Life Guards in the Hamptons (41 page)

My mother called the next day. After congratulations and pauses to wait for an engagement announcement that I did not make, she mentioned she’d been offered a contract to host a TV talk show on animal behavior, to be filmed in NYC. She needed the apartment back.

“It’ll be great fun. We’ll share the cooking and cleaning, and you can write while I’m at the station. We can travel out to the Harbor on weekends, just like we used to. We’ll talk about it when I get home for All Hallow’s Eve.”

Fun? Living with my mother? I’d move in with Matt first. Not that he’d invited me. Yet. He would.

“Um, I might be staying out here, working on my next book.”

“Something new?”

“Yes. I’m going to collaborate with Professor Harmon on a picture book, but I’m also thinking of writing for the adult market this time, no drawings. It might be one of those generational things about mothers and their daughters.”

I’d call it
Sand Witches in the Hamptons
.