“Can we go to the beach tomorrow?” Huck pleaded as he climbed into the back of the beat-up Volvo in the deli lot. “I don’t want to get sandy for a picnic, Mom. I’m cold anyway.”
“I’ll find a little spot near town in the grass with no breeze, honey. We can eat the sandwiches there.” Katie looked into the rearview mirror and sent her son a little kiss. She longed to put her feet in the sand and feel the slosh of soothing salt water on her body. But she knew not to push her son more than she already had.
For their lunch, she pulled into a protected bay with a small dock and yellow flowers blooming along the embankment. As they threw bread scraps to the ducks in the water, Katie told herself she needn’t have been worried about snooty people in the Hamptons. Catapulting their life out here still felt like a prudent decision, even if it were a little rash. The farm stands were country in feel—cute red wagon–style trailers filled with baskets of jewel-colored flowers and produce. Maybe George’s assurances were on point: the tutor hours would pile up, Huck would love a new coastal environment, and the Hamptons were populated by kind people drawn to water sports and nature, who also fed fuzzy ducks paddling for crumbs with their children.
Katie watched her son throw the crusts of his sandwich into the flurry of ducks gathered by the bank. She thought about her mother, and how strange it was that she would never know she’d taken Huck here. Having died in early March, her mother had advised her to leave home when she felt ready for a new life chapter. Today, it felt both natural and bizarre to have landed here at the dawn of Katie’s first summer without her.
As she faced the warm Hamptons sun, her mind flashed back to day one of the Portland education conference series, near the remnants of the Danish breakfast spread, when George had walked right up to her.
“Your morning talk was damn good,” he’d said. “I want to hear more about your dyslexia papers. My company is investing in some of the learning software you mentioned.” He’d pulled his long bangs off his forehead and locked his blue eyes on hers like a dare. “But I’m more interested in your brain than all the studies we are hearing about, frankly.”
“Thank you. I’ve published other . . .”
“Let’s leave.”
“Leave now?” Katie asked, shocked by his bold suggestion. “It’s only eleven-thirty, we’ve got four more panels . . .”
“Let’s slide out. Now, before the next session starts.”
And so it was that Katie and George replaced the sessions on fostering academic grit with an early lunch at a bistro on Portland’s Willamette River. A frenzied session tangled in the Hilton’s starchy sheets followed. The couple barely participated in the education conference over the next three weekends, favoring wine and heated calisthenics in their hotel rooms.
Katie looked at the still bay, reflecting like a mirror off the bright sky. She said to Huck, “It’s so peaceful, how can anyone be anything but happy here?”
Huck smiled up at his mother, his contagious, youthful innocence fortifying her own convictions. “You’ll see, we’ll meet people and we’ll both make great friends. They can’t be that different from the folks back in Hood River. Let’s go walk down the Main Street in Southampton town, and we’ll see some new faces.” She remembered locking the door of her Oregon loft for the final time just forty-eight hours before.
“This was the right move, honey, I’m sure.”
Chapter Six
Close Encounters with Another Kind
On Main Street of Southampton town, Katie and Huck entered a gourmet-style market called the Silver Apple where she paid six dollars for a small bottle of water. Strange, she thought, what exactly is in this water at these prices?
She placed a twenty-dollar bill at the counter, where people were packed in like a tight elevator. Below her, Huck could barely get oxygen in the dense crowd. As the waitress took her money, Katie squeezed Huck’s hand tighter to signal that this plan to move all the way across the country wasn’t ill-founded. The town was just a little more crowded than she imagined.
Katie tried to get the attention of the waitress behind the counter. “My change for the water? I, just, didn’t get . . .”
“I forgot. Sorry!” the girl said. “I’m dealing with another order, give me a little!” The espresso machine gurgled as it steamed up milk.
A woman in line behind Katie reached for a Fair Trade raw hemp bar on the counter, elbowing her in the ear, and screamed at anyone who’d listen. “An almond milk chai latte with Stevia and a wasabi tuna Swiss chard wrap! Do you mind dusting it with some turmeric?”