge of the pier, dangle our legs over. Well, Nic and I do. Vivien slides her legs over Nic’s, entwines her hand in his. I open my mouth to ask, then think: If they haven’t told me, they don’t want me to know, and shut it again.

“Check that out,” Vivien says in a hushed voice, pointing out across the water. It’s low tide, shoals of rippling sand peeking up out of the sea-glass-green water, ancient-looking gray-brown rocks, the sun burning low and pale orange in the sky. “This is the most beautiful place in the world, isn’t it? I never want to leave. Everything I love is right here.” She rests her head on Nic’s shoulder.

I look at our legs lined up together. Viv’s skinny and already tan, Nic’s well-muscled and sturdy, and mine, long and strong.

Nic scrounges in his pocket for the skipping stones from earlier, hands me one, nods at the ocean. I squint, slant the stone to what seems the perfect angle, fling it out. One. Two. Three . . . sort of a sinking four. Nic edges Vivien off his lap, cocks his head to the side and throws.

Six.

“Still the champion.” He hauls Vivien to her feet, swoops her in for six kisses.

“It’s not as though Gwen is after what you are,” Vivien points out, a little breathless after kiss number four.

No, it isn’t. But . . . God, I wish, for the millionth time, that I could be like her and Nic, so sure of what they have, what they want. That I didn’t always feel jangly, restless, primed to jump off a bridge and let the current carry me away. I glance over my shoulder at the distant blond figure standing by the bonfire.

Especially tonight.

Chapter Eight

Dark’s just starting to glow into light the next morning when I bike down to the beach. I can barely make out the figure standing at the end of the pier, hands on hips, surveying the water. Only that familiar stance tells me it’s Dad. As I get closer, I see his tackle box open, a big bag of frozen squid beside him. He called last night, told me to meet him at Sandy Claw early.

I’d expected him to get on me for bailing on him at Castle’s this summer. But when I’d said on the phone “Hey Dad, I’m sorry that I—” he’d cut me off.

“You gotta do what you gotta do, Gwen. But, since you’re not gonna be around every day, I want to do this. I’ve got something for you.” Now he looks up from the hook he’s baiting as I scramble over the rocks. Noting the cooler I’m carrying, he gives me the flicker of a smile.

“What’d you bring me, Guinevere?”

He takes the loaf of zucchini bread with a grunt of satisfaction, motioning to me to pour coffee from the thermos. I stayed up late last night, following the directions in Vovó’s stained old copy of The Joy of Cooking, and turning that engagement ring over and over in my head. When she’s worried, Vivien gives herself pedicures and facials. Nic lifts weights. I bake. So, Vivien ends up looking more glamorous. Nic gets fitter. And I just get fat.

“Damn good thing you can cook. Not like your mom. A woman who can’t cook . . .” He trails off, clearly unable to think of a terrible enough comparison.

“Is like a fish without a bicycle.” I was on debate team last year and we used that quote from Gloria Steinem as a topic.

“What does that mean?” Dad asks absently, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. I guess you could say he’s handsome. Not stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks gorgeous, but good-looking enough that I can squint and understand what Mom was thinking. He’s still fit and muscular in his mid-thirties, his hair thick. Nothing soft about Dad. He wears flannel shirts, year-round, sleeves rolled up to reveal the ropy muscles of his arms. He’s got high cheekbones and full lips, which both Emory and I inherited. “Did you bring cream cheese?” he asks.

“No, I did not, because cream cheese on zucchini bread is disgusting.” I hand him a tub of butter and a plastic knife.

“Sorry I haven’t seen much of you lately, pal. I’ve been doing the grunt work, gettin’ set up for the summer crowd. Sysco trucks coming and going to restock—they never tell you what time, keep you hanging all damn day—and I’ve got the new summer bunch for training—you know what that’s like.” Even though it’s been twenty years since Dad moved here from Massachusetts, his er’s are still a’s and his ar’s are ah’s. In fact, his accent gets stronger every year.

I refill the cup of coffee he’s already gulped down and pour one for myself.

“Start cuttin’ up the bait,” he directs, mouth full, handing me a box cutter and jerking his chin at the bucket of squid.

It’s still early June and not all that warm in the mornings yet. I feel as though my fingers are freezing to the slippery squid as I try to slice them—harder to do on the jagged rock than it would be on a flat surface. The tide is high, so the air’s not as briny yet, there’s a fresh breeze coming off the water, and the waves slap gently against the rocks. The dark blue sky overhead is fading fainter in the east.

“Good coffee.”

“Thanks.”

“Gwen.”

“Yes?”

“You’re making the pieces too big. The fish’ll just run off with the hook like that.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

More silence as he polishes off half the zucchini loaf and I deal with freezing cold slimy bait.

“Dad,” I finally say. “You were eighteen when you and Mom got married, right?”

“Barely,” he says. “Here, let me bait your hook.”

“Would you say that was . . . too young?”

He gives me a sharp look from under his thick brows. “Wicked young. We had no business getting hitched. But . . . well . . .” He clears his throat. “You were on the way and—why are you asking me this? You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”

“No! Of course not. Jeez. I’m on the Pill.”

He winces, and I realize I should have said I’d never even held hands with a boy, not reassured him about my effective birth control. Whoops.

“It was a medical thing. For my complexion and because my period was—”

Dad holds up a hand, hunching his shoulders in pain. “Stop! As for me and Luce, we were kids. Had no freaking clue what we were getting into.” He holds out his coffee cup. “Got more?”

I splash hot black liquid into his cup, the plastic top of the thermos, then ask something I’ve always wondered about. “Do you regret it? Marrying Mom? Like, if you had a do-over, would you?”

Dad takes a sip of coffee, screws up his face as though it’s burned his tongue, blows out a breath. “I’m no good at this garbage”—the way he says it sounds like gahbage—“imagining things fell out some different way than they did. Waste of time. That’s your ma’s territory, with all her foolish books. If you mean, do I regret you, no.” He hands me my pole, reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a wad of bills. “Your back pay.”

I take it from him, count it out, then hand him back half. Our tradition. He’ll put it into his pocket, then take it to the bank for my college fund when he deposits Castle’s income. Dad’s big on the fact that it matters that I see the money before half of it is gone. I’ll give most of the rest to Mom.

“You can have first cast, kiddo.”

I hoist the pole to my shoulder, fling it out, watching the fragile transparent line shimmer in the air as the hook dips into the waves.

“Decent,” Dad says. “Put a little more arm into it next time.”

He grins at me. For a moment, I feel this surge of affection for him and I want, the way I wanted yesterday with Mom, to tell him the whole story . . . the boys and Nic and Vivien and the ring and . . .

But we’ve never talked like that. So, instead, I reel my line in, hopeful for an instant as it snags hard on something, until I realize it’s just a clump of kelp.

“Pal, look.” Dad clears his throat, squinting as he stares out at the far horizon. “I’m gonna give you something my folks didn’t give me when I was your age.”

Not a car. Not a trust fund. Dad’s parents were, as Mom puts it, “unfit to have pets, much less kids.”

“What is it, Dad?”

“You can bait that hook and hand me my pole. What I’m going to give you, Gwen, is the truth.”

Here’s where, in one of Mom’s books, or the classic movies Grandpa Ben likes, it would turn out that Dad was actually royal but estranged from his family. That I was the next heir to . . . My imagination gives out at this point from sheer futility.

Dad casts, a perfect arc, line shimmering, glimmering out into the sea. “What’re you waiting for, Gwen? Get going!”

So I shove slimy squid onto another hook and cast out myself. I know I do it well. Strange how you can be good at something that doesn’t mean anything to you at all. But it’s always mattered to Dad. The times we spend fishing are some of our best, most peaceful. When he’s on the water, all Dad’s rough edges smooth out, like he’s sea-glass.

“You got your mom’s brains, and her looks. Sweet Mother of God, she was a beauty. Stopped your heart, seeing her.” He rubs his chest, looks out at the water, and then goes on. “You got those and my guts. You’re a hard worker and you don’t belly-ache about every little thing.” He pauses, wipes his fingers off on his faded shorts. “But the only chance you have of getting anywhere with any of that is to get the hell off this island.”

“I love Seashell,” I say, automatically. True and not true. I tip my face up as the first fingers of the sun stretch across the water. My feet in their worn flip-flops are cold, the chill of the rocks seeping through the thin rubber soles.

“Yeah, love,” Dad says. “That’ll get you nowhere fast. Look. I’m not going to sit here moaning about the mistakes I’ve made. What’s done’s done. But you’ve still got time. Chances. You can have . . .” He stops, his attention snagged by a distant sailboat. Dad checks out sailboats—the big beautiful ones like this Herreshoff gliding by, ivory sails bellying in the wind—the way some of the guys at school check out cleavage.

“Can have what, Dad?”

He throws back a gulp of coffee, grimaces again. “More.”

I’m not sure where he’s going with all this. Dad’s not really one for self-reflection. He concentrates on casting out his line, jaw tense.

After a few minutes he continues. “Here on Seashell, it’s always going to be us against them, and let’s face it—it’s gonna be them in the end, because ‘them’ gets to choose what happens to ‘us.’ Get off island, Gwen. Find your place in the world. You got a ticket in your hand already with the old lady losing her marbles.”

My line sways, spider-webbing in the water. Dad catches me by the elbow with one hand, and then carefully reels in my line, calloused warm hand over mine. “She’s loaded and she’s losin’ it. You’re gonna be there every day. Her family isn’t. Make the most of that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s redoing her will this summer. I heard her nurse, Joy, talking about it on line at Castle’s. Her son wants to take over power of attorney, so she’s tying up the legal stuff . . .”

“Dad, that has nothing to do with me.” Is he really suggesting what I think he’s suggesting? I feel like throwing up, and it’s not the combination of frozen squid and empty stomach. I look at Dad’s ducked head, incredulous.

“For God’s sake, the damn fish took the bait right off the line without me even feeling a tug. Bastard. Put some more on, pal. What I’m saying is you’ve got the goods to go places. Do it for me. Do it for your ma. Just be real smart, is all I’m telling you. Pamper that old lady within an inch of her life. Her family’s off in the city, she’s on her own. Better you wind up with a nice little chunk a change than them, the way I see it.”

“Dad . . . are you saying . . .”

“I’m telling you to keep your eyes open for opportunity. Mrs. E.’s not noticing stuff around her house the way she used to—and she never was one of those ones that knew exactly how many silver crab claw crackers she had, not like some of the fruitcakes your mom cleans for.”

I close my eyes, picturing Mrs. Ellington’s porch, the engraved silver of the tea service, the polished antiques, the leather-bound, gold-embossed books in the bookshelves. Her family legacy.

This is my legacy? Does Dad actually believe that the only way I’m likely to have anything is to grab somebody else’s? What happened to all his lectures about hard work and the people who got ahead were the ones who sucked it up and put their nose to the grindstone, and . . .

“Dad?”

I can’t seem to come up with anything more to say. He stares out at the water, at the distant horizon, eyes somber. I keep chopping bait, sliding it on the hook, bending and casting out. I remember Mrs. Ellington watching that separation of sea and sky during our interview, Nic, Viv, and I doing the same last night, and for the first time I realize that none of us are seeing the same thing. That all our horizons end in different places.

“So, I need you to fill in for me at lunchtime today. This won’t be a usual thing. But I just had to fire this kid—too much of a moron and always showing up late and high. I’m shorthanded for this afternoon. We’re gonna get slammed. Can you pinch hit? I’ll pay you overtime, even though it’s not a holiday. C’mon, pal.”

“I have a rehearsal dinner with Vivien and Almeida’s tonight. Plus watching Em all day. And Mrs. Ellington starts Monday. I can’t work all the time.” Visions of any summer lazing are quickly fading to black in my head.

“If you play it smart, like I said, you won’t have to.” He brushes zucchini bread crumbs off his faded olive green shorts, crumples the now-empty foil wrapper and sticks it back in the cooler. “But today, I need you. The first few weeks I’m figuring out who the bad apples are. And you’re my good egg.”

“Dad. About what you said. I mean, about Mrs. Ellington—”

“Just think about it, Guinevere, smart advice from your old man.” Dad takes the pole from me, securing the hook. “Embroider it on a pillow. Spray-paint it on your wall. Just never forget it: Don’t be a sucker. Screw them before they screw you.”