Summer by the Sea Page 7

“I let her use your home phone to call him. Sam, he was in an accident yesterday, and he’s in the hospital. He needs to see her. I told her she had to go. Then we went to the beach to look for you, but we couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  “What time was this?” he asked.

  “Early. Like, nine o’clock.”

  He’d been out in the boat, leading swimming drills for the young lifeguards. All the chairs would have been empty at that time.

  “Well, why didn’t you contact lifeguard headquarters and have Duke call me on my cell?”

  Lucy stared blankly at him. Of course. She didn’t know what lifeguard headquarters was. She didn’t really know Duke, either. She’d met him few times in the past, but she’d been younger then, and Sam hadn’t connected the two in recent years.

  Bottom line, Duke was Sam’s best friend and had been his boss for the past twelve summers, and Lucy didn’t know him. That was Sam’s fault.

  “Cassandra could’ve left me a note at my house!” he said in frustration.

  “She did!” Lucy raised her voice to match his. “Didn’t you see it? It’s taped to the sliding glass door! How could you possibly miss it?”

  Sam groaned and held his head in his hands. Lucy looked like she was going to cry.

  He glanced up. He had to get control of this situation, and quickly. “Okay. It’s all right, Luce,” he said quietly. “Where is Cassandra now?”

  “Flying to Italy. She called for a car and then we went to the lawyer’s office because she needed to talk to her. Then they brought me here. Then she took the car to the airport.”

  “Lucy...you should have stayed at home and waited for me!”

  “I wanted to come here! I come here every day! You said that I could!” Lucy was close to sobbing.

  Did Cassandra even know what a storm she’d unleashed? Oh, never mind. Cassandra wasn’t Sam’s worry. His daughter was. And right now, she was extremely upset with him.

  Sam touched her shoulder as gently as she could. Other than red, swollen eyes, she seemed physically okay. “Would you like to go home and get something to eat?” he asked in his most soothing voice. “You must be hungry.”

  “No.” Lucy shook her head vehemently. “I ate the peanut butter sandwich I made at Cassandra’s house this morning.” She wiped her eyes. “And drank an orange soda. Cassandra bought me a case.”

  Mighty good of her, Sam thought bitterly. Attuned to the details, but not the big picture.

  But how could he blame someone else for what was his fault? He’d “hired” Cassandra. No, it was worse than that—he wasn’t even paying the woman. Maybe if he’d paid her, she would have treated the job of caring for his daughter more seriously.

  He sucked in his breath. That was it. He’d made his decision. He was quitting his lifeguard job tomorrow so he could concentrate on taking care of Lucy. He would make sure to do a better job from now on.

  “Is Sarah Buckley here yet?” Lucy suddenly asked, her eyes brightening.

  “Luce,” he sighed. “Let’s just go home.” He didn’t want to open the can of worms that was Sarah Buckley.

  “Is. Sarah. Here?” His daughter’s voice was strident.

  Sam stood, his head pounding. The last thing he wanted—or the situation warranted—was another angry scene with Lucy. He smiled as a woman walked by staring at them, a library patron. She glanced at his bare feet and shot him a frown.

  He just wanted to get of here. With Lucy. Beyond that, he had no intention of letting his daughter have anything to do with Cassandra’s niece. She wasn’t who Lucy thought she was. Sarah Buckley was the last person in the world he would ever consider for Lucy’s role model.

  “Let’s go,” he ordered, eager to get away from the woman who was still staring. “My truck is parked out front.”

  “No! You didn’t answer my question!”

  “Lucy, let’s go,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “I hate you!”

  A buzzing started in Sam’s ears.

  “I wish I wasn’t here!” Lucy wailed.

  “Lucy,” he said quietly.

  “I want to see Sarah!”

  He let out a breath. How could he tell her that Sarah Buckley wasn’t the person she expected? She would blow his daughter off in a heartbeat and crush her on her way out the door.

  Sarah Buckley certainly wasn’t worthy of emulation. He might have been amused and struck by her as a person, but as a role model for a kid, Sarah was terrible. She was rude. Bossy. In his opinion, she wasn’t someone that an eleven-year-old should be interacting with at all.

  “We’ll talk in the truck, okay? Let’s go.”

  Just then the librarian reappeared. “Sam, I talked to Tara and she vouched for you.” But then she noticed Lucy’s distraught expression, and a fresh look of concern appeared on her face. “Are you sure everything is all right here, Sam?”

  “Yes,” he answered, nodding seriously at her. He couldn’t even fake a smile anymore. He felt like a completely different person from the man he’d woken up as this morning.

  He turned to Lucy. “Please come with me,” he outright pleaded with her this time. “You can show me the note you and Cassandra left for me. I’m really interested in seeing it.”

  “Only if you let me see Sarah,” Lucy said sullenly.

  “Yeah. Sure. Okay,” he said. The librarian was staring at them both. If she knew Cassandra, she more than likely knew who “Sarah” was. Sam had to watch what he said about Cassandra’s niece in public.

  “Right now.” Lucy folded her arms. “We’ll drive to Cassandra’s cottage.”

  “Well, yeah. Okay.”

  Lucy stared at him. “You’re lying to me, aren’t you?” She wasn’t budging from her spot by the table, and he couldn’t very well drag her off. Not with the audience he currently had.

  There was nothing left to do but tell Lucy the truth and hope she saw reason.

  He focused fully on Lucy. “You said that you left Sarah a note, correct?”

  Lucy nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then she’ll definitely read it and know that you want to see her. So if she comes to see you at our house tomorrow, then I give my blessing to have a visit with her. As long as you both want one. But we’re not going to bother Sarah Buckley tonight because she’s tired from traveling. She’s just arrived from California and it was a long flight. Frankly, she’s in a bad mood right now.” And quite frankly, he was in a foul one himself.

  “All right.” Lucy stood. She must have appreciated his honest talk, because she ceased arguing and instead slung her loaded backpack onto her thin shoulders. “Let’s go.”

  Relieved, Sam stood, too, and prepared to herd her the hell out of here. He avoided meeting the librarian’s eyes because he’d lost his cool completely, and that embarrassed him. He felt as if he’d never met a middle schooler in his life. Dealing with his own child was completely different from handling students in his classroom.

  The librarian stood aside as he and Lucy retreated from the battered library table and left the community room together. From her sagging body language, Lucy seemed to be drooping in spirits. He couldn’t blame her for being tired and emotional. Cassandra’s impulsive stunt had drained the energy from all of them.

  Outside on the street, Sam’s double-parked truck had earned him a parking ticket tucked beneath the windshield wiper. Halfheartedly, Sam removed the slip of paper and tossed it inside his truck. Then he walked to the passenger side and unlocked the door for Lucy. It was a big step up from the street, so he held her backpack as she hoisted herself inside.

  The top of Lucy’s backpack was open, and Sam saw that she’d packed her teddy bear. His heart squeezed. His outwardly angry, near-teen daughter was also a vulnerable little girl who still needed the security of a teddy bear enough that she took it with her wherever she went. Maybe if h
e’d been a better father all along, this wouldn’t be so.

  Yes, Cassandra’s sudden departure had pushed them to this crisis. But he needed to make some changes.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, Sam called in sick. It was easier than giving notice just yet; this way, Duke wouldn’t come over to try and talk him out of it. Sam couldn’t deal with that stress today. He’d made his decision and he didn’t want anybody trying to change his mind.

  Besides, Sam couldn’t leave the house right now. Lucy was home, alternating between snapping at him and giving him sullen silences. Gone was the adult-like kid, and in her place was a girl who acted more like a wounded animal than a child.

  He knew she was unhappy, mostly because Sarah Buckley hadn’t called on her yet, and Sam had stuck to his original decision about allowing Sarah to take that lead with his daughter. As a result, Sam could hear Lucy speaking heatedly with someone in her bedroom. She didn’t have a phone, so it had to be through a messaging app on her iPad. Likely, Lucy was talking with her mother. He didn’t have a problem with that, per se. He would never begrudge a daughter talking with her mother, even if Colleen talked to him as little as she possibly could.

  Still, waiting for the fallout from Lucy’s upset phone conversation put Sam on edge all morning. He fully expected Colleen to phone her lawyer who would then call Sam’s lawyer, who would then call Sam. It promised to be a stressful headache, and Sam hated stress.

  But by noon, his fear hadn’t come to fruition. Sam trudged upstairs to the spare room he’d designated as Lucy’s bedroom—even though she’d never slept over before this week—and knocked on the door.

  He received no answer.

  “Lucy, I just want to know if you’re ready for lunch?” he called. Still no reply.

  He opened the door and found her asleep on her bed, fully dressed. She’d obviously been exhausted. She slept with her arms tucked under her head and that tattered teddy bear on the second pillow, beside her.

  Sam swallowed. He noticed that Lucy’s window was open and the curtains blew inward. Since it was supposed to rain later, he shut the window and draped a light blanket over her. Then he sat on the chair beside her bed, watching her sleep.

  He’d spent eleven years without having his daughter spend the night in his house. He’d let Colleen and the family courts call the shots. He hadn’t fought them personally, and he’d told himself it was because he hadn’t wanted to damage Lucy by fighting back. But by doing nothing—by letting things happen, and letting his lawyer give Colleen mostly what she wanted—it looked as if he’d caused a lot more damage than if he’d fought to see Lucy more often.

  These ten weeks were his opportunity, he realized. This summer, he could cobble together a more solid relationship with his daughter—if he worked on it and didn’t stand passively by.

  That meant he might have to fight. Like yesterday. He might even have to be rude sometimes, like his new neighbor, Sarah Buckley.

  He stood, went downstairs to the kitchen and made Lucy a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then he climbed back up to her bedroom and left her lunch on the desk beside her iPad. He didn’t have any orange soda, and he didn’t want to run to the corner store and leave her alone in the house like this, so he brought her a glass of water, instead.

  When she woke, he was going to have as much of a heart-to-heart talk with her as he could. Until then, he decided to do something he hadn’t had the time or foresight to do before Lucy had shown up at his door a week ago—make space for her. He wanted to show her that this was her home, too.

  To start, he tossed stuff away. Work papers, mostly. Junk in his cabinets and drawers that had nothing to do with family life and everything to do with old hobbies he’d dropped along the way. He made room for Lucy’s things. And he boxed up all the beer bottles crowding the refrigerator, except for one. That beer he would save for himself. One last, relaxing goodbye to his old life.

  He had no idea what he was going to say when Lucy woke. He would take it moment by moment and keep his Zen as much as possible.

  Beyond that, whatever ended up happening...well, it depended in a large part upon Lucy. He only hoped she wasn’t too disappointed if their rude neighbor never called on her. Or, worse, if Sarah did come over and Lucy saw that she wasn’t the heroine Lucy had conceived her to be.

  * * *

  AT DUSK, SARAH smelled steak being grilled from the direction of her neighbor’s porch.

  She lifted the kitchen curtain and glanced outside. Until now, it hadn’t appeared that anyone was home next door. But over on Sam-the-lifeguard’s deck, a barbecue was fired up and smoking.

  She wanted to see him. Before Sarah made any decisions about where to travel next, she needed to know that the girl her aunt had left behind—Lucy—was really all right. After that, she fully intended to pack up and leave Wallis Point.

  Sarah settled the kitchen curtain back into place and quickly checked on her two feline companions, her comrades in being left behind by Cassandra.

  The big cat had moped all day. The little one had possessed the gall to hop into the shower with Sarah that morning. Sarah had actually screamed in surprise, until she’d seen that her aunt had jerry-rigged the curtain setup in such a way that the little tuxedo cat could sit on the ledge of the tub and watch her without getting wet.

  “I don’t even know you,” Sarah had said to him.

  She hadn’t known exactly how to feed the cats, either, despite Cassandra’s instructions, so the little one had squawked at her—he was the talker and seemed to be in charge of the show—and the big one had led the way to the cat-food cabinet. He’d pawed it with one big, furry black paw, and then had gone and sat by his food bowl while the little one yelled at her to hurry it up and fill their dishes.

  She’d split a can of unappealing-looking wet glop between them. Salmon turkey, the label said, though the contents in no way resembled either salmon or turkey, to Sarah’s mind. Surprisingly, though, the cats’ meal didn’t smell half bad.

  “Goodbye, you two,” Sarah said to the funny duo, bending down to pet their little heads. “Don’t get into any mischief while I’m gone.” She shook her head, shocked that she was warming up to these cats, given that she’d rather they weren’t here at all.

  She put on a gauzy cotton dress and a pair of flip-flops because the outfit seemed beachy and cool. Then she picked up the shopping bag she’d packed and headed through the soft sand and muggy evening air toward her neighbor’s house.

  While she trudged over, Sam stepped onto his porch.

  His presence was a good sign. If he was at home barbecuing, then his daughter had to be physically okay, at least. Sarah relaxed a bit.

  “Hey, Sam!” Sarah lifted one arm and waved at him. He turned in her direction but said nothing in reply. He looked quiet and angry as he studied her up and down.

  She paused in the hot sand, hoping that his bad mood didn’t mean his daughter wasn’t doing okay, after all. Sarah had a soft spot in her heart for any kid who got caught up in Cassandra’s pretend web of caring. When a person found out how false that care was, it was a hurtful thing.

  Sarah decided it was best to avoid mentioning Sam’s daughter at all for the moment. She had an armload of cargo she needed to unload.

  “Knock, knock.” She stepped up to Sam’s deck and held out the two six-packs she’d brought. “I come bearing gifts.” One was a Belgian beer she’d picked up when she’d been out shopping earlier and the other a six-pack of orange soda that had been left on Cassandra’s kitchen table. “Consider these peace offerings.” She plunked them down on Sam’s outdoor table and turned to study him.

  He still looked wary and therefore not likely to offer her anything to drink.

  “Um, do you mind if I have one?” Sarah indicated the beer. “I’m thirsty.”

  Sam pursed his lips. “You like beer?”

 
; “Sure, I do. Just because I’m from the San Francisco area, am I supposed to be a wino?”

  He cracked a smile. Her sassy sarcasm had nudged him from his bad mood. “Hold on a second,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He disappeared into the house and came back holding a bottle opener and a beer with an unfamiliar-to-her label. “Don’t drink that commercial stuff. Try this, instead. It’s a private label.” He popped the top and passed the beer to her.

  She read the label. “Lifeguard Lager?”

  “Just try it.”

  “I don’t know, Sam.” She had a feeling a friend of his had made it, and she decided to play with him a bit. What was the difference—she was leaving soon, anyway.

  She winked at the younger-than-her lifeguard with the nice biceps and tanned face. “After my experience with your lifeguard teams, it might leave a bad taste in my mouth.”

  “What are you complaining about? We saved your butt, didn’t we?”

  “That point is still in contention,” she said lightly and gave him a smirk.

  “Then I dare you to taste it, Ms. Buckley.” He said it with a twinkle in his eyes and a hint of the humor he’d shown yesterday.

  She liked this Sam better. “Dare accepted.”

  Tipping her head back, Sarah put her lips to the bottle and took a long, deep swallow. Cool, good-tasting beer. A mild lager, yet distinct. And fresh.

  Surprised, she lowered the bottle and gazed at Sam. The hunky lifeguard had his arms crossed and his head tilted. He held the grill spatula like some kind of medieval battle apparatus.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I like it.” She gazed at him. “I do.” He wore shorts and a blue T-shirt that suited his tanned complexion and his dark blue eyes.

  “I’m glad.” Then he turned and went into the house, leaving her alone on his deck.

  He returned carrying a box, the flaps open, which he plunked down on the table beside her gifts.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Beer. The last batch I made. It’s for you. Take it.”

  She selected a bottle and studied it. So he was the one who’d made the beer. “That’s kind of you, Sam, but you don’t have to give me all your beer.”