It Happens in the Hamptons

by Holly Peterson

  “Yes, Dad.” Luke wondered if it was normal for a thirty-one-year-old man to be so fearful of disappointing his father.

  “They say, ‘don’t get too close to the sun or you’ll get burned,’” Frank stated. “What the hell is going on? The Chases are suddenly your friends? Or that horny partner Kona you got, what, he’s doing that wife now? That Jake Chase is on his third contractor now who had to beg me to handle the flooding shit-show they are in over there, that whole house is about to sink in the sand dune if the plumbing isn’t overhauled, well, more importantly, I don’t want to see you . . .”

  “Dad, calm down. Jake Chase can be an ass. I deal with him all the time, I get it, I ran after you and you saw me, right? And still you just threw your hand in the air out your window and drove off.”

  “I know you know how I feel, son.” Frank softened, never able to stay tough with the son he inherited. “It’s just bullshit to be asked to practice my craft, and then not be treated like a human being.” Frank pointed his finger at Luke, his nostrils slightly flared on his round, ruddy face. He then took off his hat and patted down the wispy salt-and-pepper hair that was sprouting out the top of his head.

  “Dad, it’s the first time, honestly, that we ever ate there. I’ve worked almost every day all summer so far. I haven’t had time to sit with you and explain exactly how much these trustees are gaining ground on us. Kenny exchanged money on town property one time Bucky was watching, plus we’ve had a bunch of other little fuck-ups they’ve let fly any other summer, and they’re trying to shut Tide Runners down . . . and I thought the Chases being so wealthy and connected might help, which they kind of agreed to, so it was more a lifesaving professional lunch.”

  “All right, all right, I’m telling you one thing, though: those people will use you and spit you out so fast, you won’t even recognize yourself. Don’t expect them to pony up help for you guys.

  “Your mother, God rest her soul, knew that all too well. She did not take well to people from Manhattan who come out and don’t respect the community we built.”

  “Dad,” continued Luke, “I, uh, actually do understand more than you give me credit for. I hear you. I’m also thirty-one years old now. I’ve got to be polite to people who trust me with their children. You need to just realize . . . not everything is as black and white as when Mom was around. I’m very protective of Jake’s kids, the two younger ones anyway who’ve come to camp. The ocean brings us together like you don’t understand. It’s an equalizer. All of us, it’s like a family out there in the boats and on the waves. It’s not the kids’ fault their dad is a dickhead at times. Jesus, the Internet wasn’t even around when Mom was alive. Technology brings people together, Dad. You don’t even have an email, so you can’t really see.”

  Luke might as well have been speaking in Swahili, or using Kona’s lame Hawaiian catch phrases. Frank’s ruddy face got ruddier. He yanked at his utility vest and cracked his neck a few times.

  Luke plowed on. “I’m not saying we’re all equal or anything. I’m just saying many of the guys with these huge houses on the ocean have come from nothing and made fortunes. They aren’t the snobby Southampton people from the past who automatically thought they were better than everyone, even though sometimes, yes, they get testy and treat you like shit.”

  Frank stood silently and pushed the few hairs back on his head to ease his headache.

  “Look, I know this is frustrating you because you do that motion with your hand on your head when you’ve had enough,” Luke said softly. He hugged his stepdad.

  Luke for once was relieved to recognize his most annoying client by her sun hat as wide as a large flying saucer. Margaux Carroll was waving to him like a madwoman from the top of the parking lot. She had four kids with her, which was typical, given that she’d only reserved one 3:00 p.m. lesson for her fat, sorry-ass son who despised the water.

  Luke didn’t have backup instructors for the bay side. He knew she wouldn’t understand that four kids and one instructor was not a safe way to go. Tyler had serious anxiety in the water, and she couldn’t accept was never going to be the water sports ace his Yale water polo team captain dad was.

  “Dad. Let’s have a beer later. I’m sorry, I have to go make a living, while I still have a camp.” He patted Frank’s back. “You can’t make people do things or feel things just because Mom would have wanted it that way. She wasn’t here to mold me for half my life. Who knows what she would have wanted now? Jesus. You’ve got to drop it once in a while, please.”

  Luke walked up the hill to the camp meeting area, not at all satisfied he’d gotten through. His stomach was still sick from far too much shellfish and quail egg sandwiches.

  So much for that dreaded American word “closure.” He hated being reminded about his mother’s wrath. She was long lost in the boating accident. When Frank focused on it, it drew him down the whole day. Luke knew they were both still making reparations fifteen years later: Frank by force-feeding her wishes down her son’s throat and Luke by saving the lives he could in the rough waves.

  And as Luke walked toward his client, Bucky Porter hid behind a large SUV in the lot, and the bay constable’s boat idled in the long reeds by the docks, both hunting their prey.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Everything Good Happens in Summer

  “Luke, I’m sorry,” Margaux wailed like a branded heifer. “You’re going to have to do this for me. Pleeeeeease.”

  Luke shook his head at her, counting boys with his index finger in a motley grouping behind her. “Four? With me alone? You know the rules, Mrs. Carroll. We’ve been over this.”

  “I know you don’t like it when I have add-ons, and there’s some official little camp policy, blah, blah,” Mrs. Carroll declared, as if Luke and Kona were idiots for having safety concerns in the churning Atlantic with forty children at a time.

  “Hello, Margaux, anything I can help with?” Bucky Porter strolled into the scene. “I just got out here for the day, have some papers to sign in town, then I’m back to the city, thought I’d check on . . .”

  “I wanted to leave these boys there but there is only one lifeguard on the public beach and they can’t just run around on their own.”

  “So you’re bringing them to Tide Runners?” Bucky asked. “And you feel they are safer than . . .” He turned his back to Luke, as he had on the previous beach tirade.

  Margaux whispered to Bucky, within earshot of Luke, “Honestly, I’ve got so much work with guests coming tomorrow on the 4:07 cannonball train, and my help is just horrible. I’d leave the boys with just about anyone. I’d take hooligans at this point, and . . .”

  “Hooligans. Interesting,” answered Bucky, crossing his arms on his large chest. “My fear, exactly.” Just then, the bay constable’s boat rolled into the front dock slip. The hefty captain roped it on the deck cleats, and marched to the group like the town sheriff. He stood about five foot six, his potbelly cinched in with a leather belt and glossy buckle. Luke watched Bucky salute him like a fellow Marine.

  What the fuck?

  “Excuse us, Margaux, we will just need to check some credentials with Mr. Forrester.”

  The constable yanked Luke’s elbow like he was nine years old and in big trouble. “Watch yourself, Mr. Forrester. I have access to any and all businesses operating on my waters. We have information on how you’re running things. You’re overdue on town records. You could be done in a matter of days.”

  “You know what?” Luke answered. “I’m a public employee during the school year just like you. I’ve filed permits. If there’s one that’s a little expired, I’ll go into town later and update the form. By the way, no one in Town Hall has ever told us it’s out of date.”

  “I got my eyes on you,” confirmed the constable. “You’re not getting away with anything this year.”

  “Well, sir, that’s a great thing. Thank you, sir.” Luke saluted. “Good to know we are being watched, so the families are safe. And right now, I’m go
ing to deal with my client.” And then he turned to Bucky. “Lovely disposition by your lady friend Mrs. Carroll, by the way. She has such a gracious way about her.” And Luke walked away, half confident these men were on a harmless power trip, and half petrified they’d shut him and Kona down for good.

  “I’m sorry to saddle you with these kids,” Margaux plowed on, “but I promised I would watch the kids all day, and then I have this corn and lamb chop disaster at home. I just called the mothers and said you’d take them on the boat instead. If you can at least, just please, God, do me that one little . . .”

  “I’m not doing any favors here. It’s my job,” Luke explained. “If you’d like to sign up ahead of time for . . .”

  “My Brazilian help don’t speak English and . . .” And then Margaux whispered into Luke’s ear as if they were on the same nobleman level and could openly discuss the serfs’ ineptitudes. “It’s sooo inconvenient, I could just rip my hair out.” She huffed loudly.

  The gloomy, preteen boy posse at her side were mortified to be anywhere near this woman, let alone in her care. They all wore surf trunks, flip-flops, and towels wrapped around their necks. Margaux Carroll’s son, Tyler, age nine, was a few years older than the other kids, and looked like he was weighing the pros and cons of matricide. All of their eyes pleaded with Luke to placate her.

  Margaux went on, oblivious, “Who buys packaged corn on the cob from the frozen department at Waldbaum’s when there’s a farm stand on every corner with fresh, local corn? Frozen vegetables in the summer? Honestly! Helloooo?”

  “I uh, Mrs. Carroll, yeah, we all love that local corn, but it’s not in season yet,” Luke said, squinting his eyes a little at her on the remote possibility she could discern she was the fool in this situation. “It’s only June, so no farms stands have it yet. Maybe your staff had to improvise the best they could and thought it a good idea to get frozen rather than nothing.”

  “Are you taking them out or not?”

  Luke knew the bay constable in mirrored sunglasses was still scrutinizing his every move. “Mrs. Carroll, no adult can watch four kids on a boat in a bay or in the Atlantic, and . . .” Luke whispered this into her ear, “C’mon. You know Tyler, he crawls on my head every time the smallest ripple of a wave comes. He can’t be sharing me with three other kids, especially little ones.”

  “Well, can you please just play on the dock or something, Jesus, I mean I’m paying you.”

  “You’re paying me for all four kids?”

  “No. I’m paying you for Tyler.”

  Luke felt a tug on his shorts from a little guy behind him. And then a woman’s voice, “Can I help? We were just driving by and Huck wanted to see if any boys were tubing behind a boat or if we could join in.”

  It was Katie Doyle, that sunny flash of summer that made Luke believe that this season would be better than any other.

  “I mean, I could stay with you and help. I’ve actually been listening a bit to this conversation,” she said. Luke beamed his smile right at her as she continued, “I used to be a counselor on Flathead Lake near my home.” Katie had recognized Margaux Carroll from the bike shop on her very first day in Southampton, ordering Luke around the way she had the shop owners.

  “Okay,” barked Margaux. “Then it’s all set. I pay for Tyler, you’ll just include the boys for free, I guess, just because, well their moms aren’t here. This kind woman can also help you because her son’s obviously young and needs his mother still. So we’re all set?”

  “C’mon, you and I can handle five boys,” Katie whispered. “We’ll take them for ice cream if we have to in your van. Let’s just put everyone out of their misery and say okay.”

  “I’ll say okay.” Luke let out a huge breath of air. “I’m saying okay now. If you really want to be an adult spotter on the back of the boat, we can even take them out.” Luke would have taken two hundred kids on the boat to have some time with this Katie.

  Margaux swiveled with great purpose to deal with the corn on the cob crisis that had befallen her family. Her Mercedes AMG S63 sedan pulled away, Andover and Yale water polo team decals plastered all over the back window, just to pound daily pressure on her lackluster son.

  With Katie and young Huck smiling by his side, Luke chose to focus on something so true his mother had always told him: Everything good happens in summer.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rocking the Boat

  All the boxes were checked in Katie’s tidy summer plan when, bang, she’d driven by the dock and seen Luke with a group of boys. Huck had yelled from the backseat, “Mom! Wait! I want to say hi to Luke!” She had stopped, wanting to blame the visit on her son’s adoration, but knowing she couldn’t help but slow the car. The pull toward Luke was natural and undeniable, like the moon yanking the Atlantic tides ashore.

  With George on one of his binges of alone time, where he didn’t check in over several days, she’d used the open mental space to put much in good order: her work was becoming more stable, (she had gotten several more clients with ten sessions in week four alone), and she had met with administrators at the Bridgehampton Middle School. Huck was happily ensconced in his water sports camp, and having play dates regularly with new friends.

  There was nothing crazy about a detour to the dock, she had figured. Just a little temperature check. As she parked her car, facing Luke’s boat, Katie mouthed these little justifications to herself so resolutely that her head bobbed. There was something about the way she had had to convince herself that George was lovely and kind and what she needed right now that still didn’t sit right a month into summer.

  Damn this confusion.

  She remembered George’s handsome, rugged face in the car, smiling at her, when he’d driven her to a new client in a small out-of-the-way spot three days before. The creases by the sides of his blue eyes were pronounced in the bright sunlight. He’d told her, “I wanted to drive you because I wanted some extra time with a beauty.”

  Her flip-flops strewn on the car floor, her bare toes on the dashboard, he’d made her feel both secure and sexy that day. George gave her advice on best career moves, lent her a cottage, excited her sexually, and got her to go places in bed she hadn’t with former lovers. She’d remembered the masterful way he’d handled her body a few days before—how he’d pulled her jeans down before they’d even kissed and gone down on her until she’d come so hard and furiously, she couldn’t believe his sheer authority.

  She and Luke could be friends. In the fall, maybe they’d work in the same school system, they’d meet in the teachers’ lounge, share notes, split turkey sandwiches and chips from paper bags. That’s all.

  Huck had asked from the backseat, “Mom, are you talking to yourself?”

  “No, honey, just going over a little list in my head.”

  “What list? For the grocery store?”

  “Just, I don’t know, honey. Like a to-do thing, or like why-to-do thing, actually.”

  “I do that too sometimes, Mom.”

  On the docks now, with the ropes getting untied for an afternoon on the bay, and the boat’s motor spewing oil fumes in the air, Katie recognized that she had casually walked into a whole afternoon with Luke Forrester. She helped Huck and the other young boys to buckle their life jackets. She could not deny the seventh-grade flutter in her heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Blushing in the Bay

  For his part, Luke knew foul moods could vanish in mere moments, like ocean gusts that blew storm clouds into the horizon. Life was all about perspective, and Katie Doyle had changed his in an instant. He’d been chilly that morning, and been put into a bad mood with overdue town permits that might shut down his camp. The tense scuffle with his father over the Chase lunch didn’t help.

  Now, the June sun streamed down, warming his back as he helped the children leap from dock to boat.

  Luke watched as Katie knelt to help a child she’d never met with his suntan lotion. Never mind those good legs, her kindness
alone turned him on. Hell, East Coast or West Coast, good people were good people. He was. She was. Pretty simple equation in life to count on. Frank wasn’t wrong about that.

  Margaux Carroll long gone, the bay constable nowhere in sight, Luke now had the boys in a good place to leave the docks. There were five safe children’s life jackets, a couple of usable but unmatched water skis, a tube patched in a dozen spots but not actually leaking, and a boat that tended to crap out in the middle of the bay but, hell, the bay was shallow and the shoreline visible.

  He liked the way Katie dressed, too: neat but showing as much body as she could in her white cutoffs and plain rubber flip-flops. Hot and confident and sexy? Check. Tramping around like he was one of dozens of men who’d had his way with her like Simone? Nope.

  Luke rolled up his T-shirt sleeves in case Katie cared to view the biceps he’d been working on all spring since Simone dumped him. They weren’t much, but still there were discrete lines of definition if the light and shadows hit him just right. About a week before kicking him to the proverbial curb, Simone told him that his upper arms looked more like baby fat than lean muscle.

  Katie would notice the new muscle lines. She seemed like someone who sought the happy in most any situation, having blown in like those Atlantic gusts, dispersing all the rancor in the lot.

  As they powered out to the center of the bay, Luke took care Katie didn’t get splashed with wake water, though he liked that she didn’t seem to mind. He threw her his zip-up sweatshirt and she donned it instantly as if she were already his girlfriend. Even Tyler Carroll, once liberated from his mother’s clench, and secured in Katie’s knowing arms now out in the bow of the boat, seemed to feel at ease on the water, a first for him. Perhaps the kid feared his mother’s shrill voice more than the ocean’s force.