Hello, Sunshine

Ethan waved. “Hey there, Henry. Did you just get into town?”

“I ’coptered in a couple of hours ago,” he said. Then he turned toward me. “You look familiar.”

My heartbeat sped up, and I tried to act casual. “I don’t think so,” I said.

Ethan pointed. “Sunshine Mackenzie née Stephens, the TV chef who was just hacked.”

I forced a smile, elbowing Ethan in his side.

“Oh, sorry, the internet chef who was just hacked. Never quite made it to TV. Though there is a great billboard over in Sag.”

Henry smiled back. “That’s right! I think my wife is a fan of yours. And I know we have your cookbook.”

“She’s not,” Ethan whispered, and continued waving. “And they don’t.”

“Are we going to see you later, buddy?” Henry called out. “Maybe get a little surf in?”

“Definitely,” Ethan said.

Henry gave him the thumbs-up sign.

Then he disappeared into his car and peeled out.

After he was gone, I looked at Ethan, who shrugged. “I’ve provided them with fish for some dinner parties, so he knows we’re friendly,” he said. “He just doesn’t know how friendly.”

“That’s lovely,” I said. “Did you really have to embarrass me like that?”

“Please, in front of the guy who used ‘helicopter’ as a verb?”

“I’m trying to keep a low profile. Until I can pretend this never happened.”

He considered. “No offense, but isn’t pretending how you got into this mess? If you ask me . . .”

“I didn’t.”

“Seems to me that you probably should stop pretending.”

He got up and headed toward the house, the one where I grew up, which now belonged to his celebrity girlfriend.

“Let me know if you change your mind about the job at the fish shop,” he called out as he walked away. “I’ll put in a good word.”

“And why would you do that?”

He turned. “I don’t know. ’Cause I can.”

“Yeah, where I come from, people don’t just do nice things for each other.”

He smiled, motioned around himself. “This is where you come from.”

21

The truth was that I did need a job.

I needed a specific job—and it was why I had acquiesced to coming to Montauk. I needed a job that would start me on the road to redemption: a new show, a new crack at the whole thing. I was already formulating a plan in my mind. A new story, if you will. Sunshine returns to her childhood home to embrace who she really is, and in the process learns to cook, and for real this time. But not just from anyone. From a master chef. From the master chef of the Hamptons.

It would be the first step in getting it all back. The cookbooks, the show.

I already had the feel of the new show worked out. It would be elegant, real, beachy, earthy, and wish-fulfilling. We’d shoot it in a kitchen that looked out onto the Atlantic Ocean, with fresh fish on the counter, a centerpiece of lemons and white seashells.