“Not yet.” Sam clears her throat and laughs uncertainly. “But she’ll be fine with it.”
Metaphorical warning bells are sounding all over the place, but Timothy can almost ignore them over the chatter of the passengers. One of the extremely young ferry workers (do they hireactual children now?) is motioning him on toward the luggage pickup.
“I mean, if you’re sure about that. If you’reabsolutely sureabout that, I’d love to have you for the summer.” His niece: the light in the darkness; the Scout to his Atticus; the daughter he never had. His heart lifts and he moves with the other passengers, a new, hopeful spring in his step.
Amy
Sunday. Amy comes in from the grocery store, the straps of her reusable grocery bags digging into her wrists. She kicks open the door, no arm free to open it gracefully.
“Hello!” she calls. “Hell-oooo! Sam? Kona?” Greg left early for the Backman house—even though it’s Sunday, he has items on his to-do list he’s itching to get to.
No answer from Sam, she must be sleeping still, but Kona comes skidding around the corner, delirious with joy. If he could talk surely he would say,Ohmygod you’re back you’re back I thought you were never coming back.“Hey boy,” she says. “Let me put these down and I’ll give you a good scratch, okay?” Kona, seeming to understand, accompanies her to the kitchen, allowing her space. She hefts the bags onto the counter and squats in front of Kona. Has anyone in the history of the world ever been as happy to see a person as Kona is to see Amy? “I know,” she tells him, scratching and rubbing. “I know, I know, Iknow.”
When Kona is sated, or at least partially so, Amy begins to unload the groceries. She bought all of Sam’s favorites: black cherry kombucha, Doritos (an unlikely combination, to be sure, but sometimes there’s no accounting for the taste and metabolism of a teenager), strawberry Greek yogurt, a pomegranate, even though the pomegranate looks well traveled and cranky. Amytries to buy summer fruit in summer, but for Sam she has made an exception.
She’s got her head in the refrigerator, trying to make room for all of the different varieties of milk—now that Sam is home she has to keep oat milkandalmond milk on hand, plus cream for Greg’s coffee, and her own 2 percent—when she hears a sound behind her. Her heart jumps and she turns from the fridge and says, “Holy geez!”
“Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Sam, who has come in stealthy as a cat, is up earlier than usual, and dressed: high-waisted cutoffs, some sort of wraparound halter top whose beginnings and endings Amy can’t discern. High ponytail, lip gloss.
“I bought your favorites!” Amy opens her arms wide to introduce the bounty. “I didn’t get dinner food, though. Dad has tickets to the Paw Sox, so I thought maybe we could go for clam rolls at Monahan’s. What do you think? I bet you haven’t had a clam roll in a while!” Amy is surprised to find that she feels nervous suggesting this, like she and Sam had one date that went okay, not great, and she’s not sure if a second one is in the cards. To distract herself while she waits for Sam to answer, she starts the next grocery list—she hadn’t realized how low they are on butter, and also on granola. Sam loves granola.
“Mom...” says Sam.
“We can go anytime,” says Amy. “No more papers to grade, I’m flexible.”
“Mom.”
“Yup?” Amy looks up.
Sam gestures at the foyer, where, Amy now sees, is. . . a duffel? Was that there when she came in? “Thank you for buying all of this. But I... I’m taking off.”
“What?” Amy is genuinely bewildered. “Where?”
“Block Island.” Sam may as well have said Timbuktu, or Myanmar, or the Solomon Islands, so much do the wordsBlockandIslandfail to register as having anything to do with a place Amy might know. “After you told me about Uncle Timmy’s play... I’ve been thinking... and yesterday I called him, and it turns out he has alotof extra space in the house he’s staying in. So I thought—” She clears her throat, looks to the ceiling, blinks rapidly. “So I thought I might go stay there for a while.”
“But you just got here!” cries Amy.
“I’ve been here for two weeks, Mom.” Amy’s eyes fill; she feels as neglected and hurt as a schoolgirl excluded from birthday party plans, her hand not holding a crisp pink invitation when every other girl has one. Don’t bring up Christmas, says a little voice inside her head.
“It’s great being here,” Sam goes on, driving the knife farther into Amy’s heart. “It really is. I just feel like I need to... figure some things out. And I can’t do that at home.”
“Why not?” To her own ears Amy’s voice sounds a little like a strangled cat.
Sam sighs and touches her hand briefly to her high, perfect ponytail. “Because I get major childhood vibes when I’m here.”
“What’s so wrong with that?” protests Amy. “You had a perfect childhood!”
“I know. I had a good childhood.” (Amy tries not to notice the substitution ofgoodforperfect.) “But I don’t know how long I can spend in that bedroom, with the decorations from like five years ago. It’s nothing personal.”
“Four years,” says Amy. “The room redecoration was for your fifteenth birthday.” The hours they’d spent poring over the Pottery Barn Teen catalog! The thought they’d put into exactly where to hang the bulletin board, the fairy lights, the fake ivy climbing the back wall!
“Four years,” concedes Sam. “But you know what I’m saying.” She doesn’t look at Amy to confirm that Amy does, in fact, know what she’s saying. Instead she’s intently inspecting a cuticle on herring finger, right hand. “Uncle Timmy has ocean views, and all this space.” She widens both her arms and her eyes to indicate the space Uncle Timmy has.
Amy chews her lip and thinks. These are the rules of being the mother of a teenage girl in the first quarter of the twenty-first century: Be present, but half in shadow. Do, but don’t ask to be done for you. Don’t cry, even if you’re disappointed. And, if you happen to be Amy Trevino, whatever you do, don’t bring up Christmas.
“You can’t leave already. You didn’t even come home for Christmas.” You didnotjust say that,says Amy’s inner voice. Please tell me you didn’t.
Sam rolls her eyes. “Mom. I told you so many times. I wanted to come home for Christmas! We weren’t allowed to leave. We had to be there for stuff. There wasn’t enough time.”
