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I take a deep breath, shut my eyes, exhale. “You’re right. I don’t. I don’t know what you want. You did a good thing and I’m being a jerk.”
I’m relieved to see both dimples groove deep. “Whoa. Is that an actual apology? I forgive you. If you forgive me for standing in front of a girl like you and letting my eyes wander. My mom would be pissed with me.”
I have only the haziest of memories of Cass’s mom from that one summer. Adults you don’t know well all seem blend together when you’re little—someone big who talks about things you don’t understand that don’t sound interesting. No memory at all whether she was tall or short, blond or dark. Or even kind or not. I try to picture her at meets and I can’t. I can just see Cass’s dad cheering.
“She’s a therapist,” he adds. “Specializes in empowering girls and women. She’s written books about it. How the Patriarchy Silences the Female Voice. That was her best seller. Oh, and Men, Why Do We Bother?”
“Ouch,” I say. “Really?”
“Yep. Mom doesn’t like to leave any feeling undelved . . .” He wrinkles his nose, squinting. “Is that a word?”
“Close enough,” I say. Try harder to remember Cass’s mom. Picture her in hemp clothing with wild hair, fingers tented. Then with hair drawn back into a stern bun, power suit on. Neither seems right.
“Sometimes family di
I’m still stuck on Men, Why Do We Bother? I don’t want Cass to have some uptight, disapproving family. It doesn’t fit with my image of his dad from that summer, from my memories of feeling comfortable ru
“Yup, I was the one last try for a girl. I would have been Cassandra . . . you know, after the girl no one listened to in the Iliad. Who died.”
“Instead you got named after the cool guy in an iconic classic movie.”
“Yeah, well, he got offed in the end too.”
“Well, my mom named me after the world’s most famously unfaithful woman.”
Cass flinches, then looks out to sea. “I’d better get home. I’ve got this—family thing tonight—and you’d better go dry off. I’ll put together a program for Emory.”
He strides down the pier without looking back. I scan the parking lot, half expecting to see Spence’s car idling there like the other day. It’s not. But it might as well be, because Spence was right there between us.
Again.
And we were doing so well there for a second.
Chapter Eighteen
Mom plops heavily down on the couch as Nic and I describe what happened with Em, both of us trying to take a bigger share of the blame as though it’s the last slice of pie.
“This was all me, Aunt Luce. I was stupid-focused—didn’t even get that he didn’t have a life jacket—”
“No, Mom, it was my fault. I was”—distracted by Cass in his swim trunks and this weird truce we keep zigzagging in out out of—“not paying attention when I should have—”
“It shouldn’t always have to be Gwen, Aunt Luce. I dropped the ball completely, ’cause I—” Nic’s face turns red.
“I was the one who was on the dock with Emory—I was the one who brought him there. With no life jacket.”
Finally, as we both stutter to a halt, Mom sighs, her eyes taking in Em, already nodding to sleep on the corner of the couch, long eyelashes fluttering, still clutching Hideout. She brushes her hand under her eyes, then ruffles Nic’s hair, cups my chin. “I ask too much of you two, I know. I look at you both, good kids, and I want you to have everything I ever wanted and didn’t get. But we can’t let Emory slip through the cracks. We have to keep him safe. He can’t do that for himself.”
Grandpa Ben, who is punching tobacco into the pipe he hardly ever smokes, a rare sign of extreme agitation, points the barrel of the pipe at me, then Nic, in turn. “Our coelho needs the swimming lessons. We will get the young yard boy. He talked to me about it the other day.”
Nic bristles. “I can teach him. Why do we have to bring in Cassidy Somers?”
“You tried, Nico.” Mom pats his knee. “So did Grandpa. And Gwen. Sometimes these things are better when it’s not family doing the teaching.”
“Yeah, remember when Dad tried to teach me to drive?” I shudder.
“It would have been better if it wasn’t Mrs. Partridge’s fence you hit,” Mom says. “She still brings it up every single time I clean her house, the old battle-ax.”
Grandpa holds the lighter to the bowl of his pipe, takes deep breaths in and out. At last he settles his pipe in the corner of his mouth and says, “We talk to the yard boy. You”—he points to me—“you ask him tonight. He is here on the island, yes?”
“At the Field House,” Nic says. “I’ll tell him.”
“No, I need you to drive me to Mass,” Grandpa Ben says. “My coelho had a lucky escape today. Thanks must be said. Guinevere can work it out with the yard boy.” His brow crinkles. “Perhaps we can pay him in fish?”
I wince at the mental image of me slapping a dead mackerel into Cass’s arms at the end of a lesson. “We’ll work something out,” I say. “And, guys, his name is Cassidy. Not Jose. Not the yard boy. Why is that so hard for everyone to remember? Also, he’s not that young. He’s our age. I mean, I think he’s a little older than me but it’s not like he’s ten. I mean, obviously. Look at him. And you should remember him anyway, because he spent the summer here once—that crazy one, with the weather, and . . . and . . . remember? Not to mention the fact that he’s on Nic’s swim team, for God’s sake.”
Grandpa, Nic, and Mom are all staring as though I’ve sprouted an additional head. Green, with pink polka dots.
“This the polite one with the abs?” Mom asks.
Grandpa says, “You know how hard it is for us to get to meets. And all boys look the same with those little caps and those bathing suits muito pequeno.”
They do not.
Emory is still sleeping when I leave, so I haul along Fabio as a handy excuse to make my visit brief. Cass is not going to want our aged, flatulent, over-excitable dog hanging out for long. A quick business transaction, that’s all this needs to be.
But when I knock on the door of the Field House apartment, it’s not Cass who opens it. It’s Spence. He’s looking particularly toothpaste-ad perfect. It helps that he’s in te
“Helloooo,” he drawls, propping the door open with the heel of his foot and doing his full-body survey maneuver. Must be a reflex. From what I’ve heard, Spence never does anything—anyone—twice. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Fabio licks his leg, then nudges against him lovingly, waiting for a pet behind the ears. Spence bends down and scritches him, and Fabio immediately rolls over on his back. Traitor.
“Just had something to ask Cass. He home?”
“Making like Sleeping Beauty.” Spence jerks his thumb toward a closed door. “I thought I’d get a game out of him, but he crashed. Said he just needed a power nap, but it’s been an hour now. Come on in.”
I tell him I’ll come back another time. Spence, not even bothering to argue, just dismissing this, opens the door wider. “I won’t bite. Unless you ask very nicely. C’mon. It sucks that he’s a working stiff this summer. He’s tired all the time and not up for anything decent. Or, more to the point, indecent.”
“Poor guy,” I say sarcastically. Then Fabio is charging into the room, all eighty-five pounds of him dragging me behind, launching himself onto the couch in one of his ill-timed bursts of youthful energy. I need to get him, and me, out of here, now. Fabio has been known to “mark his territory” on strange couches.