Nantucket Romance 3-in-1 Bundle (72 page)

“Your light wasn’t on.” Skepticism coated his words.

Changing the subject never worked with Landon. When would she learn? “I snuck in the bathroom to read. You know how Emmett is.” Landon didn’t know the half of it, but some things she’d never tell anyone. Not even Landon.

Sam lay back, resting her spine against the wooden planks. She closed her eyes and wished she could stay just like this all night, listening to the sound of crickets and the splash of water kissing the shoreline.

“I was worried.”

His voice sounded older, deeper than she remembered. “You worry too much.”

He shifted, and Sam opened her eyes. He was lying beside her, his body a plank-width away, his head turned toward her. The moonlight glimmered on his hair, and shadows settled between his drawn eye-brows. “Don’t forget the flashlight again.”

Sam didn’t much like being told what to do, but something in the tone of his voice touched the deepest place in her as no one ever had. “I won’t.”

He held Sam’s gaze as if testing her sincerity. After a moment, she crossed her eyes at him, watching his face blur into a double image.

“Weirdo,” he said.

“Freak.”

“Slime bucket.”

“Geek.”

A mosquito stung her neck, and she slapped at it. Her skin was already speckled with half a dozen bites, but they didn’t bother her much. She was surprised Mrs. Reed hadn’t come out yet with the can of Off!, but maybe she and Mr. Reed were too busy smooching in the kitchen.

Sam imagined the inside of her own house, just two doors down, and felt a shadow press its way into her soul. Her mom would be calling her in soon.

She turned to Landon, glad to see his face had softened. “Wanna have a sleepover at your house? We can decide what we want to put in our time capsule.”

Landon glanced away, and Sam didn’t recognize the look that passed over his face.

“We’re getting too old for that.”

Well, la-di-da
. Maybe Landon thought turning thirteen had made him all grown up. Sam suddenly felt every day of their seven-month age gap. “Time capsules aren’t just for kids, you know.”

One corner of his mouth slid upward, but not quite enough to bunch up his cheek. He pulled himself upright and splashed back into the murky water. “I wasn’t talking about the capsule.”

She wanted to ask what he meant, but she could tell he didn’t want her to by the way his head dipped low.

“Samantha!” Her mom’s voice had an edge that said she’d been calling awhile.

“Coming!” Though Sam knew she should get up and go, her body lay against the boards as heavy as a ship anchor. She should have gotten out of the water hours ago so she wouldn’t drip water across the kitchen floor. Too late now. At least Emmett wasn’t home.

“I should go in too,” Landon said, wading alongside the pier.

“The mosquitoes are bad tonight.” He smacked at his arm.

Why couldn’t she just stay at Landon’s house? If he was so worried, why didn’t he invite her over? He stopped at the shoreline, where the water licked at his feet.

“You’d better go.”

He’d stand there until she left, he was just that stubborn.

Sam pulled her feet from the water and walked down the pier. They crossed paths in front of his parents’ Adirondack chairs.

Landon turned and lifted his fingers. “Don’t forget the flashlight.”

“I won’t.” Her feet carried her across the Reeds’ yard, then across Miss Biddle’s. She knew by feel the moment she stepped into her own backyard. Emmett kept the grass clipped so short their lawn had turned wheat brown. It drove her mom crazy.

Sam entered the cottage through the back door, hoping she could sneak into her room and change into dry clothes before her mom saw how wet she was, but the squeak of the screen door gave her away.

“Samantha.” Her mom’s lips pinched together as she looked Sam over.

“Sorry, I forgot.” Ribbons of water dripped from the edges of her swimsuit, carving rivers between goose bumps. They trickled over her ankles as she made a mad dash past her mom to her bedroom.

“I’ll clean it up,” she called.

“You bet you’ll clean it up. I don’t know why I bother cleaning around here.”

Sam
rummaged through her drawers, pushing aside the night-gowns her mom had bought, and pulled
out her favorite long T-shirt and a stretchy pair of shorts.

A few minutes later, Sam entered the kitchen and took a towel from the drawer, then wiped up the mini puddles. The bones of her knees knocked against the wood floor as she crept along, swiping in wide arcs.

“Why do you wear that ratty old thing? You look like a boy, Samantha.”

“It’s comfortable.” Sam slung her wet ponytail across her shoulder.

“You missed a spot.” Her mom pointed toward the door.

Sam backtracked and dried the area. By the time she finished, her mom had left the kitchen, so Sam tossed the towel in the washer and returned to her room, shutting the door. The doorknob was the old-fashioned kind, cut glass with clear angles. She’d thought it beautiful when she was little. When the sunlight flooded the room and hit the glass, it splayed prisms of light across the wall.

Now she wished for a plain old metal doorknob, the kind with a lock.

Sam turned out the light and slipped under the quilt. Before she lay against the pillow, she reached into her bedside drawer and with-drew the flashlight. The switch flipped on with ease, and she set it on the wooden sill of the window. She turned on her side and tucked the covers under her chin.

She lay that way for a long time, hearing the sounds of her mom getting ready for bed. She knew it would be a while before Emmett came home, but still she listened for the sound of his car, for the crunch of gravel under his work boots. She listened until her ears were so full of silence it seemed they would burst.

Sometime later she startled awake to the sound of the front door opening. She heard her mom talking; then Emmett’s voice rumbled through her closed door. “She didn’t pull the weeds like I told her to.” He cursed.

“Well, she can do it tomorrow.” Her mom’s voice was fading.

“How much did you lose tonight?”

The sound of their bedroom door clicking shut resonated in her ears.

“Get up.”

Sam’s arm stung with the sharp slap, and she shot up in bed. Dawn’s light filtered through the window, gray and dim.

Emmett was already walking away. “Go pull the weeds like I told you yesterday. No breakfast until you’re done.”

“I already did.” In her fog of sleep, the words slipped out.

He turned and hauled her out of bed, and her knees buckled as her feet hit the floor. Fully awake now, she realized it was Saturday and her mom was at work. “I’ll do better.”

He straightened, and she noticed tiny red veins lining the whites of his eyes. She looked at the rug beneath her feet. He released her burning arm.

When he left, she traded her long T-shirt for an old, faded one and set to work in the flower beds, pulling the weeds she’d missed the day before. The sun was nowhere to be seen, hiding behind a thick curtain of angry clouds. She’d emptied two bucketfuls and was back on her knees when Emmett opened the back door. The squawk of the hinges made her jump.

“Since you didn’t do what you were told the first time, you can pull the dead blooms and trim the hedges too.” With that, he disappeared into the house.

She sat back on her haunches and brushed the hair from her face with dirty fingers. She scanned the rows of lilies, and she pictured all the rose blooms in the front yard and the hedges lining the yard. With a sigh, she leaned forward and grabbed a dandelion, wrapping it around her hand and yanking hard. She tossed it, roots and all, in the bucket.

The rain started then, first a drop on her hand, then one on her cheek. Within a minute, a steady shower fell. She planted her knees in the dirt and began pulling wilted blooms from the lily plants. By the time she’d finished the first one, the dirt under her knees was mud, and her empty stomach twisted. She scooted toward the next plant and went back to work.

Sam didn’t see Landon until he fell to his knees beside her. Wordlessly, he plucked a bloom and then another, tossing them in the bucket. When he finally looked at her, his hair hung in wet, dark strands over his eyes and a clump of dirt smudged his cheek, and Sam knew she looked no better.

His lips turned up on one side, and she couldn’t stop her own smile.

They worked until the beds and hedges were done and their clothes were soaked clean through. Landon reheated the pancakes his dad had made that morning, then they watched TV with his younger brother, Bailey, until lunchtime. By then, the sun had come out again, and the threesome played all afternoon, passing a football and fishing off the end of the Reeds’ pier.

At supper time, Landon headed inside, and Sam said she had to go in too. But when she got home, her mom and Emmett were gone, so she had a bowl of Lucky Charms and a handful of peanuts. When she saw Landon in his backyard again, she joined him, and they tossed his football until it was too dark to see.

Later, Landon stood at the water’s edge, the cool water nipping at his toes, while she stood poised barefoot on the first plank of the pier like a 747 aimed at a runway. At the end, the light glowed against the black sky.

Even in the dimness, she saw his hard, flattened lips and knew they suppressed a reprimand, just as he knew a scolding would not stop her.

Sam smiled impishly at him, then darted forward, building speed in just a few long strides. At just the right spot, she sprang into a round-off and followed it with four back handsprings.

Her hands and feet alternately punched the boards, making a rhythmic
thud-thud, thud-thud
. She landed solidly in the spotlight four planks shy of the water. Nearly a record. She was no Mary Lou Retton or Julianne McNamara—she was too tall and big-boned to be nimble—but she didn’t care so much about form.

She strode back toward Landon and stepped into the dark water, making sure to keep her clothes dry.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Landon said before compressing his lips into a tight line again. His olive green eyes looked almost black in the nighttime shadows, and she could see the shimmering lights from the water reflected in them.

“I haven’t fallen yet,” Sam said as she worked her toes into the silty sand until the tops of her feet were covered.

“When you do, don’t come crying to me.”

Sam smirked at that because Landon knew she never cried, and if she ever did, he’d be the first one to scoop her up and sweep away her tears.

When the moon was high in the sky, Landon’s mom called him in, so they said good night and Sam went home. She could hear the TV blaring in her mom and Emmett’s room, so she crept into her bedroom and shut the door. After getting ready for bed, she lifted her window to invite the night breeze inside and set the flashlight on the sill.

Sam curled up on her side and closed her eyes. Sometime later, she heard her mom and Emmett talking on the back porch. She strained to hear them.

“The flower beds look nice,” her mom said.

“Took the better part of the day.”

Sam heard a rush of exhaled breath and envisioned the puff of cigarette smoke from her mom’s mouth.

“What are our plans for tomorrow, baby?” Emmett asked.

Sam pictured her mom crossing her arms, shrugging him off.

Sam thought she must have missed her answer because there was such a long pause. Then she heard her mom’s reply. “We don’t have any.”

There was a haunting tone in her mother’s words that Sam hadn’t heard before.

Their voices lowered to low mumbles she couldn’t interpret, so Sam listened to the nocturnal orchestra outside her window.
A loon called out over the buzz of the insects, and the water licked the shore-line. If
she concentrated hard, she could hear Mom’s boat knocking against the pier bumper. A breeze rattled the tree leaves and carried the sweet scent of salt-spray roses through the air. Her body began to relax. Her thoughts slowed and her breaths deepened.