Yet, maybe having the right story didn’t matter. Maybe wanting everything to sound a certain way was how I’d ended up in this mess. Maybe all that mattered was that I was having dinner with Danny tonight, just the two of us, and the possibility of that made me happy.
I did, just, feel happy. And free. It was a weird moment to feel free—with a baby growing inside me. But I’d shed the skin of the wrong life. And there it was, handed to me like a prize. Happiness, freedom. A little bit of both.
Ethan smiled, kindly. “All right,” he said. “Life’s too short for the awkwardness. When you get back, let me know, we’ll go drink cider or something.”
“That sounds . . . awful,” I said.
“What? I’m running out of nonalcoholic choices.”
“Maybe you just want to give me a lift to the station instead?” I said. “We could catch up now.”
“No,” he said. “Thanks anyway. I’ve got plans with my friend.”
I looked at my old home, his girlfriend inside. “You deserve so much better than that. And maybe I don’t have the right to say it, but you do know that, right?”
“They’re just plans,” he said. “Let me know if I should break them.”
Ethan started to walk toward his girlfriend’s house. Then he turned back.
“Hey. It’s probably a boy. You’ve never looked better.”
“You are lying . . .”
He shrugged, turned back around. “Well, if anyone should know.”
56
Here’s the last thing I’m going to tell you, at least for now. I left my car out in Montauk and took the train back to New York for many reasons. The main one was so that Sammy would know I was coming back. We made a weekend plan, just the two of us, Rain and Thomas finally going away on their engagement weekend. If Rain knew something was up beyond a weekend away, she wasn’t letting on. She casually said, See you soon, trusting me to come through for her. We had that, between us, again.
So I wasn’t leaving Montauk that day for good, but I would have to leave soon. I would have to set up shop and get ready for the baby and find a job somewhere. Chef Z, in the end, did help a little with that. He put me in touch with a woman who owned a toy store, a few blocks from where I used to live. The woman was a frequent guest at 28. Her store was so sweet—she only sold wooden toys. Noah’s Arks and train sets. Her husband was a woodworker and apparently made all the toys himself.
They were opening a second store down the street—this one a specialty food store, this one her dream. Featuring off-the-beaten-path foods: olive oils from northern Kentucky, pinot noir from West Sonoma County, ginger scones from a bakery in Big Sur.
Chef had Lottie call to tell me they needed someone to run the shop. It sounds pretty great, actually, but it’s only tangentially related to cooking, I’d said. I could hear Z scream in the background, So are you.
Then Lottie hung up the phone.
“Excuse me?”
I looked up from my window seat on the train to see a blond girl, mid-twenties, staring down at me. Smiling. I turned off the music.
“Are you Sunshine Mackenzie? The Sunshine? Like . . . of A Little Sunshine?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Her smile disappeared. “Well, either you are or you aren’t.”
It seemed like a smart thing to say, except it wasn’t true. We are and we aren’t. We try and we fail. We tell the truth and then we lie. We want to be a part of things so badly that we’ll pretend to be anyone to get into the room. And pretend to be someone else just to stay there. We want to be seen and we want people to guess. We want them to understand. We want to be forgiven. We forgive ourselves. We start again.
“I just wanted a selfie for my Instagram,” Blondie said. “Can we do it anyway? No one will know.”
“You’ve got a lot of followers?”
“About fifty thousand.”
“Seriously? What do you do that you have so many followers?”
I knew that I sounded about a thousand years old, but she smiled again, pleased that I thought she was important. “That’s like barely any.”
Then she bent down, posed, and waited for me to get camera-ready too.
So I did. On the local train—somewhere between New York and Montauk, somewhere between the old life and the new one—Sunshine Mackenzie covered her belly (that wasn’t their business) and made the peace sign for fifty thousand people she didn’t know.
The girl looked at the photograph, analyzing it. “Not bad,” she said. “But maybe we should do another without you making a peace sign? No one does that anymore.”
I shrugged. “Consider it a throwback to a different time.”
She looked annoyed. “The sixties?”
Then she clicked a button as she walked away.
She didn’t say Thank you, or See you around.
She wasn’t interested.
If I were a betting woman, I’d say she posted the photograph anyway. Maybe I just like to think she did. People would send in comments asking if I was nice (Totally!), if I had gotten fat (A little . . . yes!!), and one person would ask who I was (The fake cooking show, remember?).
Most of them would. Some of them wouldn’t. The rest of them wouldn’t care.
Which, you should know, was a great way for Sunshine to say good-bye.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Suzanne Gluck and Marysue Rucci. You remain the dream team.
My gratitude to everyone who gave this novel a great publishing home, especially Carolyn Reidy, Jonathan Karp, Richard Rhorer, Elizabeth Breeden, Cary Goldstein, Zachary Knoll, Sarah Reidy, Clio Seraphim, and Kitty Dulin.
I owe so much to the people who provided insight into Sunshine’s world. Several of you asked to remain anonymous, so I’ll thank you in a different forum than this, but please know your insight and humor made researching Sunshine a treat.
I can’t say thank you enough to Sylvie Rabineau, and to my early readers, whose feedback was invaluable.
Thank you to my parents, Rochelle and Andrew Dave, and the entire Dave and Singer families. And much love to my wonderful friends.
Finally, my son and my husband. I love you with all my heart.