Hello, Sunshine

by Laura Dave

  I didn’t have a plan for when I got to the front door. How do you say hello when you’ve been gone for so long?

  So I stayed in the car for a minute too long, maybe five minutes too long, tapping on the steering wheel. I willed someone to open the door so I wouldn’t actually have to ring the bell and give them the chance to slam it in my face.

  Then I heard sirens in the distance. Except they were getting closer.

  I looked in my rearview mirror to see a squad car racing down the driveway, its lights flashing.

  A police officer stepped out of his vehicle, screaming into his megaphone, apparently at me.

  What was happening? I got out of the car, squinting toward the squad car in the afternoon sun.

  “Step out of the car.”

  “I am out of the car!”

  “Step further out of the car. And keep your hands by your sides!” the officer yelled.

  I pointed toward the house. “No! See, this is my family’s home.”

  “HANDS BY YOUR SIDES!”

  I put my hands down as the officer walked over from his squad car, the sun backlighting him. It took me a second to place him: Zeddy Morgan, fellow graduate of East Hampton High. Fellow native. He’d had a crush on me when I was in sixth grade—or was it seventh?—and left a pack of half-eaten Twizzlers and a love note by the front door. A front door he was now trying to keep me away from.

  “Zeddy?” I said.

  I gave him a smile, relieved that whatever had started this misunderstanding, it was about to be over.

  A look of recognition swept across his face. “Sunny? Sunny Stephens! What are you doing here?”

  “Visiting.”

  “Visiting who?”

  I looked at him, confused.

  His face turned beet red. “Sorry to do this, but the owners want you to get off the property.”

  I pointed in the direction of the house—my childhood house. “It’s my property,” I said.

  “Yeah . . . not anymore,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The new owners took it over a few years back. Celebrity folk. Very private. They’re not here too often.” Then he pulled out his notepad and started writing me a ticket. “Though they are here now.”

  He handed over the ticket. I looked down at it, still trying to process what he’d said about my family’s house, no longer in my family. And then trying to process what the ticket said: $500.00. Trespassing.

  “Zeddy, you’ve got to be kidding!” I said. “We used to live here. Would you just explain to the owner?”

  He shrugged. “Already did.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said you don’t live here anymore.”

  I put the ticket in my pocket. “Nice.”

  I looked in the direction of the house.

  “VERY NICE!” I screamed.

  “All right, all right,” Zeddy said, motioning toward my car, motioning for me to leave. “Let’s not make a scene. I’m going to meet the guys at The Sloppy Tuna. Why don’t you come? Five-dollar oysters, two-fifty beers. And they usually just let me drink for free. I can see what I can do. Considering the ticket.”

  It was a terrible invitation. But it was the only one I had.

  I nodded my agreement, and Zeddy opened my car door.

  Then I noticed movement on the guesthouse porch. A little girl. At least, I thought it was a little girl. All I could confirm was that whoever it was who raced out of the doorway and back into the house was a blur of blond curls and glasses and skinny, adept legs.

  I turned back toward Zeddy.

  “So . . . you remember how to get there?” he said. “Just take a left on Old Montauk and—”

  “Zeddy, are they living in the guesthouse?”

  He looked away. “No.”

  “Zeddy!”

  “They may be living in the guesthouse,” he said.

  “And you didn’t want to mention that?”

  He shrugged. “Not my information to share.”

  I walked down the driveway and toward the small guesthouse, the ocean breeze growing stronger, propelling me forward.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” Zeddy called out. “COME BACK! Five-dollar oysters. Two-fifty beers.”

  I kept moving, taking the front steps two at a time, ringing the doorbell.

  “It’s my treat!” he said.

  She opened the door. She was barefoot in a baby-doll dress (did people still wear baby-doll dresses?) with a ballet slipper in one hand and a jar of peanut butter in the other. And she had curlers in her hair. At least they looked like curlers until I realized they were sticky balls of the peanut butter.

  And yet she looked me up and down, and rolled her eyes. “Of course!” she said.

  The first words my sister had said to me in five years.

  14

  I sat at the kitchen counter, my sister perched over the sink, washing the peanut butter out of her hair. I tried not to make it obvious as I looked around. The guesthouse was more of a guest cottage: a living area with a loft above it, a small kitchen, one bedroom in the back. My sister had decorated it (if you could use that word) with bright throw rugs and sofas, large chairs, my niece’s artwork everywhere. Not an empty square foot. It made the house look even smaller.

  “I’m leaving for work in five minutes, so you better make this quick,” she said.

  I looked up at her. She was still tugging ferociously at her hair. “Who did you sell the house to?”

  “A celebrity and her husband. Doesn’t matter. They’re here, like . . . never.”

  “They’re here enough to be assholes,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t see it that way.”

  She kept pulling at her hair, the kitchen reeking of peanut butter.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Is the smell bothering you?” She motioned toward the front door. “Because you’re free to go.”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “Well, Sammy thinks it’s hilarious to put peanut butter in my hair whenever I sleep. And I made the mistake of taking a nap, since I’m on the late shift tonight. So currently I’m in the process of getting it out and trying not to kill her!”

  She said this last part very loudly, and I noticed movement in the loft above. Sammy.

  Samantha. Her daughter. My niece. I put a thousand-dollar check into an education trust fund for her every birthday. I hadn’t laid eyes on her since she was two months old. My heart started racing at the sight of her. And, quite honestly, at the thought I couldn’t stop myself from having: Could I get that six grand back, if I promised to replace it later? It would be enough for a shitty sublet in New York for the month, it would be enough until I was made whole again.

  “We can skip the formalities, I know why you’re here. I mean, I said to Thomas, she is definitely going to show up, and he said she would never. But I knew.”

  I knew she was setting me up by saying Thomas. The name of someone that I should have known and didn’t. Instead of taking her bait, I searched her finger for a wedding ring. Nothing there.

  “Look, I have to get to work,” my sister said. “So if you could get to what you need, I’d like to speed this little visit up. And if you’re looking for money—”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I just need a few days to hide out.”

  “Forget it,” she laughed. She actually laughed.

  “Rain . . .” I said. That’s right, let’s pause to register that my sister’s name was Rain. Sunshine and Rain. My father was a musician (and perhaps high at the time of our births) and he’d made a deal with God that if he named us in that way, his art would be protected. It’s too bad he hadn’t been interested in a deal protecting us.

  “I want to be perfectly clear with you about this,” my sister said. “I don’t have any desire to help you.”

  “I have nowhere else to go.”

  “You have nowhere else to go? Why don’t you try Georgia? Isn’
t that where you’re from?”

  I looked away, not wanting to enrage her further. She blamed me for leaving her here with our father. She blamed me for leaving Montauk at all. It didn’t seem like a good moment to remind her that she was the one who had chosen to stay. It didn’t seem there was ever a good moment for that.

  “Or, here’s an idea. Hang out in your gorgeous Manhattan loft. Order takeout until things calm down.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Danny sold the apartment right after everything happened . . .”

  “So . . . when he found out you were sleeping with someone else?” She shook her head, laughing a little. “He sold the place out from under you? Well, not the nicest thing to do. Can’t say you didn’t deserve it.”

  She picked up her phone and started texting. I was hoping it wasn’t the police. I couldn’t handle another five-hundred-dollar no-visitor fee.

  “I don’t particularly care that you’re guilty of plagiarism on a major scale. Or that you deceived thousands of true fans who believed in you. And I’ve always liked Danny, but that’s really your business too. Just to be clear, I’m not helping because you’re a lousy fucking sister. And you were long before you did anything wrong to any of those people.”

  She stopped texting, returned to pulling the peanut butter from her hair.

  “I don’t hear from you until you need something.”

  “That’s not true, Rain.”

  “A card on my kid’s birthday isn’t hearing from you.”

  “It’s not like my phone has been ringing off the hook either.”

  “And if it had been?” she said. “What would’ve you done? Swooped in and helped out with the house?”

  I looked around her shitty guesthouse and tried not to think about what it must have been like when she and Sammy ended up here.

  “I don’t even know why I’m getting into all this. I don’t have the time. Sammy! We’re leaving.”

  “She goes with you to work?”

  “Tonight she does.”

  I touched her arm. “Why didn’t you tell me you had to sell the house?”

  She moved her arm away, as though my touch actually stung her. “In our many lengthy conversations?”

  “Wasn’t there another option? I would’ve helped. Or, if you didn’t want my help, you could have rented it out, made a fortune doing that.”

  “Thank you for the brilliant financial advice! That didn’t occur to me.”

  “I’m not saying . . .”

  “I had to sell the house, okay? The maintenance was too much. And I needed the money for Sammy’s education.”

  I looked at her, confused. Great public school was one of the few advantages of being in the Hamptons year-round.

  “What do you mean?” I said, concerned. “Does she have learning issues?”

  She shook her head, more offended that I might actually have the nerve to care than about anything else I’d done. “Why are we even discussing this? You want your share of the house?”

  I did, as a matter of fact. “I told you, I just need a place to stay until everything quiets down.”

  She pulled at her hair, free of gum and peanut butter, soaking wet. “No.”

  “Can I just stay here until you get back?” I said. “Please? Use the computer. Get organized. If I go back out there, I’ll probably get arrested.”

  I held up the ticket as proof.

  “Who do you think called the cops?”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m sorry, are you outraged? Did I, like, offend your moral compass?”

  I shook my head, exhausted by her narrative—her same narrative that cast me in the role of evil villain. And she must have registered it on my face—my anger at her. Which only made her more angry. And, like that, there we were again, right where we’d left off, convinced that the other person was wrong and impossible.

  “Hello.”

  We both turned to see that Sammy was standing in the loft (her bedroom apparently), wearing wire-rim glasses and overalls, her hair in two braids, Pippi Longstocking–style. The glasses took up most of her face—which, combined with the braids, made her look older than she was. Or maybe it was neither of those things. Maybe it was the way she was tilting her head, studying me. Like, at six years old, she had the ability to study anything.

  “Sammy, where’s your jacket?” Rain said.

  “I checked the temperature. I’m fine.”

  That stopped me—the way she spoke. Grown-up, pitched. Her eyes still laser-focused on my face: piercing blue eyes, stunning and mildly absurd behind those glasses. And then there was how much she looked like my sister. Rain was two years older than me, and I had spent my childhood looking at her and trying to decide how I should be. It was bizarre to look at this small version of her, trying to figure out who I was.

  Sammy climbed down the loft’s ladder and stood right in front of me, studying me more intently. She might have been six, but I wanted to look away.

  “Are we related?” she said.

  “What makes you ask that?” I said.

  “Well, we look alike, for starters.

  Rain hoisted up her daughter. “Sammy. We’re leaving.”

  They headed for the door, Sammy hanging over her shoulder.

  “Just be gone before we’re home,” Rain said.

  “Thank you, Rain.”

  Then she did look at me. “Don’t thank me,” she said. “Just don’t come back.”

  She opened the door, a bag over her shoulder, Sammy still dangling, a balancing act she had mastered. And, yet, her face gave her away. My sister had always been the classically beautiful Stephens sister: five foot eight (to my five foot three), with shiny blond hair and strong features, a smile that lit up her face. But she wasn’t smiling now, her eyes creased, her hair short and uninspired. Now she just looked tired.

  As they headed out the front door, I heard Sammy say, “Who is that, Mommy?”

  “That,” she said, “is nobody.”

  15

  I intended to find a place to stay for the night and leave as promised. I had no money and no good options—though staying with my sister was proving to be impossible. It would be one thing if we had a five-thousand-square-foot house to avoid each other in. There was no avoiding each other in six hundred square feet. Except I fell asleep with the laptop right on top of my stomach. And I hadn’t been searching last-minute, reasonable hotel deals, like I should have been. I was trying to write an email to Danny, something that would make him understand—maybe something that would make us both understand. I hadn’t gotten too far. This was what I had written before I fell asleep.

  Dear Danny, so you’re probably

  Clearly, that would fix everything.

  I woke up when I heard the key in the lock. My sister. I reached for my laptop and grabbed the rest of my stuff—not even zipping closed my bag—and raced toward the door. Rain wasn’t kidding. She would call the police if I wasn’t out of there before she stepped inside. My plan was to run out, even if that meant running right past her. But I ran too fast, and instead of squeezing past Rain on my way out, there was a man there. Large, imposing.

  “Whoa!” he said.

  He grabbed my shoulders, trying to avoid a collision. This guy was dirty and smelly, in fisherman gear, a garbage bag in his hand.

  I flinched on his impact—on the feel of his hands on me—and my things went flying all around him, my laptop hitting the floor with a crack.

  I bent down and started picking everything up.

  He looked down at me, like he was trying not to laugh. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  I looked up at him. “Don’t you knock?” I said.

  “Is that protocol where you’re from?” he said. “If I’m the one with a key?”

  He got down on the ground and started helping me corral my things—his hands on my folded underwear, his hands on my lipstick.

  “Hope you didn’t have a
nything too valuable in here,” he said.

  “You know, just everything I own,” I said.

  He picked up my computer, a crack running down the front. “Owned may be more accurate,” he said.

  I looked at him, his water bib undone, his suspenders by his waist. He was so dirty that you could almost miss that he was also pretty good-looking, in a burly kind of way. All muscles, with these clear blue eyes, smile glowing.

  “So you did show up,” he said. “I thought you would.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I believe someone owes me a hundred bucks.”

  “You would have to be Thomas?”

  “I don’t know that I would have to be,” he said.

  I wasn’t in the mood for this guy, who was so obviously charmed by himself. I didn’t want to pretend I was interested in having anything like a relationship with my sister’s boyfriend, let alone with my sister herself.

  He stood up, and I followed suit, my clothes stuffed back in my bag. He pointed toward the bedroom. “I’m just here grabbing a few things,” he said.

  “Well, Rain is at work—”

  “I know where Rain is.”

  “So does she know that you’re here grabbing a few things?”

  I couldn’t read his look. “You’re asking a lot of questions, considering I’m the one with the key,” he said.

  “It was one question, actually. And you know what? I don’t care, I’m leaving.”

  “Are you going through Sag on your way out of here?” he said.

  “No, why?”

  He smiled, dirty and mean. “No reason. There’s just a little billboard. For all the new Food Network shows.”

  I closed my eyes, taking a breath in. “Great, so everyone is going to recognize me.”

  “Well, you’re more like the corner of the billboard,” he said. “And, no offense, you look a lot better in the billboard version of yourself than you do in person, so . . .”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m just saying, I’d relax about that. Not sure how many people around here care about someone stealing a few recipes.”