This Is What Happy Looks Like(53)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“Hopefully a more successful one this time.”

“It will be,” he promised.

“And if not, at least we’ll have found you a backup career for this whole acting thing,” she teased. “Sailing the seven seas.”

“That’s not the worst idea,” he said. “It sure beats L.A.”

She sat down on the bench that ran the length of each side of the boat, a place to stow tackle and nets and buoys. “I don’t know,” she said. “The circus probably never thinks the towns where they stop are boring either.”

“Are you saying I’m the circus?”

She grinned. “I’m saying you’re a clown, anyway.”

“Thanks,” he said, laughing as he looked out toward the shore, where enormous houses were perched along the rocky coast. They passed a sailboat, and the couple aboard waved. Graham lifted a hand in return.

“This is going to make things worse, isn’t it?” Ellie asked, and he glanced over at her. “Taking the boat.”

“It might,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s not like we’re smuggling drugs or anything.”

She looked at him sideways. “Does chocolate count?”

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s okay.”

“Good,” she said, pulling a bag of candy from the backpack and tossing it over to him. He caught it with one hand, then held the wheel with his forearm while he opened it. The chocolate was soft from the sun, and it melted on his tongue. He felt a spreading warmth expand in his chest, and he wished they could stay out here all day. But he knew they were on a mission of sorts, and it was there in Ellie’s every move: a grim sense of resolve.

“So are you nervous?” he asked, passing the bag back over to her. “To see your dad?”

She nodded, her lips pressed into a straight line.

“Do you have a plan?”

This time, she didn’t answer, and Graham wondered if his words had been whipped away by the wind; it almost seemed like she hadn’t heard him. But then she pushed her sunglasses up on her head, and he was able to see her green eyes again, focused on him with an intensity that made his heart skip like the bow over the waves.

“Remember that poetry course?” she asked, but she didn’t wait for him to respond. “It’s a big deal to get in. And I really want to go.”

He wrinkled his brow. “I thought you were.”

“I am,” she said, a bit too fiercely. “But I’m still short. And there are no scholarships.”

Graham sucked in a breath as he waited for her to continue, biting back the question he wanted to ask, though he knew it would be the wrong thing to say right now; the moment felt delicate, easily breakable, and so he kept quiet.

“I’m gonna ask him for the rest,” she said, and her words came out in a rush. “I can’t ask my mom for that much, and it’s not like he doesn’t have it.”

“How much—” he began, unable to help himself, but she cut him off, as if she hadn’t heard him.

“And it feels like he owes me at least that,” she said, digging at a groove in the wood with her fingernail. “All these years, and nothing. And it’s not like I’m using the money for something crazy or frivolous, like a car or a tattoo.”

Graham raised his eyebrows. “That’s true.”

“It’s for school,” she said. “It’s for Harvard.”

Against his better judgment, he cleared his throat. “How much do you still need?”

She raised her eyes to meet his. “A thousand dollars,” she said quietly, the words almost lost to the breeze, and then she bent her head over the wood again.

A thousand dollars, Graham thought, ashamed at how small the number seemed to him. He was reminded of the money his parents had used to send him to private school, how enormous that had seemed at the time, how much it had cost them to use it. Now things were different. A thousand dollars. Just last month, he’d paid a contractor almost twice that to build an indoor pen for Wilbur in the back of the laundry room. He’d seen his costars drop that much on a celebratory meal, and he was sure the many purses strewn around Olivia’s trailer added up to at least that, and probably even more.

He looked over at the curve of Ellie’s shoulders as she sat there on the bench. For her, a thousand dollars was clearly an insurmountable obstacle, enough to send her off on a stolen boat to seek out her estranged father. How easy it would be to write her a check, to hand her a thick stack of bills, to surprise her by sending the payment to Harvard without saying a word. But this wasn’t a movie, and he knew her well enough to guess that she wouldn’t consider him a hero, and she wouldn’t throw her arms around his neck in gratitude. There was a fragile pride to her that would never allow her to accept that kind of charity. This was something she had to do herself.

“What if…” Graham began to ask, keeping his shoulders square to the windshield. “What if he says no?”

Behind him, Ellie slung a hand over the side of the boat, letting her fingertips catch the spray of the water. “Then I’m not going,” she said, her voice flat. “But how could he say no?”

What Graham didn’t say—what neither of them said—was that he would almost certainly say no if last night’s episode were to land him in the gossip columns just as he was revving up his fund-raising campaign. Graham realized now why she’d been in such a rush to leave. She was trying to outrun the news.

She stood up and sidled around him, reaching out to take the wheel. He stepped out of the way to let her drive, and she shifted the boat into a higher gear, the nose lifting out of the water as the engine dug in and they picked up speed.

When he looked over the side of the boat, Graham could see the dark shadows of fish beneath the surface. If things had turned out differently, he might be out here with his own father right now, their lines dangling, an easy silence between them as they waited for something to bite.

The shoreline was rougher here, the looming estates had given way to smaller fishing cabins, and he thought of all the other pairs of fathers and sons that might be gathering their gear at this very moment, ready to spend the holiday in quiet company. They all seemed so peaceful, so serene, these homes that dotted the shoreline. How nice it would be to have a house up here—nothing fancy, just a little cabin set back along the coast, a place to visit when he grew tired of the plastic landscape of Los Angeles, a way to keep this particular piece of the world with him even after he was gone.