Summer By The Sea

Too bad he couldn’t just let her be a free-range kid like he and his brother had been during their carefree, predivorce summers on the beach. But nowadays, the powers that be frowned on unsupervised kids, especially in a high-traffic tourist town. Even at eleven years old, Lucy needed somebody to watch her and be responsible for her. He worked as a lifeguard full time. What was he supposed to do?

Sam gazed over Lucy’s head and out the window toward the seashore where he’d spent most of his life working and playing during the short-but-sweet New England summers. He loved his summers here. He would never live anywhere else. He liked waking up to the smell of salt water outside his bedroom window and the sounds of rolling waves and cawing seabirds. Beyond a long expanse of sand was the deep blue Atlantic Ocean, and all he had to do was stare at that horizon whenever he needed to find peace.

“Do you remember when you were little, and you used to sit up on the lifeguard chair with me?” Chair ten, right outside his window. It wasn’t set out for the season yet, but it would be soon. “You used to love spending time on the beach.”

Lucy stopped chewing and stared at him. “I can’t sit on the beach with you while you’re working, Sam.”

Sam. That about killed him. He smiled anyway. “Yeah, I know. And I know this isn’t what you had planned for your summer vacation, either, but don’t worry, we’ll figure it out and make it work for us.”

He took another long drink from his ginger ale can. “Are there any day camps you might be interested in for the summer?” He figured he should ask—maybe she had something in mind that he didn’t know about. As a local teacher, maybe he could use his connections to get her a last-minute slot. “Wallis Point has a swimming program and a sailing academy. Then there’s always tennis lessons—”

“No, thank you, Sam.”

He winced and glanced back at the beach. His friend Duke drove by on one of the two open-roof all-terrain vehicles that the Wallis Point lifeguards employed. During the school year, Duke was vice principal of the high school in town. In summer, Sam often drove with Duke on patrol. Today, though, was the day after classes had let out for the summer, and if not for Lucy, Sam would have been flying out of Logan Airport for his yearly backpacking vacation before he started his lifeguard job. This year, trekking through Scotland for a week.

“I like the library,” Lucy suddenly said.

Sam turned around. “The library, in summer?”

“Yes, please.”

She really was a serious student. If he was honest with himself, he was worried about that. Lucy was eleven years old, and she didn’t have fun easily. It occurred to him that she was a throwback to his own mother. That was the only conclusion Sam could come up with.

Lucy finished the last bite of her sandwich, so Sam reached for his sunglasses. He gave her another bright smile. “Okay, Luce. How about we take a walk on the beach and discuss this some more?”

“No, thank you. I’m going to see Cassandra,” she said simply, and stood. Lucy never asked permission. She just did whatever the inner force inside her told her to do.

“Okay, sure,” he said reasonably. Cassandra was Sam’s next-door neighbor. Seventy-something and eccentric, she was a bona fide working artist—an internationally famous children’s book illustrator. Lately, Lucy had taken to ending their Saturday visits with a stint at Cassandra’s cottage. Sam hadn’t interrupted them. The relationship was good for Lucy, he thought. Lucy seemed to love visiting Cassandra, and that was what mattered to him. Besides, a couple of hours every two weeks hadn’t seemed as if it would be a burdensome interruption for his neighbor.

He leaned back, watching Lucy clear away her lunch dishes and load them neatly into his dishwasher. Lucy just did things like that. She was independent and capable, but there was no getting around it. Somebody needed to be here for her full time, and that somebody needed to be him.

And wasn’t this his opportunity to get closer to her, scary as that seemed?

He slipped on his sunglasses and stood. He might ruffle feathers for what he was about to say, but... “I’ll walk over with you. I need to see Cassandra, too.”

Lucy looked him straight in the eyes and nodded. “Okay.”

“Just so you know, if it’s all right with Cassandra that you hang out with her a little more often than usual this summer, then it’s cool with me.”

“Good.” Lucy seemed more animated and hopeful than she’d been when she first arrived. “Last time I saw her, Cassandra said she would be home today.”

“Great.” Sam opened the glass slider that led to the porch. “Before we go over there, though, could I ask you something?”

Lucy slipped her hands into her jacket pockets as if bracing herself.

“We need to figure out something for, ah...” He didn’t want to say “childcare,” but that was the only word he could think of, so he swallowed his reticence. “Someone to take care of you. I, ah...” He took a breath. He’d never wanted to face this. And it pained him to say so, but he’d made a monumental decision. He was going to sacrifice something for her, his only child, that he’d never thought he could ever sacrifice for anybody. He needed to resign his lifeguard job. There really wasn’t any other way out of it.

“Sam, I want Cassandra to watch me this summer.”

He blinked in surprise. “Do you really think it’s fair to ask Cassandra to do that?”

“We already discussed it, she and I.” Lucy set her chin.

How was that possible? “Cassandra doesn’t have a phone,” he pointed out.

Lucy used the toe of her sneaker to outline the edge of his breakfast bar in the kitchen. “We talked about it the last time I was here.”

He willed himself to breathe easily, in and out. He would not care. Would not get upset.

“You were here almost a week ago.” Four days before Colleen had called him. “We didn’t know then that your mother was going to go off to Alaska for the summer.” He’d tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, he really had.

“Mom knew she was going,” Lucy said in a small voice.

“She told you?” he asked softly.

“No.” Lucy shook her head vehemently. “I heard her on the phone with the cruise ship people.”

“By accident?”

Lucy moved her wispy bangs to one side. “I listened on the extension because I thought it was a call from my teacher.”

Okay, should he be concerned? With his students, he only rarely called their homes. Usually because there was a problem with the child. “Why do you think your teacher would be calling your mom?”

“That’s not important,” Lucy said.

Yeah, it was. And he was going to lose his patience if he wasn’t careful. “Okay. We’ll go see Cassandra,” he said simply.

He grabbed his windbreaker from a hook and put on a ball cap. They stepped through the sliding door onto his deck overlooking the beach. In mid-June, it was windy and cool. Cassandra’s cottage was only about twenty yards away, but despite the nearness, they didn’t talk often. They usually just waved when they saw each other. Most days, he caught glimpses of her working on her paintings. A bit of a bohemian, the lady often dressed in Indonesian batik and straw hats. She smoked imported cigarettes that smelled like clove and cinnamon spices, and she seemed more detached and easygoing than even he was. Every now and then she stopped by Sam’s house parties in summer, and nothing seemed to faze her. Yet she didn’t seem irresponsible. She taught art classes to teens regularly at the local library, and she was a popular teacher.

Lucy adored her.

She always had. The first time Lucy had toddled over to greet Cassandra, she’d been three, and Cassandra had given her an ice pop and let her play with her paint brushes. His serious, stoic daughter had been hooked on the woman ever since.

They walked through the beach sand together, he and Lucy. When she was little, he’d held her hand, but now that she was older, they didn’t do that.

When they got to Cassandra’s door, Lucy gave a small, hesitant knock on the glass.

Cassandra answered immediately. She radiated “earth mother” authority, her billowing, colorful pants as bright as her smile. Reading glasses sat atop her head of white-gray hair, and in her right hand was a cane—solid metal of some type and vividly purple.

“Come in, come in.” She opened the door wider, smiling broadly at his daughter. “Welcome, Lucy.” Then Cassandra looked directly into Sam’s eyes. “You’ve brought your father with you this time. That’s good.”

Sam nodded to his neighbor. “Good to see you, Cassandra. I don’t mention it often enough, but thanks for everything you’ve done to help Lucy over the years.”

“I enjoy her company very much.”

He glanced over to find that Lucy had taken up a perch in a vintage, lime-colored beanbag chair. A small black-and-white tuxedo cat wandered over to investigate her on silent cat feet. Lucy scooped him up into her lap and pressed him to her cheek.

Yet again, Sam was taken aback. Lucy had never been cuddly with him. Other than the worn teddy bear he’d been surprised to see in her luggage, he hadn’t realized she had this side to her.