Summer By The Sea. Cathryn Parry

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Cassandra shuffled over to her kitchen and bustled with a plastic grocery bag on the counter. The front half of the cottage was one big room—a combination art studio/library/kitchenette and seating area. A stereo on one of the shelves played a jazz song from the thirties or forties, sung by a woman with an emotional, raspy voice. Sam felt unsettled by the unfamiliar environment and the strange new revelations his daughter had given him.

      Cassandra brought over a snack for Lucy.

      “Blueberry cake!” Lucy said, excited.

      Sam remained standing, not sure what to say.

      “Cassandra gave me The Witch of Blackbird Pond to read,” Lucy told him, her tone serious again. As she contemplated him, that studious look came over her and she turned silent once more.

      He instinctively touched the doorjamb. “What’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond?” he asked Cassandra.

      Cassandra smiled at Lucy. “Shall you explain the story to your dad, or should I?”

      “It’s an old story,” Lucy said, settling the plate on a table beside her. “It’s a novel about a teen who has to travel to a new place in the 1600s, and it isn’t anything like what she’s used to, and she gets upset because she doesn’t fit in. So she runs away and meets a kindly Quaker lady who lives by herself on a pond, and she takes her in and feeds her blueberry cake and lets her play with a kitten every time she comes to visit.”

      He just stared at Lucy. “So you’re saying you’re upset when you come to see me, and that every time you visit Cassandra’s you eat blueberry cake and play with a kitten?”

      She rolled her eyes. “No. It’s not literal, Sam.”

      But there had to be some truth to it. And Cassandra appeared to be watching him closely. He wasn’t sure he liked the scrutiny.

      It bothered him that his neighbor seemed to know more about his daughter than he did.

      But he shook the feeling off. Decided to get right to it. Giving Cassandra his charming smile, the one that usually got him places with women, he said, “Lucy’s mom is going to be away for the summer. It looks like she’s going to be staying with me for a couple months.”

      “Yes, I heard that from Lucy last week,” Cassandra said noncommittally. “You must be very excited.”

      The back of his neck tightened. He’d momentarily forgotten that his neighbor had known about the change of plans before he had.

      But he kept smiling. Folding his arms, he said quietly to Cassandra, “I am excited that she’s here. In fact, I’m resigning as a lifeguard supervisor in order to spend as much time as possible with Lucy.”

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