“I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” Quinn said, leaning over to open one of the boxes that were strewn all around them. She wrinkled her nose at whatever was inside, and moved on to the next one, pulling out a bag of saltwater taffy. “As soon as I saw the news, I wanted to make sure you knew. Where have you been anyway?”
“My phone’s… broken,” Ellie mumbled, accepting a piece of green taffy from Quinn, then twisting it in her hands. “My mom. Is she…?” She wanted to say mad or angry or upset, but she was sure that her mother would be all of those things, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to complete the sentence. Her stomach lurched when she tried to picture it: her mother picking up a newspaper, or opening up her e-mail, or being stopped by someone on the street in town. They might ask about her daughter, or about the man she’d had an affair with, or they might just ask about Graham and the cameras, the biggest scandal this sleepy town had probably ever seen. There were so many things she could be mad about, it was almost hard to focus on just one.
“I think she’s just worried about you,” Quinn said. “I was too.”
Ellie had closed her eyes, but now she looked up again. “Thanks,” she said, biting her lip. She felt her shoulders relax, just slightly; of all the many things she was still toting around with her—the broken news story and all it would mean for her mother, the polite handshake with a father she’d never get to know, the disappointment of missing the Harvard program, the looming and inevitable good-bye to Graham (a thought that squeezed at her heart and took the breath right out of her when she thought about it too hard)—it was a relief to have one of them slip away. Whatever had passed between her and Quinn this summer—the hurt feelings and jealousy and misunderstandings—all of it now seemed to have been forgotten. It was a little bit like the taffy, this friendship of theirs; you could stretch and pull and bend it all out of shape, but it was no easy thing to break it entirely.
“I’m sorry I never told you about my father,” Ellie said. “I wanted to. You have no idea. But Mom was always worried this would happen.”
Quinn tilted her head. “What?”
“That the news would get out and everyone would know the truth,” she explained. “About who we are. And who he is. And where we came from.”
“Ellie, come on,” Quinn said with a small smile. “Nobody here cares about that. You’ve lived here how long? You think anyone who knows you would care about some scandal that happened a million years ago?”
“Well, they do now,” Ellie pointed out. “You said the word’s out there. All those articles…”
Quinn laughed. “That’s practically a footnote,” she said. “Really. All anyone cares about is Graham.”
Ellie stared at her. “What?”
“Do you think people would rather read about Paul Whitman’s daughter or Graham Larkin’s girlfriend?”
“I’m not his—”
“Trust me,” Quinn said, popping a piece of taffy in her mouth. “You are.”
Ellie leaned back in her chair and shook her head in wonderment. Her father had always loomed large against the background of her life, his absence so big it almost felt like a presence. Now, the idea that Graham—who she’d only just met—could somehow turn out to overshadow him struck her as amazing. All this time, she thought Graham’s fame would be the thing to tip her off balance. But he’d managed to salvage the whole situation simply by being himself. To almost everyone else in the world, he was far more important than Ellie’s father. And it took her only a moment to catch up to them, to realize—with a little shock—that he was more important to her too.
Quinn sent another piece of taffy sailing across the wooden table in her direction, and Ellie reached out to stop it. “My mom’s still gonna kill me.”
“Maybe,” Quinn said merrily, now fully back to her old self. “But once she’s done with that, how about we grab some sparklers and head down to the beach? You can even bring your boyfriend, now that you guys have been outed.”
“Only if you bring yours too,” Ellie said, and Quinn’s smile broadened.
They swept the rest of the taffy into the cardboard box, then pushed back their chairs and walked out to the front of the store together. The sky was turning gold at the edges, the waning light glinting off the band’s instruments. Ellie could see Meg from the deli making snow cones just beside it, and farther down, Joe from the Lobster Pot was standing beside an oversize grill, a spatula in one hand and a chef’s hat perched at an angle on his head.
The whole town seemed to be out tonight, and the invisible boundaries of a dance floor had been loosely arranged, the first few brave couples out for a spin. Behind it all, the ocean was dark and glittery, and Ellie thought of the Go Fish, still docked in the town of Hamilton, and of those few quiet moments at the bow with Graham by her side before everything had gone wrong.
When she shifted her gaze back to the party, she saw her mom weaving past a line of children at the ice cream station. Ellie felt a hitch in her chest at the sight of her, and she turned to Quinn, who had fallen uncharacteristically silent.
“I should go talk to her,” Ellie said. “But we’ll meet up later.”
Quinn nodded. “We always do.”
Outside, Ellie hurried across the street before she had a chance to lose her nerve. Even as she walked, she found she was bracing herself against the stares that were sure to come her way. She’d seen how far and wide the story about Graham and the photographer had traveled in such a short time, and if her name was now out there too—not to mention the name of her father—then there was no reason not to think everyone in town already knew.
And it was clear that they did, their eyes tracking her progress across the lawn. But there was also something odd about the way they surveyed her as she walked past; it was like they weren’t looking at her so much as around her, their gazes skirting the edges of her, hopeful and searching. They were looking for someone else, she realized. They were looking for Graham.
Ellie felt like laughing. Quinn was right. Nobody cared about who her father was or why they’d come to this town in the first place. All they cared about was that the movie star in their midst had chosen one of them. And now they wanted to see for themselves.
Mom was standing at one of the tables, her back to Ellie as she refilled her glass of lemonade. When she turned around, the hand holding the pitcher trembled a bit, and though Ellie had expected her to be angry—and rightfully so—all she saw was the relief that was scrawled so plainly across her face.