On a particularly gloomy day, we avoided the rain by visiting the National History Museum. Luther made up funny—and very loud—fictional stories about each of the dinosaurs in the Blue Zone, and even managed to coax Nana into dropping her plans for lunch at an old hotel she found in a guidebook. Instead, we ate burgers at a dark pub and laughed hysterically as Sam told us about things going disastrously wrong with the milking equipment on his first morning shift alone at the farm.
Not only did Nana not seem to mind our new traveling sidekicks, she genuinely seemed to enjoy Luther’s company. After lunch, they walked on ahead, and Sam came up alongside me while we strolled, bellies full, to the Baker Street station.
“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” he asked.
I took a few quiet seconds to think while Sam and I wove in and out of pedestrian traffic. Together, apart, together. His arm brushed against mine, and in a heated breath I registered that it didn’t feel accidental.
“Nana’s house is on the water,” I told him. “It’s raised on stilts, overlooking the Russian River and—”
“Wow—stilts?”
“Yeah, I mean, the river floods a lot, so most houses near the water are on stilts.” When his eyes went wider, I said, “Don’t get a mental image of some sort of elaborate castle. It’s really just a three-bedroom, plain house on stilts. Anyway, we’re not supposed to jump from the deck because it’s so high up. The river is pretty deep there, but our toes always brush bottom, and the depth changes year to year. Someday we’ll jump and it’ll just be riverbed.”
Sam’s hand brushed mine when we sidestepped a man on the sidewalk, and this time it was accidental: he apologized under his breath. I wanted to reach out and make the contact permanent.
“Charlie and I would jump off the deck when we were home alone. I’m not even sure why.”
“Of course you know why.”
“To be scared?”
“To feel a rush, yeah.” He grinned over at me. “What would you think about when you jumped?”
“Just . . .” I shook my head, trying to remember the feeling. “Just that there was nothing else in that moment, you know? No school, no boys, no drama, no chores. Just jumping into the cold water and feeling crazy and happy afterward.”
“You’re pretty cute if that’s the craziest thing.”
I wasn’t sure whether I was more thrilled that he called me cute, or embarrassed to be exposed for being so tame. I held in a shaky breath and laughed. “You know me.” And in a weird way, I feel like he did. “What about you?”
Sam hummed. “Tipping cows. Drinking beer in the middle of nowhere. Weird races and games in cornfields. Trying to build an airplane.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s easy to be crazy on a farm.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah, I mean,” he said, ducking around a man walking aimlessly with his eyes on his BlackBerry, “everyone in Eden’s always saying when you live in the middle of nowhere it’s impossible to get into trouble, and I think it gives parents a sense of ease, like even if they can’t see us, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Drinking some beer in a field? But knowing they think that, I don’t know . . . it feels sort of like a challenge sometimes.”
“Did you ever get hurt?”
Sam shook his head. “Hangovers? Sprained my ankle once. But it’s mostly just a group of us being idiots. Most of the girls around are way smarter than we are and could kick our asses. It kept us from going too far.”
Nana turned around, waiting for us to catch up. “What are you talking about?”
I grinned over at Sam. “He’s talking about drinking beer in fields, tipping cows, and building an airplane.”
I expected Luther to say something about the cows or the beer, but he just nodded proudly. “That plane nearly flew, didn’t it?”
Sam looked down at me, grinning. He knew exactly what I was trying to do—get him busted—and when Nana and Luther turned back around, he dug a long finger into my ribs, tickling. “Looks like that backfired, missy.”
Mom called me that night, right as I was slipping out the door to meet Sam. I took my flip phone out of the room with me, not wanting to wake up an already-snoring Nana.
I’d been wondering whether Mom was lonely with us away in London, though I knew how much work it took to keep the café open, and even with a couple women from town helping her while we were gone, I was sure Mom didn’t have a lot of time to think about anything but work. Still, if it was nine o’clock at night in London, it was nearly six in the morning at home; Mom should have been running around like mad getting things ready for the breakfast rush. Unless . . .
“What’s wrong?” I asked immediately.
She laughed. “Can’t I miss my kid?”
“You can,” I said, “but not when you’re supposed to be opening the café. Nana will lose it.”
“It’s Tuesday,” she reminded me. “We’re closed. I’m still in my jammies.”
I pressed the down button on the elevator, relieved. “I have no sense of what day it is.”
“That’s the best thing about vacation.”
This triggered a small, guilty realization. “When was the last time you took a vacation?”
The only one I could think of was when she took me to Seattle for a weekend a little over a year ago. Other than that, it felt like Mom had become a happy, settled fixture of Guerneville. Just like Nana.
“Seattle,” she confirmed, and I felt a weird wiggle of guilt that we didn’t just close up the café and bring her along. “But don’t worry about me. You know I love summers here.”
I always had, too. The heat came rolling in across the river and down the dried creek beds bursting with fat blackberries. The air grew so sweet and the sun heated the beaches and sidewalks so hot, we couldn’t go barefoot for even a few seconds. If we needed a reprieve, we drove just a few miles west, where the ocean met the Russian River. On the coastal beach just past Jenner, we would be blasted with air so cold we needed jackets in the middle of July. The town filled with tourists and their money and there was always a line outside Nana’s café, all day long.
“Maybe once I start school, over a break we can go on a trip, me and you,” I said.
“That sounds nice, muffin.” She paused. “Are you walking? What time is it there?”
Guiltily, I admitted, “I’m sneaking out to hang out with Sam.”
“Do you think you two could make it work?” she asked. “Cross-country?”