Wishful Thinking (16 page)

Hazel looked at her bare toes in the sand, trying to imagine the man Reid described. Her grandfather. Could it be that she’d gotten her photography-loving genes from him?

Suddenly, Hazel heard a familiar click. She looked up to see that Reid had taken her picture.

“Hey!” she whined. “Not fair.”

Reid shrugged, a few drops of water dropping from the tips of his short reddish hair and landing on his freckled shoulder. “Every photographer needs to have her picture taken once in a while,” he said with a smile. “How is anybody supposed to know you were there?”

Reid stood and tossed his towel to the sand, revealing his still-damp blue and white striped trunks. “Watch this,” he whispered to Hazel, and tiptoed around her. She turned just in time to see him scooping up Jaime by the waist.

“Noooooo!” Jaime squealed, reaching back toward the cliffs as Reid hauled her off to the water’s edge. “My shark’s teeth!”

“They’re just rocks,” Reid laughed. “They’ll be here when you get back.”

Jaime pounded on his shoulders with tight little fists, her dark hair falling over her face, a wide, open grin cut from ear to ear. Reid dunked her into a wave, soaking her T-shirt and leaving her wild-eyed and laughing as she tried to catch her breath.

Hazel wiped a few grains of sand from the lens of her camera and buried it inside her bag, making her way back to the blanket.

“Don’t make me come out there,” Luke called from the water. He was standing waist-high in the rushing tide, waving at her to come in.

Hazel shook her head defiantly, an excited flutter already catching in her breath.

“Okay,” Luke said, jogging toward her. “You asked for it.”

Before she knew what was happening, Luke was there, tucking his arms around the back of her knees and tossing her over his shoulder like a rag doll. As he sprinted toward the ocean, Hazel hiccupped with delight, watching as the cliffs bounced behind them. She held her breath as the sand got darker and thicker under Luke’s bare feet. Rippling white water flooded around his ankles and soon they were falling together into the shocking cold.

Seconds later, when they surfaced at the same time, they were still clinging to each other’s shoulders, their noses just centimeters apart. They stayed like that for a few long moments, blinking and gasping for air, neither one of them wanting to let go first.

After the beach, after their fingers were wrinkled and pruney, their bathing suits full of sand, and their cheeks freckled and sun-kissed, Reid suggested they go back to his house for dinner.

“My parents are at some charity thing,” Reid explained as they pulled out of the beach parking lot. “But I’m sure the cooks are around.”

Hazel glanced at Luke, sitting beside her in the sticky backseat.
Cooks?
he mouthed, and Hazel swatted his thigh. She didn’t care who was doing the cooking; her dad was inviting them to his house for dinner. She was going, and that was that.

They drove with the windows down, past working farms, lush estates, and tucked-away ponds. As Reid started to turn
at an intersection near the airfield, a paved landing strip in the middle of an overgrown field, Jaime sat forward in the front seat.

“Go straight,” she said, pointing through the windshield. “It’s faster.”

Reid continued his turn and shook his head. “I think I know the way, James,” he laughed. “It
is
my house.”

“Your house, maybe,” Jaime said with a stubborn smile. “But it’s
my
island. And you’re going the wrong way.”

Reid laughed and turned on the radio, flipping through static to find something that sounded like classic rock. Jaime made a face and quickly changed the station, settling on something poppier. She turned up the volume and tossed her hair to the music as Reid’s eyes met Hazel’s in the rearview mirror. He flashed her a bemused smile, and Hazel smiled back.

It was her first family road trip, even if
she
was the only one who knew it.

Reid turned down a side street, hugging the rocky points of the coast. The road was lined with old Victorian homes, many of which looked like restaurants or hotels. At a sharp bend, Reid pulled into a narrow driveway and turned off the ignition.

“Home, sweet home,” he said as they piled out of the car. The driveway was lined with tall, manicured hedges, and a row of pink rosebushes hugged the wraparound porch.

Inside, a spiral staircase led up to the second floor, which overlooked a formal sitting room, complete with a baby grand piano and claw-footed furniture. Jaime hurried to the bathroom; she’d yet to have any of the weird pregnancy food cravings the books had prepared them for, but she was right on schedule with the constant need to pee.

“Whoa,” Luke gasped, hovering over the piano and plunking a few of the higher keys. “Are you sure it’s cool we’re here?”

“Of course.” Reid tossed his towel over a high-backed chair at the dining room table. “My parents are used to it. They’re actually not as uptight as they look.”

Reid lifted his eyes to a gilded frame that hung over the piano. It was a portrait of a sophisticated couple, standing in front of a glowing fireplace. The man was tall and dapper in a handsome suit, and the woman was petite with dark red hair. At their feet, two shiny-haired golden retrievers lay quietly on an oriental rug.

Hazel stared wide-eyed at the painting. Those were her grandparents. Those were her grandparents’ dogs.

“Hey,” Reid said, startling her from behind. “Want to see those prints I was telling you about?”

Hazel nodded and followed Reid to the stairs. Luke sat down carefully on the glossy piano bench. Hazel could tell that he was trying hard not to break anything, or drip on something expensive. She gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze as they passed.

Reid led her upstairs, down a long hall, and through a pair of thick glass doors. His father’s study was an oval-shaped room, lined with bookshelves and centered by a dark mahogany desk.

“This is it,” Reid said, flipping a light switch behind the door. A dozen strategically placed light fixtures snapped on, perfectly illuminating the framed photographs that plastered every square inch of the walls.

“He’s got a little bit of everything,” Reid said, walking
slowly around the room. “Edward Weston, Cartier-Bresson,” he listed, pointing at one shot of a group of children playing in a fountain. Hazel felt like she’d seen it before, probably in one of the coffee table books she’d spent hours flipping through at bookstores but never had been able to buy.

Hazel stood close to the pictures, slowly gliding from one to the next. She lingered in front of a tall, black-and-white image of a beach on a cloudy day, the crooked shoreline diagonally snaking from top to bottom down the frame.

“That’s an original Ansel Adams,” Reid said, standing behind Hazel with his arms crossed.

Hazel nodded and leaned closer, making out the title of the work.
“Rodeo Beach,”
she read aloud. “I’ve been there!”

She looked closer at the image of the shore. She’d been to that beach, just across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, a few times with Roy, and once or twice with different group homes. It wasn’t far from the city, or Roy’s apartment in San Rafael, but the traffic at the tunnel was always bumper-to-bumper. Most of the time, Hazel had been forced into tagging along and was ready to leave as soon as she’d arrived. The beach she remembered looked nothing like the pristine shoreline she saw now, through Ansel Adams’s lens.

“He’s my dad’s favorite,” Reid said, pointing out a few other, similar-looking landscape views. “My dad always says the American West is a photographer’s dream. I think he wishes we lived out there.”

Hazel sighed quietly, looking at Reid as he crossed behind his father’s desk. How many times had she wished that she’d lived anywhere else? She still couldn’t believe that in a strange and accidental way, her wish had come true.

“I don’t know,” Reid said, stopping in front of the big bay window at the back of the room. “If I were a photographer, I’d have a hard time dreaming up anything better than this.”

Hazel looked over his shoulder. The window faced the ocean and a long, crumbling jetty that wound its way out toward the horizon. A rustic white lighthouse sat atop a small, stony hill. He was right: It was a picture waiting to happen.

“Reid!” Jaime shouted from downstairs. “How do you work the TV? There are, like, two hundred remotes!”

“I’ll be right there,” Reid called back, starting back toward the hall. “You can hang out up here as long as you want,” he said over his shoulder. “Just turn off the lights when you leave.”

Hazel watched him go, his long, slender arms swinging by his sides as he hurried to the top of the stairs. “Hey, Reid,” she called after him. “Thanks. This is really great.”

Reid smiled. “No problem,” he said with a friendly shrug.

Reid bounded down the stairs and Hazel turned back to the study. She couldn’t quite explain it, but she felt somehow sturdier. As if, for most of her life, she’d just been floating around, and now she was finally attached to something real. Maybe it was the way Jaime felt about the island, and her arrowheads. They were in her blood. They made her who she was.

Hazel took one last look at her grandfather’s collection, turned off the lights, and hurried downstairs to join the others.

“I
’m out back,” Rosanna called from behind the studio. Hazel was balancing two blue mugs of French press coffee in one hand and a plate of Emmett’s muffins in the other. She walked carefully through the tickling blades of tall grass and found Rosanna on the patio.

“I’m supposed to be packing, I know,” Rosanna sighed. It was the beginning of August and preparations for the big cross-country move were well underway. Jaime and Hazel spent most of their time packing up the office and planning travel arrangements, though they did their best to avoid talking about what any of it meant.

Rosanna was supposed to be dealing with the contents of her studio, and preparing for the end-of-summer going-away party she was planning to host at the farm. But lately it seemed like she’d been doing more painting than packing.

Today, she had set up an easel outside and was facing the section of cliff where a small cluster of beach plum trees bent
sideways toward the ocean, their white flowering branches curved like icicles.

Hazel put the coffee and muffins on the low glass table and peered over Rosanna’s shoulder at the canvas. She had a feeling the sudden inspiration was Rosanna’s way of putting off dealing with the inevitable—the move, the realness of her disease—but wherever it came from, the result was a breathtaking collection of landscapes. She’d only just started sketching the lines of the cliffs and horizon, but Hazel could already tell she was trying something new.

“I came out here early this morning and something about the way the light was hitting the trees wouldn’t let me go back inside,” Rosanna said. “Sometimes when I get stuck with portraits I like to try something totally different. Kind of like clearing the slate.”

Hazel looked back at Rosanna’s painting. She knew exactly how she felt. After another week of failed attempts at taking pictures of her friends, she’d finally decided to go in a different direction. And since Reid had showed her his father’s collection—her grandfather’s collection—she’d been starting to think that maybe landscapes were speaking to her, too. Everywhere she turned was another beautiful view, and all she could hear was Reid’s voice in her ear. The island truly was a photographer’s dream, and she’d be a fool not to take advantage of what was right in front of her face.

Rosanna sat down in one of the wrought-iron chairs and reached for a warm muffin. “Mmmmm,” she moaned, savoring a bite. “What do you think I’d have to do to get Emmett to come to California with us?”

Hazel sat on the chair opposite Rosanna and helped herself
to a crumbly chunk off the plate. Today was blackberry with white chocolate chip, the tartness of the dark berries mingling with the sweet, subtle chocolate.

“I have a feeling he’ll be pretty sick of me, though, once we finish planning the menu for the party,” Rosanna mused. “I told him he didn’t have to cater the whole thing, but he insisted.”

Hazel took a sip of her coffee and watched as a seagull swooped out over the edge of the cliff, diving for treasures in the ocean below.

“Speaking of the party,” Rosanna continued, picking up her mug and tracing the faint watery ring it left behind on the glass. “Have you decided which pieces you want to show?”

Hazel swallowed a hot mouthful of coffee. “At the party?” she asked, her stomach turning an anxious flop. “The goodbye party? It’s an art show, too?”

Even though the art show was always in the back of Hazel’s mind, Rosanna hadn’t said anything specific about it, not since they’d talked in the hotel hall. Now that it was a real thing, with a real date, and real people planning to attend, the fact that she’d agreed to participate felt real, too. Real, and scary.

Rosanna nodded. “Why not?” She smiled. “What better excuse to try and unload a bunch of paintings than a crosscountry move?”