“Where are you going?” I asked, suddenly distressed to lose one of the few people I knew in this giant house.
“Off to see the prof,” he said nonchalantly, as though he alwaysgave this answer to this question. Then he paused. “Uh—your dad.”
Ethan and my dad had plans this morning?Iwanted to have plans with my father. I should have told Dad earlier I wanted to help him out this summer, so he wouldn’t need Ethan. “Take me with you.”
Ethan gave me a frankly appraising look. “Why?”
“I can help.”
“With—what? Your dad’s work?”
“Why not? I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, but—he didn’t mention you’d be helping. Did you guys plan for you to join us?”
I shrugged. I’d planned it in my head, I just hadn’t really articulated it. “Does it matter?”
Ethan smiled slightly. But not the flirty, fun smile from earlier. No, now he looked like he knew something. I frowned. “What?”
“Nothing.” When my frown deepened, he shoved his hands in his pockets sheepishly. “Your dad mentioned you can be impulsive sometimes.”
Now I was irritated. “Are you gonna give me a ride or not?”
“Have you even had breakfast?”
I snagged two golden-brown patties off the top of the pile of pancakes. “Let’s go.”
Still looking skeptical, Ethan led me outside to a Jeep I had to struggle a bit to get into. Ethan turned the key, and the engine rumbled on. We started down the road, sunbaked roses and lavender sweeping over us. “Why’d you start working with my dad?” I asked. Ethan knew too much about me. I needed to level the playing field.
“You don’t know?”
“I know you started three years ago when a family friend introduced you. But I don’t knowwhy.”
“He does interesting stuff.”
The title of Dad’s first book wasMapping the Atlantic: A History of American Maritime Cartography. Which, yes, could be interesting if you were fascinated by how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century people mapped and learned to navigate the ocean’s currents, floor, and coast. I just hadn’t run across a ton of teenagers who were.
Ethan drove us to a strip of office buildings mid-island, a place where you couldn’t even tell you were on Nantucket. He led me down a long hallway. At the end, a door had Dad’s name in small white print.
“Morning, Ethan,” Dad said when we walked in, then focused on me with surprise. “Jordan! What are you doing here?”
I tried not to bristle. “I thought I’d see what you were up to.”
Dad looked around, as though searching for the toys he’d kept on hand to entertain me when I was a child and visited his classroom—juggling balls, non-drying clay, an action figure or two. “I’m afraid it’s not very exciting—we sit here reading, most of the day—”
“I like reading.”
Dad gave me a skeptical look.
Okay, I was more of a numbers girl than a book girl. “What does Ethan do?”
“Ethan’s combing through old microfilms and documenting mentions of the historical figures we’re interested in.”
A real barrel of monkeys. “I could do that. Help you guys out.”
Dad grimaced. “You don’t want to do that, honey. You want to be out, exploring Nantucket, making friends—”
“I’d rather work for you.”
