Hello, Sunshine

“I need you to tell me why you don’t want to go to camp,” I said. “Was someone mean to you?”

“No.”

“Sammy, if someone was mean to you, I’ll go with you to the camp and make sure that the counselor knows. You don’t have to give up camp.”

She closed her book. “It’s nothing to do with that,” she said.

“So what happened?”

She met my eyes, as if trying to decide whether to say. “Kathleen’s daughter is coming to camp. She wants us to sit together at lunch.”

“And you don’t want to?”

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Sammy looked exasperated. “Her daughter goes to the school, the one in New York.”

I nodded. Now she was getting somewhere.

“I know she’s going to try to make us be friends and stuff. So I’ll want to go.”

It was a strange reaction—as though Sammy was skipping a couple of steps. The one where she decided if she liked Kathleen’s kid, and the one where she decided if the school seemed interesting to her.

“Why do you feel badly about that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, Kathleen says it’s a great place, so . . .”

Then I knew what was upsetting her. “Your mom.”

She nodded. “She thinks the school is a bad place, I guess.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I think it could be fun.”

I felt my heart break a little. What was wrong with Rain that she was making Sammy feel like it was the school versus her? And what was wrong with the counselor that she was sending in undercover recruiters? Would she get some kind of bonus if Sammy showed up there? Suddenly I was mad at everyone, except for the kid sitting on the edge of the couch.

“All right,” I said. “You don’t have to go to camp. But no reading day, okay?”

She sighed, exhausted. “Why not?”

“You’re not going to sit around. If you don’t want to go to camp, that’s fine. You’re going to do something, though.”

“I am doing something. I’m reading.”

I looked out the window at our old house, the red car in the driveway, the nameless celebrity inside. And I thought of her boyfriend. “Let’s go fishing,” I said.

A real Montauk fishing boat—not the kind rented out for bachelor parties and beer, but a fishing vessel—was not exactly meant for a comfortable cruise around the harbor. Ethan and Thomas’s offshore boat—forty-eight feet long, two-sleeper cabin—was no exception. It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but it wasn’t luxurious, either. The deck was wiped down from the morning haul, but it still felt slimy and sticky. And there was a distinct odor in the air that, in comparison, made Ethan smell like fresh chocolate cookies.

Still, as soon as we left shore, I felt better, the ocean breeze helping my nausea, helping to empty my head. Ethan and I sat at the helm, Sammy at our feet, lifejacket tightly on, watching the ocean swirl, mesmerized.

Just kidding. She was reading in the sleeper cabin. She could have still been at the house.

Ethan folded his hands over his mouth, tried to warm them.

“I ended up having a lengthy conversation with my friend’s husband earlier,” he said. “He was trying to relate to me, I guess, and said all these people who say there are two Montauks, one for the summer people, one for winter people, they don’t get it. He said it’s about the people who fish here and the people who don’t.”

“So what’s wrong with that?”