Hello, Sunshine

“I thought you disappeared on me!”

My sister was sitting on the living room couch, arms folded across her chest.

I jumped back. “Holy shit! You scared me.”

She was pissed. “I scared you? I thought you just took off.”

“And left all my things?”

“It’s what you did last time.”

I looked at her, not saying anything. I had to catch my breath from finding her sitting there. It was like I was suddenly fifteen again, and walking into the house late. My father didn’t give us a curfew. But if I arrived home even a second after ten, Rain would have a million questions about where I’d been. It wasn’t that she was actually worried about me. She was worried about my father. She didn’t want him to be woken up or to manage what that would mean for him the next day. And for her.

She stood up. “Where were you?” she said. “I wanted to go to the hospital and see Thomas. Isn’t that why you’re here? You get a place to stay and you help me with Sammy? What the hell were you doing?”

I sat on the edge of the couch, my feet throbbing. “See? Why do you have to ask like that?”

“Because I know how you work,” she said. “And I know when you’re up to something.”

“I got a job at a restaurant.”

She laughed. “Where?”

“28.”

“28 hired you for two weeks?”

“I didn’t tell them it was just for two weeks.”

She shook her head. “Of course not.”

I motioned for her to go away. “As fun as this girl talk is, I’m exhausted, so if you’d please . . .”

She ignored me. “Did anyone there recognize you?”

“A couple of people, but it doesn’t seem like they’re going to say anything.” I paused. “Until it benefits them to do so.”

“So how did it happen? The job? Ethan pull some strings?”

“What kind of strings? He’s a fisherman.”

“No, he’s the fisherman. Look him up. Ethan Nash. He’s very impressive.”

I put my legs out in front of me, ready to fall asleep in that position—lights on, clothes on—as soon as she stopped her lecture.

“He takes the ferry to New Haven every week to teach a class at Yale on climate change and oceanography. Generating a safe food supply.”

She paused, as if waiting for me to jump out of my seat, impressed.

“There is a thirty-restaurant wait list to even get his fish. Le Bernardin uses them, Per Se . . . Chef Z won’t serve fish from anyone else. A national restaurant group offered him a million-dollar contract if he would ensure that his fishermen worked with them exclusively this season.”

“And he didn’t take it?”

“That’s not why he’s doing this. Not that you’d understand that . . .” She headed toward her bedroom. “Well, congrats on the job. I can’t believe that you made it through a shift. Bet you’re gone by the end of the week.”

“Thanks for the faith,” I said.

“So I guess this means I’m on my own with Sammy again.”