“Hmm.” Cassandra left it at that. “Your job is very important to you,” she finally said.
He shrugged. Honestly, teaching was interesting and it was a paycheck. That was about it.
Cassandra glanced sharply at him as if reading his mind. “I meant being a lifeguard.”
He blinked. It was true, he looked forward to his lifeguard job all year. He liked the keeping-people-safe aspect of it. He liked sitting in his chair, looking out over the ocean and feeling calm and at peace with the world.
“Well, yes, it’s a good job. But my daughter is more important to me. I’ll take care of her, Cassandra, you don’t have to worry about her being here all the time while you have work to do.”
“Please, Dad!” Lucy interrupted. “I don’t want you to quit your lifeguard job to take care of me!”
She’d called him Dad, not Sam.
He felt himself grinning like a fool.
“Cassandra says you’re really good at what you do.” Lucy continued. “She says you’re the only lifeguard trainer she’s ever seen who teaches the lifeguards how to meditate to stay calm. And you show them the best way to return lost children to their parents. And...to defuse tense situations.”
That was the most Lucy had said to him in a long time, and Cassandra smiled sheepishly at him. “Your lifeguard station is right in the line of sight of my workspace. I’ve been listening to you lead morning training sessions for years.”
Cassandra had obviously been talking him up to his daughter, and he appreciated that. “Thank you, Cassandra,” he said quietly.
She folded her hands and slid a sideways look at him. “I wonder if you could do a favor for me this summer.”
“Oh?” He felt his smile tightening.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Cassandra hastened to explain. “I have a young houseguest coming here from the West Coast, on sabbatical from her demanding job. She’s looking for someone to tutor her in meditation. I wonder if you could teach her some techniques?”
He almost burst out laughing. He would just bet this “young houseguest” was single, a sweet young thing, and Cassandra was attempting to fix him up. He was thirty-two and unattached, and his fellow teachers tended to do that to him, too. Cassandra he couldn’t get mad at because she was Lucy’s friend. Plus, he could see the irony in her request.
Cassandra noted his amused expression and tsk-tsked him. “You know how important meditation is, Sam. Sarah asked me to find her a class, and I thought of you. I never saw anyone teach neophytes at work like that until you came along. The other lifeguard supervisors scream at the recruits and blow their whistles. Run, swim, practice mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
“Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is quite important,” he teased.
“Staying calm and responding appropriately to stressful situations is more important.” She nodded at him.
He agreed with her, but that wasn’t the point. “How old is your houseguest?” he asked.
Cassandra didn’t bat an eye. “Sarah is in her thirties, like you, and she’s quite pretty. She returns to California after Labor Day.”
So here was this summer’s anonymous yet intimate fling—was that what she was implying?
“No, Cassandra. Sorry.” Honestly, the morning’s uncomfortable realizations about him and Lucy not having an emotional connection were making him not want to have his yearly fling. It seemed pathetic now. Maybe he’d only thought he’d been connecting with these women, just as he’d thought he’d been connecting with Lucy during their twice-monthly Saturday outings. Lucy had made him see that it hadn’t been true, at all.
“Please, Dad, help her!” Lucy’s voice was a shriek. He nearly jumped, it surprised him so much.
“Luce, I’m going to be busy with you. You and I can hang out and do stuff together. We can go to the library and read books together all day, if that’s what you want.” He would miss his job, and money would be tight, but at least the time spent together would bring them closer.
“But, Dad, you don’t understand...” Lucy got up and shrugged out of her backpack. She riffled through a stack of books and papers and pulled out a magazine.
Business Roundup. He stared at her, confused. This was an adult publication, and not something he or her mother read, that was for sure. He couldn’t quite picture bohemian Cassandra reading it, either.
Lucy flipped the pages open to an article she’d marked with a yellow sticky note and showed the pages to him. One featured a huge, glossy picture of a severe, unsmiling woman.
He blinked and looked up at his daughter.
“This is Sarah Buckley,” Lucy said. “Haven’t you heard of her?”
Should he have? He shrugged and held up his hands.
“She’s one of the most important women in Silicon Valley,” his eleven-year-old informed him.
He studied the picture again. Sarah Buckley wore a black suit jacket with a white shirt and had dark chin-length hair. Her fighting gaze made her look like she battled and scrapped for what was hers and never gave up trying.
“I didn’t know you were interested in business,” he said to Lucy.
“She’s a woman of substance. That’s what it says. Read the article.”
He took the magazine from her and flipped through the piece. It was five pages long. When he heard his daughter loved the library, frankly, he’d thought she meant the young adult section. Cassandra had all kinds of artsy friends who wrote literature for kids and teens, but seriously...business magazines?
“Sarah Buckley talks about setting life goals and making daily progress and moving above the limitations of your background.” Lucy set her chin as she spoke, and in that moment, there was no question, she absolutely reminded Sam of the driven woman profiled in the piece.
He moved away from the magazine with the photograph of the intense Silicon Valley executive that Lucy so admired. He strode over to a couch across the room and sank deeply into the cushions. The whole day so far had been staggering to him. What other parts of herself had Lucy kept hidden from him? He had such a gap to bridge with her that it felt overwhelming.
Lucy settled back in the chair, rereading the article about the woman she obviously idolized. Cassandra wore a thoughtful expression that Sam couldn’t place.
“She’s my niece,” Cassandra said quietly. “My deceased sister’s only daughter. She’s in trouble with her job and she’s coming here to destress for the summer.”
“Sarah Buckley is your niece?” He stood up and glanced over Lucy’s shoulder at the photograph again. He saw no family resemblance to Cassandra.
A movement out the window caught his attention. On the beach, a crew on a town dump truck was delivering freshly painted lifeguard stands to each of the assigned stations.
A pang went through him. As much as he wanted to improve his relationship with Lucy this summer, the reminders of what he was giving up for that made Sam think again of all the good things he loved about his job that he would miss once he tendered his resignation. He would miss the early morning swims with the lifeguard teams, being calmed by and at peace in the vast, powerful ocean, his refuge since he’d been able to walk. Being one with the ocean was a feeling he couldn’t easily describe, a home to him. It was his peace and his anchor. He’d hoped Lucy would feel this way too, but she didn’t.
Not everybody loved the ocean, he reminded himself. Lots of people couldn’t swim or didn’t know how to manage the powerful