Hello, Sunshine

“Has your mom mentioned anything about your family?”

“Not a lot, really. Just that I’m named after my grandpa.”

I cringed, n

ot wanting to react in front of her, irritated to think of anyone being named after my father. “Has she told you anything else?”

“Mom told me on the phone that you’re her sister. The one that sends the checks.”

She seemed to have no discernable reaction to this, not needing or wanting any further information.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“The checks.”

She looked confused by my slowness. Which gave me the opportunity to look away, my heart breaking a little at her gratitude.

I threw off my makeshift cover (a throw blanket with the ABCs on it). “You must be hungry,” I said. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Cinnamon toast.”

Toast. Great. My mind went to Amber and her terrible toasts. She’d recently done a special episode on sweet treats—and made her own version, which had cinnamon and nutmeg on seeded wheat, smothered in olive oil and butter. I had watched that episode, for some reason or other, and remembered her pride at the addition of the nutmeg. Like she had single-handedly reinvented the cinnamon-toast wheel.

I got up, ready to cobble it together for Sammy. But then she stopped me.

“I only get it at John’s. Eight thirty sharp.”

I turned and looked at her. “Would you like to go there with me now?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“No, you said you only go there.”

“Samesies.”

She looked back down at her book, and I bit my lip trying not to laugh at this confusing child, who apparently acted forty-eighty and eight in the same conversation.

“Considering summer traffic, we will have to leave now if we want to arrive on time,” she said.

“I’m ready when you are.”

She looked up, taking in my wrinkled clothes, snug against my body. “Are you sure about that?”

17

The ride to John’s Pancake House, which took five minutes in the winter, was so far taking us five times as long.

And we were less than halfway there.

Sammy sat in the back, reading a book, unbothered. I was very bothered—not only by the traffic, but by what the traffic represented. Over the last few decades, Montauk had stopped being the one place in the Hamptons that was still undeveloped and became the place that prided itself on a different kind of development. It wasn’t quite as showy. It was more quietly fancy, drawing in the kind of wealthy people who thought they were better than their counterparts because instead of spending money on fancy cars, they spent it on their Priuses and perfectly done cottages filled with shabby chic furnishings. They purchased fluffy couches that cost twelve thousand dollars (the Montauk Sofa, that’s actually what they were called) and cast-iron pots that were never used. It was its own cult of obnoxiousness: the show that didn’t look like one, which was a show all in itself.

The village reflected that. On the surface, it was less a glamorous beach town and more a town of yesteryear: surf shops and restaurants, all desperately needing a face-lift. And sprinkled throughout these Montauk evergreens were the fancier new additions: a yoga studio, an overpriced bar, a designer clothing boutique—all hiding their glamour with the same rustic chic exterior, the occasional six-figure sports car giving the whole enterprise away.

And getting in my way.

A Range Rover took a sharp right turn, forcing us to miss another light.