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?”
“Mom.” A bright flash of genuine irritation jetted through me at how quickly she went from me hanging out with Sam to imagining a long-distance relationship. I loved her romantic streak, but sometimes it was more pushy than anything. “I’m eighteen, and we aren’t a thing.”
“I’m not setting you up to be a child bride, Tate. But to just . . . have fun. Be eighteen.”
“Isn’t it your job to discourage this kind of behavior?”
I could almost see her waving this concern away “You get plenty of that from Nana. I’m just dreaming, you know me, having the fun conversation and what-ifs.”
“I like him but—I don’t want to get my hopes up and start talking about what-ifs.”
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s not like you won’t be disappointed regardless if nothing happens. I don’t know why people think permanent denial is better than temporary disappointment.”
I knew she was right, allowing myself a few moments of fantasy as I made my way from the elevator to the back doors that led to the garden. My only boyfriend to date lived a half mile down the road from me. What would it be like to date someone in another state, clear across the country?
“I mean,” I said, giving in, “he’s so cute, Mom. But he’s more than that, he’s really easy to talk to. I feel like I could tell him anything.”
Mom paused again, and in that silence I heard how quickly the unspoken question formed. Finally: “Did you?”
What was I hearing in her voice? Fear or excitement? Sometimes they sound the same—thin and tight, words clipped.
Would she be angry if I’d told him? Or would she understand my desire to lay claim to this glimmering history of ours? Sometimes I got the weird sense that I was disappointing her by not rebelling and shouting from a megaphone who I was, who she was, where we came from. In London, I wanted there to be a reason for my small-town clothes, bland ponytail, outdated style. I told myself it could be fun, playing the role of the country mouse in a big city. But in the privacy of my own thoughts and as selfish as it sounded, I wanted the world to know that it was just an act, that I wasn’t meant to be a fish out of water in this land of cosmopolitan women.
Daughter of world’s most famous actor has been living a simple life in