He was good at it. He would do it year-round if the wages were good enough and he lived in a region of the country that supported it. Because of Lucy, he had stayed in Wallis Point, a town close to her home. It had now become his permanent home, too.
“Dad, you shouldn’t quit your lifeguard job,” Lucy pleaded again. “Please let me stay with Cassandra.”
She must have been watching him stare wistfully at the beach. The magazine was slack in her lap, and her serious brown eyes seemed sorry for him.
“She’ll be in good hands here,” Cassandra added softly.
“What about your work?” he asked Cassandra.
She resumed washing her brushes. “Don’t worry about me. I always take care of myself.” She glanced up at Sam with an expression he couldn’t quite read. “I’ve never told anyone this, but I do have regrets from Sarah’s childhood.”
Both he and Lucy had given her their full attention. They waited for her next words with rapt curiosity.
“Her parents both died when Sarah was twelve.” Cassandra paused to scrub at an especially tough stain on one of her brushes.
“I know this story.” Lucy jumped in eagerly. “Sarah talks about it in the article. She said that facing tragedy and then a difficult home life in her younger years helped hone her focus and showed her the importance of hard work in creating her own destiny.” She read from the magazine. “‘Because only in creating one’s own destiny can one ever be free.’” She put the magazine down. “She won a full scholarship to study engineering at university, where she started developing her own patents and inventions. She started her own company, and now I think she’s really rich. Nobody can push her around anymore.”
Sam stared at his daughter, confused on all kinds of levels. Money was what was important to Lucy? He hadn’t had an inkling that she placed so high a value on wealth. He certainly hadn’t passed that onto her. Business and power had never been important drivers to him. He was more of a helper, and he liked to live simply. Humbly. Sarah Buckley’s world just wasn’t his kind of place.
Cassandra shuffled over, bringing the platter of blueberry cake with her. She plunked it down before him. “Some refreshment, Sam?” she asked drily.
“That is just like what Hannah the witch gave to Nathaniel, too!” Lucy exclaimed. “Dad, you can be Nat!”
Cassandra raised an eyebrow at him.
“Let me guess,” he said, realizing he would have to get used to living with Lucy on her terms and not just spending two afternoons per month on a fun, distracting outing he’d dreamed up. “I’m living in The Witch of Blackbird Pond?”
“Nathaniel was Kit’s love interest. They both needed blueberry cake and kittens to find their happily ever after,” Cassandra explained.
“They get married in the end,” Lucy piped up. “Neither of them see it coming. But it’s true love and a happy ending.”
“Mm-hmm. Right.”
“Cynical about love, are you?” Cassandra asked him with a smile.
He laughed. “I’m not cynical about anything.” Actually, he was amazed that Lucy was talking so much, and about things she never talked about with him. With Sam she was always so serious and polite. This afternoon’s conversation was a revelation, even if much of it was disturbing to him. A reminder of how much he’d let himself off the hook as a parent.
He shook his head. It was bewildering, sometimes, that he was even a father to a daughter.
With a sigh, Cassandra sat beside him on the couch, patting his knee with her hand as she did so.
“Lucy will be safe and happy here, Sam. Let me watch her during the days for you—this is what she wants. And my cottage is close by—you can glance back at it any time of day from the beach, and here she’ll be. Except when we’re at the library, of course. And, yes, I do have an ulterior motive in wanting to keep Lucy around for the summer. It plays to my own guilt.”
“I don’t understand.”
“As I was saying before, I wasn’t there for Sarah when she needed me,” she said in a low voice. “After her parents were killed in an automobile accident.”
“So, where were you?”
Cassandra glanced at Lucy, who now had two cats on her lap. The second was a huge guy who looked part Maine Coon, with big bushy ears and a thick black coat. He blinked his green eyes slowly and purred while Lucy petted him.
“That’s Simmonds,” Cassandra said. “The smaller male in the tuxedo fur is Becker.” She turned back to Sam. “Let’s you and I step outside for a minute. Lucy will be fine with my two boys to keep her company.”
He nodded and rose with Cassandra. Lucy barely noticed, so busy was she talking to Becker, who actually seemed to be “talking” back.
“Becker rules the roost,” Cassandra said, as she crossed her small porch and sat in a blue metal seat. Sam sat across from her on an Adirondack chair. “He’ll be out here squawking in an instant if anything happens with Lucy. Have I ever told you the story about Becker waking me up when the kitchen was filled with smoke? A wire shorted and I didn’t hear the smoke alarm, I’m such a heavy sleeper.”
Sam smiled politely. He wasn’t a cat person himself.
“Ah, well.” Cassandra settled back and closed her eyes. The breeze stirred her gray hair and she sighed. “About Sarah. She was left alone after her parents died, and I wasn’t aware that she didn’t have anybody else except me to rely on until months later. I was in Naples, you see.” Her mouth twisted. “And back then...” She lifted her hands and shrugged. “The authorities in the States didn’t know where I was. They tried after the funeral, but couldn’t locate me in time.”
“What happened to Sarah?”
“She was put into a foster home. Maybe two.”
Oh. Hell.
That made Lucy’s situation look like a walk in a park. “Are you okay with your relationship now?” he asked.
Cassandra leaned forward on her cane and stretched out her legs in front of her. The legs of her batiked pants billowed like flags in the breeze.
“It’s certainly affected her and how she feels toward me, I can’t deny that. I’m not sure she ever forgave me for my initial choice to skip the funeral. The truth was, I couldn’t bear to face it. And by the time I realized what had happened to her and flew back to the States to fetch her, she’d managed to win herself a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school in California and was building her own life for herself. I didn’t stop trying to make it up to her, but...” Cassandra paused. “I had my own problems at the time,” she admitted. “There...was a reason I was in Naples to begin with.”
“And what was that?”
She waved her hand. “It’s not important now. The important thing is that Sarah reached out to me and she’s coming here to relax on her sabbatical.” She gazed out to sea. “I’m hoping the slower pace can help her.”
A summer by the sea could do a lot to help heal people. He’d seen it himself.
“When is the last time you saw your niece?”
“In person?” Cassandra turned her face to the sun. “It must be since she graduated from college.”
“That long?”
“She’s usually quite busy with her job, Sam.” Cassandra crossed her legs. “My thought is that Sarah and Lucy can each be good influences for one another. I confess—I was the one who told Lucy about Sarah. A young girl needs female role models. And for Sarah, getting