Mark followed her out to the garden. The sun was getting high overhead so she moved to the shade of her poplar tree, swatting aside a yellow jacket.
“I see you’re keeping up with the flowers,” he said.
She was in no mood for small talk. “What are you doing here?”
He crossed his arms and smiled at her. “You look great, Emma. Really terrific.”
She hated to admit how good the compliment from him made her feel. Why did she even care what he thought? Thirteen years, and she still wasn’t over the sting of his abandonment. “Mark, I asked you a question.”
He sighed as if she were being a drag for not acting like they were old pals. “I had some business in East Hampton and I couldn’t leave without trying to see Penny.”
“So you just suddenly had the urge to see your daughter?”
“It wasn’t sudden. This was just the first practical opportunity.”
Emma raked her hand through her hair. “Why didn’t you call me? You can’t just show up like this after all this time, Mark. It’s not right. It’s going to confuse Penny.” It was confusing her.
“She’s a great kid. You’re doing a good job, Em.”
The flattery hit her right where she was most vulnerable, and it was as strong as a rush of dopamine. “Thank you. Look, I’m glad you want to see her. I’m sure she wants to see you too. But there’s a right way to go about things, Mark.”
“I know, I know. Sorry, I just got carried away. You know I’m not much of a planner.”
Yes, she did. He wasn’t much on follow-through either. “So how long are you here for?”
He glanced up at the sky and exhaled. “I’m going to play it by ear. There’s always a chance things will heat up on this project I’m working on and I’ll have to see people in East Hampton again. So I’m going to stay local for a week or two.”
A week or two? He hadn’t spent more than a night in town since the summer he’d left for good. Somewhere deep down, an alarm bell sounded. But it was silenced—or at least muffled—when he pulled a check out of the pocket of his cargo shorts and handed it to her.
“Sorry I’ve been behind. So what do you say I take our kid to the beach for the day?”
Our kid. Powerful, powerful words.
Emma opened her mouth to tell him that Penny had run off yesterday and was grounded, but then she decided that was more information than he needed to have.
“Let’s give this a day to settle,” she said instead. “Why don’t you let Penny go about her normal schedule today and you can pick her up tomorrow morning?”
He seemed about to protest, but then he stopped himself, smiled, and said, “You’re the boss.”
Yes, she was. So why did she suddenly not feel like it?
“Ma’am, we’re closing in twenty minutes. I’m going to need to return those documents to the archives room.”
Bea looked up in annoyance. Documents—as if she were perusing old housing records. “They’re not documents,” she muttered. Oh, Henry’s work did not belong stuffed away in the library. For the hundredth time, she wondered what he had been thinking.
She waited for the librarian to leave, then quickly snapped photos of the drawings. Knowing she had a copy of them in her phone made her feel a little bit better, but only for a moment. Returning them to the circulation desk felt like handing over her child. This was all so wrong!
Heart heavy, she walked outside. Day was turning to evening. She stood between two massive stone Doric columns and called Kyle. Mercifully, he actually answered. She heard the distinctive rumbling of a boat motor.
“Don’t tell me you’re at the marina again,” she said.
“Just spending some time with the locals,” he said. “You never know what that will turn up. In fact, I did overhear an interesting conversation that I want to loop you in on.”
“We can discuss it over dinner.”
She told him to meet her down the street at Wölffer Kitchen. The restaurant was three doors away from the hotel, nestled between a sushi place and a Sotheby’s real estate office. She’d read about it in the Times. The paper had given a glowing review of the restaurant’s baby lamb chops, though she understood the menu was seasonal.
“They don’t take reservations,” she told Kyle. While that was a policy she found vexing, she had a grudging respect for it. Fortunately, it was early enough that they were seated immediately.
The Wölffer Kitchen dining room had a burnished, elegant feeling. The design touches were fanciful—lots of mirrored surfaces and whimsical hanging light sconces. From her seat on the banquette, Bea had a full view of the bar across the room, the liquor bottles shelved in a wall of textured glass.
“This restaurant is owned by the Wölffer Estate Vineyard family,” she told Kyle. “You should have wine tonight instead of that dreadful whiskey.”
“I like my dreadful whiskey. Thanks, though.”
She ordered a bottle of rosé with the ambitious name of Summer in a Bottle.
“For fifty dollars, it had better be a damned good summer,” she said, turning to the menu. “Do you know what you’re having?” she asked Kyle. His face was sun-kissed, his brown hair tinged with gold. Two young women seated nearby glanced at him appreciatively. They probably think I’m his mother, Bea thought. If they even notice my existence. The invisibility of old age never failed to irk her. At least in New York City, people occasionally recognized her as somebody.
She ordered a watermelon salad with arugula, feta, and pickled onions and a grilled shrimp dinner with farro, artichoke, and baby chard.
“I’ll have the local oysters,” said Kyle, handing his menu to their server.
“So, don’t keep me in suspense,” Bea said. “What is this conversation I need to know about?”
“I was hanging out with Sean and he got a call for a pickup so I rode with him. He had to deliver fuel to a boat that rents a mooring from him—”
“You’re not going to find Henry’s drawings on a water taxi! Honestly, Kyle. If you can’t make yourself useful, you might as well go back to Manhattan.”
“I am trying to help you, Bea. If you would let me talk for one minute. So we get to this yacht and the woman who owns it was going on and on about a fund-raiser to rebuild the movie theater that burned down. You’ve seen that temporary wall around it, right?”
She nodded with impatience.
“Part of the fund-raiser is an art auction. I think you should donate something to the auction. Something big.”
“And why should I do that? To impress your new friends?”
He sighed. “Bea, you’re fighting to take a local house away from a local woman. I think it’s a bad idea, but obviously your mind is made up. So the point is, you can’t just take from this place without giving something in return. Everyone here is going to be against you.”
Bea nodded slowly, thinking about her encounter earlier that day with Emma Mapson. What gossips in New York City think means nothing. The house is in this town, and in this town, no one will take your side. No one believes you.
Bea looked at Kyle with, she had to admit, a new appreciation. “You are absolutely right,” she said. “In fact, I want to do more than donate some work. I’m going to get on that committee to rebuild that theater. By the end of this summer, Sag Harbor will never want me to leave.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Early morning at Long Wharf was Emma’s favorite time to be by the water. The sun was bright but gentle; the boats were empty and rocked gently on their moorings. The shops and restaurants weren’t yet open, and the primary sounds were the seagulls calling to one another, undisturbed by people.
Cole Hopkins waved to her from the deck of his boat. Everyone in town knew Cole Hopkins and his signature turquoise-blue sixty-three-foot catamaran the Louise. Emma had met Cole and his wife, Louise, their first summer in Sag Harbor, the same year Emma started working at the hotel. Cole had spent thirty-six years as a commercial fisherman on crab boats in the
Bering Sea before starting his luxury charter business. He was booked months in advance and did more than a hundred and twenty charters a summer. But Emma was still hoping there was a way he could help her out the night of the Sag Harbor Cinema fund-raiser.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” she said. “I’ve got only a few minutes before I have to get to work.” She had hoped they could just discuss it on the phone but he’d told her, “I’m not much of a phone guy.”
They sat on white beanbag chairs on the stern of the boat. Louise, who worked with her husband on board as hostess and first mate, offered Emma a bottle of sparkling water.
“So, Emma, what can I do for you?” Cole said.
“You know about the cinema fund-raiser and that most of the events that night are here on Long Wharf?”
He nodded. “Great idea. It’s going to be a big night.”
“It is. I’m actually hosting an art auction off-site. At a house on Actors Colony Road.” She still couldn’t bring herself to say “my house,” and anyway, she was trying to be discreet. “One of my committee members had the idea to provide transportation to the house by boat. I was talking to Sean about it and he said you have another boat, a dinner yacht, that you also charter.”
Cole leaned forward. “I’d love to help you out but I have a sunset cruise booked for that night. I could put some feelers out, see who else might be around.”
Emma was disappointed. She wanted to work with someone she knew was a pro, someone who had strong ties to the town.
“Let me ask you,” he said. “The house on Actors Colony Road that you mentioned—is it the one that famous artist left to your daughter?”
So much for discretion.
“Um, yes,” she said.
“We read about it,” Louise said, joining them. “How incredible. It’s like something out of a movie.”
“Must be an interesting story there,” Cole said, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know about that.” Emma shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “But I am hoping to at least put it to good use with the art auction.”
Louise’s phone buzzed; she checked it and then told Cole that the person he was meeting with at one o’clock was waiting on the dock.
“Ah, yes. Another friend of Sean’s,” he said to Emma. “Looking to buy a boat. Excuse me for a minute.”
While he was gone, Louise asked about Penny and spoke of their own grown children. “We see them more in the off-season.” The Hopkinses spent October through April in the Virgin Islands, where they ran a winter charter business.
“I should be going,” Emma said, though she didn’t want to leave. Even docked, the Louise felt like a getaway. She could only imagine the serenity of sailing on the Peconic at sunset. Someday, she would like to see Sag Harbor through a tourist’s eyes.
Louise walked her starboard to the steps, where Cole was talking to his visitor.
Emma stopped in her tracks.
“You’re the friend of Sean’s?” Emma said.
Kyle Dunlap smiled at her. “Emma! What a surprise. It really is a small world out here. I love it,” he said.
She crossed her arms.
Kyle looked around and let out a low whistle. “This boat is a beauty.”
“She was designed by Chris White,” said Cole. “Intended for private use for a family to sail around the world. But by the time I got my hands on her, she’d been sitting idle for years. It took my wife and me three long years to convert her from a recreational yacht to a U.S. Coast Guard inspected vessel.”
“Impressive. And Sean said you do more than a hundred and twenty charters a season?”
“That’s right. Up to three a day.”
“Since when are you a friend of Sean’s?” Emma asked Kyle. She couldn’t let it go. What the hell? Cole looked at her like she was a little off.
“I’ve been spending some time helping out on the launch,” Kyle said.
She didn’t know why this irritated her so much, but it did. “And you’re buying a boat? Yeah, you’re really more like me than Bea Winstead.”
“Nothing like this,” he said. “A fixer-upper. Right, Cole?”
“That’s the plan. So my guy at Coecles Marina has two things for you to look at.”
“You should ride over with us,” Kyle said to Emma.
“To Shelter Island?”
“Why not? It’s a beautiful day.”
“Yeah, and I have to get to work. For some of us, this town isn’t just a playground.”
Penny couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so happy. Sitting in the passenger seat of her father’s rented Jeep, she waited while he paid for the day pass for Coopers Beach, and then they drove up and parked. She could already feel the breeze off the ocean.
It was sunny and cloudless, an even better day than when she’d gone there with her friends. Up ahead, the beach was dotted with blue umbrellas; a few kids about her age tossed around a Frisbee. The whiteboard at the entrance to the beach announced that the water temperature was sixty-five degrees and the surf was one to three feet. This time, she wasn’t going to let her OCD ruin things for her. Nothing could ruin today. Her father had come back for her!
Talking to her dad was so much fun. She loved hearing about his life in Los Angeles. He was still doing some acting here and there, but he said he was transitioning to producing.
“It just takes money,” he said.
“That’s why you went to East Hampton?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Met with a guy who has deep pockets. There are some people in New York I’ve spoken to also. We’ll see. Fingers crossed.”
New York. Everything interesting in the world seemed to happen in New York City. She’d said this to Henry once and he said, “Can’t really argue with you. My life certainly changed when I moved there.”
“Can you take me to see New York City one day?” she asked her father.
He smiled at her. “You are just the cutest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Around him, she felt cute. It was different with her mom; her mom was her mom. She had to love her. But when her dad was around, he was making a choice to be with her, and every moment he continued to make that choice affirmed her sense of worth. But she also felt the need to be on her best behavior so as not to scare him off.
It had been so long since she’d seen him—sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas during sixth grade. He’d taken her to eat at LT Burger, and she spent the whole time struggling not to rearrange the silverware or sip from her glass six times and put it down and then sip from it six times again. She’d done a really good job that night—he hadn’t suspected a thing. And still, it had been years before he’d come back.
That’s why there’d be no OCD today. She would boss it back if it killed her.
They put their blankets close to the water but not close enough to get wet when the tide rolled in. Her dad pulled a baseball hat out of his bag and handed it to her. “Wear that. Your mother won’t be happy if I bring you home sunburned.”
“I’m fine. I was just here a few days ago and I didn’t need a hat.”
“I guess your mom must bring you here a lot.”
“Not really,” Penny said.
“No? Why not?”
“I mean, she works all the time. And then she’s tired and there’s grocery shopping and all that stuff.”
“Sorry about that, kiddo.”
She shook her head. She wasn’t trying to make her mom look bad. It was just the truth. “It’s fine. I mean, I came with my friends the other day. It was fun.”
“Your friends are old enough to drive?”
“Um, one of their brothers is.”
“And your mom was okay with that?”
So many questions! She guessed, after all the time they’d spent apart, he wanted to catch up. “Um, she didn’t exactly know,” Penny said.
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “I don’t always tell her where I am or what I’m doing. But don’t
say that to her, okay?” She didn’t know why she’d admitted that. Maybe she wanted her father to see her as more grown up, to remind him that she wasn’t a baby anymore. Maybe he liked teenagers more than little kids, and that was why he was willing to hang around for a little while.
“Well, I don’t want you getting into any trouble. You have to be safe.”
“I am. Come on, Dad. Look at this place. Nothing ever happens here.” And then she thought of something. Had her mother told him about the house? She hoped not. She wanted to tell him the news herself. “Do you know about the house?”
Her dad looked out at the waves. “What house?”
“I inherited a house! A big, amazing, gorgeous house on the water. The terrible part is that my friend died. But then the house thing happened and in some ways, it’s like he’s still here. Or like he’s looking out for me in some way. I don’t know.”
She told him everything, including the part about the crazy old lady and how her mom was nervous about the whole thing.
“Wow. That’s quite a story,” her dad said.
“You have to come see it,” she said.
“I’d like that, kiddo. I’d like that very much.”
Emma made certain she was home in time for dinner. All day long, she’d been thinking of Penny out with Mark, and it had set her on edge. She knew she should be happy that her daughter’s father was spending time with her, but for some reason, she just couldn’t be. Maybe it was because her own relationship with Penny was strained. Or maybe it was because Mark had given her plenty of reasons over the years not to feel positive about him.
She wanted to discuss it with Angus, but she’d gotten home so late last night, he was already asleep. That morning, while Penny ate breakfast and talked excitedly about the day ahead with her father, Angus had given Emma a look that told her she wasn’t alone in her concern. But all she had time to say to either of them was “I’m picking up dinner from Cavaniola’s on my way home. I’ll be back by six.”
Now, sitting at the table, eating roasted lemon chicken and baby kale salad with Gouda (Cavaniola’s was famous for its cheese), Emma didn’t feel much better. Penny went on and on about Mark: Dad was going to produce a play, Dad was going to take her to New York one day, Dad was going to rent a place out there to spend more time with her.
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