Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

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СКАЧАТЬ with the intensity reserved for photos on a post office wall. Mac had the kind of skin that never burned, turning golden and ripe as a peach and then browning. Katie had that skin, and his hair color too, but she’d inherited Grace’s dark Portuguese eyes and a dimple that appeared whenever she smiled, and Grace had to admit she’d been seeing a lot more of it lately, ever since Katie had learned her father was still alive.

      “And you know the bad guy’s gone because?”

      “I have the money and resources to figure things like this out, that’s the because. He’s not getting back into the States, don’t worry.”

      “We’re not in the States.” She glanced around the quiet beach and saw a sand crab busily dragging the corpse of a small sea anemone across the sand.

      “Still.”

      “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Katie crooned. She clasped her small hands together as if she were holding a Mr. Microphone in a karaoke bar. “I just want my daddy.”

      “I’m coming, princess.”

      Pet names. He’d met Katie face-to-face for the first time exactly twenty-four hours before, and already he had a raft of them. Little dimple toes. Miss periwinkle flippy hair. Sunshine happy girl.

      He clambered to his feet and reached for a towel.

      “Do you remember that old movie, A Man and a Woman?” Grace twisted the cap back on and tossed the suntan lotion aside.

      “I wonder if I should take off my sunglasses.”

      “Remember, Anouk Aimée, and she loses her husband, and then she meets this race car driver, and they both have adorable kids and then they all go out to dinner? Or maybe she lost her race car driver husband, and met somebody else, I can’t remember.”

      “She’ll probably splash all over them, right?”

      “Well, it’s not like that here.”

      “What are you talking about?” Without the sunglasses, his eyes were a brilliant green against his skin. He dropped the sunglasses onto the blanket.

      “The kids. In that movie. They were there. But somehow in the background. They were present, but didn’t take over the whole thing. The grown-ups still had a nice, normal dinner and they were flirting to beat the band and—”

      “So.” Mac shot Grace a swift, evaluating look. “Are you thinking about the dinner or the flirting part?”

      “I am hungry.”

      He smiled, his teeth very white, and she felt her body flush.

      “Daddy.” Katie flung her arms wide.

      “I’m coming, sweetie girl,” he called, his eyes still on Grace. “Ten minutes. Then I take you and your mom back to your place so you can get changed for dinner.”

      They’d already agreed to that; it was just that he said it with such authority, and she thought about that as she gathered up the blanket and stowed it in the car. What she didn’t want was Mac upsetting the balance she had with her daughter, and it was already too late for that.

      He had come over in the morning in his rental—a classier, cleaner car than the cheap one she’d rented before he got there—and picked them up, and now he was driving them back, and it seemed, incrementally, that he was in the driver’s seat a lot. She still wasn’t certain how she felt about that.

      From the moment yesterday when Mac had flown in and found them, the life she’d shared for five years with Katie had been over. She’d stepped over a threshold into another world, and it scared her.

      What was worse, she had no idea what it was doing to Katie.

      Katie had been subdued—shocked—when she’d met him, stealing quick looks up at his face before moving out of reach. Mac had taken it slowly, never pressing, and that, too—his restraint—pressed a guilty place in her heart and made Grace want to run.

      That first night, they’d eaten dinner in a small local café, the only outsiders. The wife of the cook served them steaming plates of rice and fish and when Katie yawned as the plates were cleared, the server said in a musical voice over her shoulder as she swayed back to the kitchen, “Looks like it’s time to get your little one home.”

      Home.

      They were so far from that, all of them. Far from the safety of home. From the idea of it. And Grace feared she’d never find her way back, and that even if she could, she might be returning empty-handed. Losing the one thing that mattered most.

      She watched as Mac and Katie came up the beach toward the car, wrapped in damp sandy towels, Katie chattering. There was a warm gusty wind but suddenly Grace felt chilled, the growing tug of distance, separation.

      She gripped the side of the window as Mac bumped the car down the narrow rutted road that led to her bed-and-breakfast. They turned a corner and a haphazardly built octagon painted a startling shade of Creamsicle purple appeared, set back in a tangle of undergrowth.

      A truck idled in the drive. The back looked like a flimsy covered wagon held together with duct tape. A sunburned man with a nest of red dreadlocks sat hunched in the driver’s seat, talking on an iPhone. He clicked it shut and sat up and eased out of the truck as Grace and Mac got out of the car. Mac was taller and bigger through the shoulders but the other guy was younger. He smiled.

      Grace made a sound. “He’s back. That’s my landlady’s son. Clint. He likes to stop by unannounced.” She reached into the backseat to help Katie out.

      “Swell,” Mac said. “And he has the key, right?”

      “Actually the door doesn’t lock.” Grace unsnapped Katie’s seat belt and she scrambled free.

      “Ah.” Mac nodded.

      Clint plodded over and pulled a crinkled envelope out of the pocket of his board shorts. The flap had been opened and resealed with a piece of cloudy Scotch tape.

      “Here.”

      She ripped the envelope open and pulled out the single sheet, scanning it.

      “Is that who I think it is?” His voice had a lilt to it, as if he’d had a couple extra beers and couldn’t quite shape the hard vowels anymore.

      She glanced up.

      Clint was staring at Mac.

      “No, Clint, you’re getting them mixed up.” She refolded the letter and put it in the pocket of her cover-up. “The other guy’s better-looking and works for Fox.”

      Clint frowned and brightened. “Oh, I get it. A joke. Very funny.”

      Mac touched her arm. “Okay?”

      She knew he was talking about the letter. She shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him, he’s already read it.”

      Clint ignored her, hitched up his board shorts and padded over to a twisted tree that stood in the yard.

      “It’s СКАЧАТЬ