Текст книги "This is What Happy Looks Like"
Автор книги: Jennifer E. Smith
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
–Uh-oh.
–What?
–I forgot my phone.
–So?
–So how am I supposed to e-mail you now?
–I guess we’ll just have to talk.
Once they were out of the harbor—through the precarious maze of buoys and docks—Graham relaxed. The open water stretched out ahead of them, blue-green waves tipped in white, like some great confection coated with powdered sugar, and the thin line where the paler sky met the darker ocean with perfect symmetry. Everything shimmered under the gaze of the sun, and Graham closed his eyes against the wind and the spray of the wake on either side of the boat as they sliced through the water.
Beside him, Ellie stood with one hand on the wheel, moving it back and forth every so often, the tiniest of adjustments that went unfelt as the boat barreled ahead, leaving behind a trail of white foam. At first, they didn’t speak; the rush of the wind was too loud in their ears. But even without words, there was a complicity to the moment that felt louder than all the rest of it. Together, they had made their escape.
“See?” Graham shouted over the wind, and Ellie cocked her head in his direction. “You’re a pro.”
She shrugged. “Turns out it’s not all that different from a ski boat.”
The last time he’d been out here, Olivia had been the one at his side, and in between takes she’d brushed the flecks of water from her face and scowled. They had only two more days of filming left, and he knew she was excited to get back to L.A. For her, this was nothing but a time-out, an unwelcome break from her regular life, which consisted of photo-ops and fancy parties, manicures and meetings.
But now that Ellie had returned to him, Graham felt the last day approaching with a deep sense of dread. He would miss watching the fishing boats go out in the morning, the way the sun broke across the village green, the sound of the waves that seemed to follow you throughout the town. And, of course, he’d miss Ellie. He didn’t feel ready to say good-bye just yet, and the thought of it was something he’d been chasing from his mind with alarming frequency.
“Can I try?” he asked, and Ellie stepped aside, leaving two fingers lightly on the wheel until she was sure he had it. He peered out through the glass, watching the bow of the boat moving up and down like a rocking chair.
“You’re a natural,” she said, and to his surprise, she leaned against him, coming to rest beneath his free arm, which he looped around her shoulders. He was embarrassed by how tall this made him feel, how adult, with one hand on the wheel and his girl at his side, and he straightened his back and lifted his chin and let out a happy sigh.
“I think I’ve found my new calling,” he told her, and she laughed and slipped away from him again, quick as a minnow. She reached for her backpack and pulled out a water bottle, taking a sip, and then offered it to Graham, who shook his head. “I feel like Ahab,” he said. “Off on another quest.”
“Hopefully a more successful one this time.”
“It will be,” he promised.
“And if not, at least we’ll have found you a backup career for this whole acting thing,” she teased. “Sailing the seven seas.”
“That’s not the worst idea,” he said. “It sure beats L.A.”
She sat down on the bench that ran the length of each side of the boat, a place to stow tackle and nets and buoys. “I don’t know,” she said. “The circus probably never thinks the towns where they stop are boring either.”
“Are you saying I’m the circus?”
She grinned. “I’m saying you’re a clown, anyway.”
“Thanks,” he said, laughing as he looked out toward the shore, where enormous houses were perched along the rocky coast. They passed a sailboat, and the couple aboard waved. Graham lifted a hand in return.
“This is going to make things worse, isn’t it?” Ellie asked, and he glanced over at her. “Taking the boat.”
“It might,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s not like we’re smuggling drugs or anything.”
She looked at him sideways. “Does chocolate count?”
“No, I’m pretty sure that’s okay.”
“Good,” she said, pulling a bag of candy from the backpack and tossing it over to him. He caught it with one hand, then held the wheel with his forearm while he opened it. The chocolate was soft from the sun, and it melted on his tongue. He felt a spreading warmth expand in his chest, and he wished they could stay out here all day. But he knew they were on a mission of sorts, and it was there in Ellie’s every move: a grim sense of resolve.
“So are you nervous?” he asked, passing the bag back over to her. “To see your dad?”
She nodded, her lips pressed into a straight line.
“Do you have a plan?”
This time, she didn’t answer, and Graham wondered if his words had been whipped away by the wind; it almost seemed like she hadn’t heard him. But then she pushed her sunglasses up on her head, and he was able to see her green eyes again, focused on him with an intensity that made his heart skip like the bow over the waves.
“Remember that poetry course?” she asked, but she didn’t wait for him to respond. “It’s a big deal to get in. And I really want to go.”
He wrinkled his brow. “I thought you were.”
“I am,” she said, a bit too fiercely. “But I’m still short. And there are no scholarships.”
Graham sucked in a breath as he waited for her to continue, biting back the question he wanted to ask, though he knew it would be the wrong thing to say right now; the moment felt delicate, easily breakable, and so he kept quiet.
“I’m gonna ask him for the rest,” she said, and her words came out in a rush. “I can’t ask my mom for that much, and it’s not like he doesn’t have it.”
“How much—” he began, unable to help himself, but she cut him off, as if she hadn’t heard him.
“And it feels like he owes me at least that,” she said, digging at a groove in the wood with her fingernail. “All these years, and nothing. And it’s not like I’m using the money for something crazy or frivolous, like a car or a tattoo.”
Graham raised his eyebrows. “That’s true.”
“It’s for school,” she said. “It’s for Harvard.”
Against his better judgment, he cleared his throat. “How much do you still need?”
She raised her eyes to meet his. “A thousand dollars,” she said quietly, the words almost lost to the breeze, and then she bent her head over the wood again.
A thousand dollars, Graham thought, ashamed at how small the number seemed to him. He was reminded of the money his parents had used to send him to private school, how enormous that had seemed at the time, how much it had cost them to use it. Now things were different. A thousand dollars. Just last month, he’d paid a contractor almost twice that to build an indoor pen for Wilbur in the back of the laundry room. He’d seen his costars drop that much on a celebratory meal, and he was sure the many purses strewn around Olivia’s trailer added up to at least that, and probably even more.
He looked over at the curve of Ellie’s shoulders as she sat there on the bench. For her, a thousand dollars was clearly an insurmountable obstacle, enough to send her off on a stolen boat to seek out her estranged father. How easy it would be to write her a check, to hand her a thick stack of bills, to surprise her by sending the payment to Harvard without saying a word. But this wasn’t a movie, and he knew her well enough to guess that she wouldn’t consider him a hero, and she wouldn’t throw her arms around his neck in gratitude. There was a fragile pride to her that would never allow her to accept that kind of charity. This was something she had to do herself.
“What if…” Graham began to ask, keeping his shoulders square to the windshield. “What if he says no?”
Behind him, Ellie slung a hand over the side of the boat, letting her fingertips catch the spray of the water. “Then I’m not going,” she said, her voice flat. “But how could he say no?”
What Graham didn’t say—what neither of them said—was that he would almost certainly say no if last night’s episode were to land him in the gossip columns just as he was revving up his fund-raising campaign. Graham realized now why she’d been in such a rush to leave. She was trying to outrun the news.
She stood up and sidled around him, reaching out to take the wheel. He stepped out of the way to let her drive, and she shifted the boat into a higher gear, the nose lifting out of the water as the engine dug in and they picked up speed.
When he looked over the side of the boat, Graham could see the dark shadows of fish beneath the surface. If things had turned out differently, he might be out here with his own father right now, their lines dangling, an easy silence between them as they waited for something to bite.
The shoreline was rougher here, the looming estates had given way to smaller fishing cabins, and he thought of all the other pairs of fathers and sons that might be gathering their gear at this very moment, ready to spend the holiday in quiet company. They all seemed so peaceful, so serene, these homes that dotted the shoreline. How nice it would be to have a house up here—nothing fancy, just a little cabin set back along the coast, a place to visit when he grew tired of the plastic landscape of Los Angeles, a way to keep this particular piece of the world with him even after he was gone.
“Hey,” he said, twisting around and pointing toward the shore. “Do you know what town this is?”
Ellie turned to look, then shook her head. “How come?”
“It just looks nice is all.”
“Look it up,” she suggested, and he felt for his phone in his pocket before remembering that he’d left it back at the hotel. He hadn’t done it intentionally, and he’d only realized this as they were gliding out of the harbor, but it wasn’t the worst day to lose his tether to the rest of the world. There was nobody he wanted to hear from at the moment, not Harry or Rachel or Mick or anyone else. Without it, he’d thought he might feel unhinged, but all he felt was free.
“I don’t have mine, remember?” he said. “Can I borrow yours?”
It was balanced on the dashboard in front of her, and she nudged it in his direction. He pulled up the map feature, waiting for the radar to register, a slow dance of pixels arranging themselves across the screen. The wind lifted the hair from his forehead, and he squinted out at the church steeple that rose from the trees along the coast, the idea of his future home growing more solid in his mind.
He was about to tell Ellie what he was thinking when they cut across the wake of another boat, their own vessel popping up like a skipped rock, and the phone went flying out of his hands in slow motion, pinwheeling end over end until it landed soundlessly in the water. The surface was too busy with foam to see even a ripple, and in seconds they were past it, the little square of metal probably halfway to the sandy bottom.
“Uh,” he said, his back still to Ellie.
“What?” she asked from behind him.
“Your phone…”
“Don’t tell me.”
“I’m afraid it’s swimming with the fishes,” he said, stepping over to her with what he hoped was a sufficiently apologetic look. “I’m really sorry. It just slipped.”
She groaned.
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
“That’s not very helpful at the moment,” she told him. “I was using that to navigate.”
He looked out the front of the boat. There were a few sailboats in the distance, and a motorboat toting a water-skier, and to the left, nearer to the shore, the harbors were speckled by buoys, each one capped by a resting seagull. The town he’d so desperately wanted to move to only a moment ago had slipped behind them, lost for now.
“We’ll be able to see it from here, though, right?”
Ellie shrugged. “It’s not like a train stop,” she said. “The towns aren’t labeled. I’m not sure how we’re gonna figure out which one it is.”
“I’m sure it’ll have a bunch of big houses.”
“I guess so,” she said, but the corners of her mouth were turned down, and her eyes gave away her worry.
“We can always ask someone.”
“How?” she asked. “By smoke signal?”
“We’ll wave them down.”
She glanced at her watch with a sigh. “It’s only eleven,” she said. “It’ll probably still be a while, anyway.”
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll just keep an eye out, then.”
“Okay,” she repeated, and above their heads, a seagull let out a long cry. Graham tipped his head back to watch, wondering what they must look like from the sky, dozens of boats spread far along the water, a mirror image of the birds fanned out across the sky. And in the middle of it all, the Go Fish, moving steadfastly past a series of identical towns as it carried them farther and farther up the coast, leaving only a trail of foam in its wake, like bread crumbs meant to guide them home again.
–Know any good sailing jokes?
–I’ve got one about seagulls.
–Okay.
–Why do seagulls fly over the sea?
–Why?
–Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bagels.
The sun followed them like a spotlight, making everything shimmer under the intensity of its glare. Ellie could feel the warmth across her shoulders and on the back of her neck, the tip of her nose, and the pale line of scalp that was visible against her red hair. It had been more than two hours now, and still they were drifting.
Graham scratched at his forehead, which was already starting to burn. He’d forgotten to pick up sunblock earlier, and they were now out of water too. Every so often, they shifted to a lower gear, slowing enough to wave at a passing boat and then shouting their question across the blue space between them. Sometimes, an answer was lobbed back at them—probably another half hour at most, or four more towns, tops—but other times, they were met with only blank stares or helpless shrugs.
Ellie tried to tamp down the anxiety that rose and fell like a parachute inside her. She wanted to be back in Henley, drinking pink lemonade out of star-spangled plastic cups. But if she was going to do this at all—and she had to, not just for the money, but for other reasons too, for all the things that had been left unsaid all these years—then she wanted to do it now.
Behind her, she heard a tapping sound, and she turned to see Graham with one hand on the wheel. He was frowning down at the little dials that dotted the dashboard, and as she watched, he lifted a finger to drum at one of them again. Beneath her feet, Ellie could feel something deep within the boat groan in resistance as they slowed down.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, walking over to join him. She put a hand on the throttle and tipped it forward, but rather than the expected surge, there was a soft sputtering, an alarming rattle, and then the engine cut out entirely, and the needle that Graham had been studying so intently—which Ellie now realized, too late, was the gas gauge—fell onto the E with a stiff-armed finality.
Graham looked over at her, his mouth forming a little o of surprise, and for a brief and fragile moment, Ellie felt a lump rise in her throat. Her eyes stung from the salt and she could feel a sunburn setting in, so hot it made her shiver. Here they were, floating up the coast with not a drop of gas left in their stolen boat. Behind them, there were reporters and photographers and consequences. There was Ellie’s mom and Graham’s manager and the awful memory of last night. But what lay ahead of them wasn’t much better, and now they were stuck somewhere in between, and her eyes burned with tears at the helplessness of the situation.
Beside her, she could feel Graham waiting for her reaction, holding himself perfectly still, like a deer caught between crosshairs. But when she finally gathered herself enough to look back at him, she was astonished to discover that he was trying not to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” she said. He tried to compose his face, but he couldn’t help himself, and a laugh escaped him. He looked like a movie star then, with eyes as blue as the water that surrounded them, his head crowned by the sun so that he seemed as wavy and indistinct as all the rest of it. She had a sudden urge to stand on her tiptoes and kiss him, and she could feel her panic melting beneath his gaze. After all, it seemed to be saying, what better excuse was there to stay out here for hours, just the two of them, at the whim of the tides?
“It’s a little funny,” he said, and she moved closer, taking his hands in hers.
“Maybe a little,” she admitted, but just as he lowered his head, just before she could rise up and kiss him, the air was split by the sound of a nearby siren, and they both turned to see a coast guard boat barreling in their direction.
Graham dropped her hands, and Ellie staggered over to lean against the side, her eyes wide as she watched its approach, the prow raised high in the air as the water churned all around it, alarming in its rush.
“What are the odds,” Graham said, “that they’ve realized we’re out of gas and are just coming over to help?”
“Slim,” Ellie said, her heart thumping hard. She’d never so much as stolen a pack of gum before, never sneaked a cigarette or cheated on a test, and now here she was, about to get caught stealing a boat. It wouldn’t matter that she wasn’t the one to have stolen it. She’d gone along with the plan. Because Graham had stolen it for her, and she could almost feel the guilt scrawled all over her face as she watched the gap between the two boats grow smaller. Theirs was more of a ship, really, huge and white and angular, with blaring red lights along the top. When they were close enough, a man in dark sunglasses and a bright orange Windbreaker raised a megaphone.
“Please remain where you are,” he said, the words crackling. “Do not move your vessel.”
“We couldn’t if we tried,” Graham mumbled.
“This is bad,” Ellie whispered. “Isn’t it?”
“It’s not good,” he admitted, but when he saw her face, he forced a cheerfulness into his voice. “It’ll be fine, though. It’s just a misunderstanding. We’ll work it out.”
When the coast guard ship drew up alongside theirs, the man lowered the megaphone. “This boat has been reported missing,” he called out. “Know anything about that?”
Graham cupped his hands around his mouth to call back. “It’s my fault, sir,” he said. “I was only borrowing it.”
The officer took off his sunglasses and squinted at Graham. “You’re that guy,” he said, looking perplexed. “From those movies.”
“Exactly,” Graham said, bobbing his head encouragingly. “I’m up here filming a new one, and we’ve been using the boat—it was a production guy who called it in, I bet, right?—and I guess I just forgot to let someone know.”
Ellie marveled at the ease of his explanation, the nonchalant way in which he chalked the whole thing up to a misunderstanding, and the reaction of the officer, who seemed to be absorbing all this with a thoughtful air. If it had been Ellie, she would have been stumbling through the story, flustered and nervous. Even if she were telling the truth, she would somehow manage to appear guilty.
“Give me a minute,” the officer said, holding up a finger. “I just need to verify this.”
He disappeared back into the cabin of the boat, and Ellie turned to Graham. Before she could say anything, he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “It does come in handy sometimes, this whole being-recognized thing.”
Even so, they waited in tense silence. A few Jet Skiers streamed past, their yellow life jackets bright against the water, and a plane flew low overhead. Ellie wasn’t wearing a watch, and her phone was now somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic, so she had no idea what time it was, but the sun had crossed the highest point, and she imagined it must be well after noon by now.
When the man returned, he took off his sunglasses and rubbed the back of his neck. “I spoke with the guy who called it in,” he said, then glanced at a piece of paper in his hand. “He didn’t realize you were the one who’d taken it. He said it’s no trouble at all, just to bring it back in one piece.”
Graham flashed a smile and lifted his hand in a little gesture of gratitude. “Thanks, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry to have caused any confusion.”
The officer nodded, and was about to turn around when Ellie called out to him. “Actually, we’re out of gas,” she said quickly, and he raised his eyebrows, looking weary at the prospect of another problem from the movie star on the borrowed boat. He didn’t offer any suggestions, just stood there looking at her, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “What should we do?”
Forty-five minutes later, the coast guard had towed them into a marine gas station in the small town of Hamilton. The two officers had been cordial about the whole thing—though Ellie suspected that underneath their professional veneers they were both thinking about what an idiot you’d have to be to run out of gas—and Graham even signed an autograph for one of their daughters.
They left them in the hands of a mustached man who set about filling the tank, bidding them good-bye with a smart tip of their coast guard caps. Ellie watched them go back out to sea, relieved to be on dry land, her stomach still flopping around like a beached fish.
“How far to Kennebunkport?” Graham asked while the attendant came around to examine the gauge, his wrinkled face pressed close to the dial.
“Ten minutes by bus,” he said without looking over.
“Why would we take a bus?”
“Because your gauge is busted,” the man said, straightening up. “I just filled you up and it’s still showing you’re empty. I need to fix the dial. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
Graham handed over his credit card, and they agreed to return later in the day. There was a local bus that arrived every half hour, stopping at each town along the coast, and the attendant crooked a finger up a tree-lined road to where they could apparently find the stop just in front of the town’s tourist center.
Their legs were rubbery after so many hours on the water, and they made their way across the street unsteadily. Ellie was relieved to see that the tourist center wasn’t far—a narrow wooden building that looked more like a tree house than any kind of office—and the bus stop was directly in front of it, nothing more than a red plastic bench and a nearly unreadable schedule tacked to the back of a stop sign.
Graham squinted at it. “Twelve minutes,” he said, then glanced at the tourist office. “Let’s check it out.”
Inside, an older woman with a halo of wispy hair was hunched behind the desk, her head bent over a thick book. Ellie began to wander around the periphery of the small space, which was lined with brochures about everything from sailboat rides to whaling trips to blueberry-picking expeditions, but Graham walked right up to the desk.
“Happy Fourth,” he said brightly, and the woman glanced up, her face registering no recognition. If there was an element of the job that required a welcoming demeanor, then she was certainly out of her depth. She made no move to ask if they needed help, only pursed her lips and stared at them over her glasses.
Graham pointed at the computer behind the desk. “We’ve had kind of a rough morning,” he said, his voice a little too saccharine, “and I was just wondering if it might be possible to borrow your computer to check in about something. Just for one quick minute.”
From where she was standing before a panel of brochures about lobster-related activities, Ellie smirked. She had no idea what he wanted the computer for, but it was obvious the woman—staring up at him with a befuddled expression—had no clue who he was, and even Ellie didn’t believe he could make this happen on charm alone.
But he flashed her a dazzling smile, uttered a somewhat sheepish “please,” and just like that, without a word, she was moving aside, tucking the book under her arm and clearing a space for Graham to sit beside the counter, like he was in charge of all tourist-related information for the town of Hamilton.
Afterward, as they walked out to wait for the bus, she rolled her eyes at him.
“What?” he asked. “Didn’t think I could pull it off?”
She shook her head in amusement. “What’d you need to look up anyway?”
“I just wanted to make sure there was nothing new,” he said. “Before we go see your father.”
Ellie blinked at him, impressed that he’d thought of it. “And?”
“Just the same old stuff,” he said. “Graham Larkin’s a brute, Graham Larkin’s a thug. Nothing you didn’t already know.” He said this jokingly, but there was a tightness to his voice too, and she remembered that he hadn’t checked the news before they’d left. That he’d done it for her—to make sure she was fully prepared before approaching her father—touched her deeply, and as the bus came squealing around the corner, she laid a hand on his arm.
“Thanks,” she said, and he nodded. As they climbed aboard, Graham produced a few bills for the driver, and they found a seat near the front, far enough away from the few other passengers, who gazed out the windows toward the back.
“So the next time that woman opens her computer,” Ellie said, leaning against the window, “her search history is going to say something like ‘Graham Larkin punches photographer.’ ”
He laughed. “I think it was actually ‘Graham Larkin clocks the idiot who got too close with his camera.’ ”
As they wound their way out of town, drawing nearer to Kennebunkport, the houses in the windows grew larger and more imposing, huge beachside mansions with porches that jutted out over the water, all of them topped with American flags that waved crisply against the cloudless sky.
Before she’d left this morning, Ellie had found the address of the house where her father was staying, a feat that hadn’t turned out to be all that difficult. The estate had a long history of being rented by important politicians, and there was a sizable paper trail left behind by the journalists who’d made a habit out of lurking around its edges. She’d sifted through enough images that even now, hours later, she could call up the weathered gray siding and wraparound porch with perfect clarity. But what she couldn’t imagine was walking up the flagstone path and knocking on those red double doors. What she couldn’t imagine was coming face-to-face with Paul Whitman.
She turned to Graham, who was hiding a yawn behind his hand. “Okay,” she said, her voice businesslike. “I need a plan of attack.”
“Going to war, are we?”
“I can’t just waltz up to his house without knowing how this is gonna work,” she said, swiveling to face him more fully. “What if his wife’s there? And his sons?”
“Your half brothers,” Graham pointed out, and Ellie shrugged.
“I guess.”
“Well, have you figured out what you want to say to him?”
“Sort of,” she said, which wasn’t exactly true. She had no idea what she wanted to say. How could she, when she wasn’t even quite sure how she felt? She’d spent years studying his photos and watching his interviews, observing the life he’d built from afar, wondering what it would be like to be part of it. But now that she was this close, the idea that he might not be happy to see her was too devastating to consider.
After all, he hadn’t ever denied that he was her father—at least not in any kind of official capacity—but he hadn’t ever acknowledged it either. Which meant that in the eyes of the world, she was still fatherless and he was still daughterless. And there was no way of knowing how he’d react when she showed up at his door. Was it possible that he might recognize her? Would she recognize him? And not just in the way she did in the newspapers, but on a deeper level; she wondered if there’d be some spark of familiarity, of belonging, something to indicate that they were more than just two strangers standing on opposite sides of a doorway. That they were family.
Ellie wasn’t sure. She was grateful to be armed with the knowledge that he wasn’t aware of what had happened last night, that at the very least, she hadn’t yet dragged his name through the papers. But there were still so many other unknowns.
“Practice on me,” Graham suggested, sitting up taller against the back of the seat and puffing out his chest. He dipped one eyebrow and arranged his mouth into an overly serious frown. “Hello there, young lady,” he said, and the imitation of her father was so striking that Ellie gave his arm a little shove.
“Stop,” she said. “Too weird.”
Graham relaxed again, unfazed. “Okay, then what?”
“I guess I’m just gonna knock on the door and see what happens.”
“At least you’ve got the element of surprise on your side,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “He’ll be caught off guard, and it’ll give you a chance to figure out how to play it.”
“I guess,” she said, turning back to the window.
As they neared the edge of the town, the smell of seafood was heavy in the air, wafting through the open windows of the bus. Up ahead, they could see that crowds of people filled the streets, and she felt a pang of regret at missing the celebration back in Henley. Rows of flags were draped above the long picnic tables, and a few curls of smoke twisted in the air above the shops.
Graham inhaled deeply. “Must be a clambake,” he said as the bus pulled to a stop in front of a much grander-looking tourist office, presumably with someone far more welcoming inside. Ellie didn’t relish the thought of passing through the throngs of people with Graham, who would surely attract unwanted attention, and once she stepped off the bus behind him, she handed over his sunglasses, which he’d left on his seat.
“Not as good as the mustache,” he said as he put them on. “But they’ll have to do.”
There was a map at the bus stop, and Ellie could see that the house wasn’t far, set off on a small peninsula just north of the main shopping district. They’d have to cut through town to get there, but once they made it through the busy streets, it shouldn’t take long. As she followed Graham in the direction of the party, she pictured the red front door of the house the way a quarterback pictures the end zone, trying to focus in spite of the noise and the music and the smell of food.
“I wouldn’t mind a lobster roll first,” Graham said as they reached the party, a sea of red, white, and blue shirts. Dozens of picnic tables were arranged end to end, stretching up and down the length of the main street, but the party spilled over onto the sidewalks and into the stores. There were children everywhere, in wagons and on bicycles, carrying water balloons or cookies, left mostly to their own devices as their parents tended the food or just tipped back their bottles of beer with willful obliviousness.
