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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?”
