Inside the Sun Spot Surf Shop, summer goods swelled out of the cramped shelves. Huck touched everything he could, the graphic T-shirts with the coveted new york sunshine brand blazoned across them, the boxes of inflatable pool rafts piled to the ceiling (swans to sit on, half pizza slices with holes for drinks to lie on, donuts to curl into), surfboards—some short, some sky high—lined up vertically, boogie boards wrapped in plastic, Go-Pro cameras, and other mechanical gadgets designed to make any child salivate.
Katie could sense the guy near her, tracing her steps around the store. He looked her age, maybe a tad older, early thirties. His upright posture signified a self-assured person, but the way he followed her from afar also read careful, with an air of kindness. Just what the doctor ordered after the hell she’d been through this past spring with her mother dying.
Huck tugged hard at her shirt from behind. “Mom, we really need a drone.”
“Honey, I promised candy. Possibly a shark tooth necklace. We came into town to explore, and buy one small thing. Remember, explore was the plan.”
With all the water sports paraphernalia in the shop, Katie imagined herself windsurfing on the bays in the Hamptons, boom in hand, sea spray in her face. It all made her desperate to get summer going already. Katie had discovered the soothing salt water of the Atlantic for the first time this morning. Dunking her body in had felt positively baptismal, as salt water always washed the demons away. She’d found salvation all year back home in Cascade Locks—a windsurf mecca, with the winds blowing into the gorge from the Pacific, her heavy wetsuit keeping her warm in forty-five-degree water.
The Sun Spot store was even messier than the cottage, but she was excited to shake up their senses with the new sights, sounds, tastes, and even aromas in the Hamptons. This morning she’d inhaled humid, salty fog rather than the dry Pacific Northwest air. For lunch, Huck had scarfed down his first plate of fried clams from a truck by the sea. Katie chose a lobster roll. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever eaten lobster on a hot dog bun. As they biked around the back lanes of Southampton, Katie had yelled back at Huck, “Even the light is different out here! Look how the thick trees make these streets all shaded even in the middle of the day.” Katie and Huck were used to the blinding sun on the open lavender field outside her Hood River door, reflecting off the snow-capped peaks of the largest mountain range in America.
Katie watched Huck in front of a row of bathing suits, perusing the bold colors with patterns, stripes, and images of the sea. “Look, it says SURF on the side. I really need one.”
She flashed on an image of Huck standing like this, his back to her as it was now, before her mother’s resting place after the funeral in March. They had strewn half of her ashes in Flathead Lake by their home. For a moment, while Katie said goodbye to mourners, the child paid homage to his grandmother alone, walking down to the shore again. He stood there, his chubby physique thinned out in the dark suit with baggy pants she’d borrowed from a neighbor. The delicate waves of the lake lapped at his big-boy shoes in the muddy sand.
This is my first glimpse of the man Huck will become, she’d thought. During the entire ceremony, he’d grabbed her arm, squeezing it hard, knowing he was sending love up her limbs, telling her they’d carry on in life as a duo now without her mom next door. Watching Huck standing so tall reminded her of her mother’s dying credo even as illness spread: she’d told Katie it was easier to live out her days grateful, rather than glum. Katie breathed in deep, channeling her mother, fortifying her resolve to embrace all the newness out here and stand firm in her decision.
The guy walked closer to her now. It was getting more difficult to ignore him. He wore jeans that curved on his strong build, and a T-shirt that hung a few inches farther down on one arm than the other. His thin frame was muscular and tight.
As she feigned interest in a small boogie board for Huck, she smiled back at him, even though she wanted to keep the segments of her new life simple, easy to put together, just like the jigsaw puzzle from the musty closet she and Huck had started on.
Katie thought about the relationship space George kept mentioning in phone calls. He was so intent on giving her distance and time so she didn’t feel pressure. Was it possible, she might even date a little when George wasn’t here? How weird. This great-looking guy now trying on a sweatshirt made her anxious with possibility.
George couldn’t have been clearer, or more convincing. He’d laid out the summer plan in detail after that day picking cherries when he took her out to a dimly lit restaurant for dinner. “I swear on my life and yours. I like the other house. I haven’t slept in the little cottage for fifteen years. We just give it to someone who is writing a novel or needs a break from a marriage. We don’t rent it, ever. You don’t have to pay. Just stay. No strings.” At that point he’d asked the waiter for a thick felt-tip pen and written on a cocktail napkin in the light of a candle: COME EAST, NO STRINGS, KATIE OWES GEORGE ZERO.