Free The Guest Cottage by Nancy Thayer Page A

open their hands to give us jewels.
    “Good boy, Leo. Good decision.”
    Another crisis threatened one day when Sophie was preparing lunches to take to the beach. It had taken them a few days to develop a routine for getting all the paraphernalia to the beach: towels, beach chairs, sand toys, beach umbrella, cooler of drinks, basket of lunch or snacks, books, sunblock. Getting out the door was like preparing for a trip to a foreign and backward country, but once they’d lugged everything down to the shore, the world opened up in a blaze of blue sky and sunshine. It was worth it. Sophie and Trevor had decided to join forces until they got to the beach rather than duplicate the coolers, the lunches, the chairs.
    Sophie was making sandwiches. “Do you want to try tuna fish today?” she casually asked Leo.
    “No!” Leo said. “Daddy makes my sandwich.”
    Trevor was dumping ice into the cooler. “Leo,” he began, hoping that his son would relent.
    “Only Daddy,” Leo asserted stubbornly.
    “Fine,” Sophie said easily. “I’ve put the bread out—”
    “I want
Daddy
to make my sandwich,” Leo insisted, and now his voice was more scared than bossy, as if in Leo’s mind something bad would happen if each single detail weren’t followed exactly as it always was.
    Trevor put down the ice. What could he say?
Careful, or he’ll blow?
    To his infinite relief, Sophie shrugged. “Okay. I’ll give this to Jonah. He can always eat lots of sandwiches.”
    When they got to the beach, Trevor and Leo established their home base a few yards away from Sophie and her kids. After all, they weren’t a family. Leo seemed to prefer playing alone, building walls out of sand or walking along the beach holding Trevor’s hand. The few times Lacey had made overtures—bringing Leo more shells, asking if he wanted to throw the Frisbee with her—Leo had done his shoulder-shrug, head-dip movement in response. Lacey stopped visiting their camp.
    Still, they all went home together. Trevor and Leo used the outside shower, then dressed in dry clothes. Lacey and Jonah clomped up to their rooms to shower and check their iPhones, and Sophie rinsed her feet with the hose, then ambled into the kitchen to begin preparations for dinner. She always set out a plate of chewies—carrots, celery, zucchini sticks, almonds—to keep the kids from digging the potato chips from their hiding place and devouring them. Everyone became crazed for salt.
    By the end of the first week, when Trevor got ready to make his shopping expedition to the grocery stores, Leo said he’d stay home and work on his Lego wall. He didn’t say he’d play with Lacey, or invite Jonah to help him, but he was willing to remain in the house with the Andersons while Trevor was gone. That, to Trevor, was a success of great magnitude.
    And eating Sophie’s fabulous cooking every night was a bonus he’d never anticipated. They all sat together, eating and talking, and although Leo insisted that Trevor was the only one who could put food on Leo’s plate, he quite happily ate the food that Sophie, not Trevor, had prepared. Small steps, Trevor thought. Inch by inch.
    —
    Sophie had forgotten how dazzling the world was. Sitting on her beach chair, watching Lacey and Jonah splash in the waves, listening to the laughter and chatter of other families, friends, and lovers floating like balloons up and down the beach, feeling the warm gold of the sun on her skin, staring far out to a horizon that seemed never to end, she remembered the grandeur of the world. It was like being a child again.
    Yet her oldest offspring was leaving childhood. Jonah had been her one true love, her pal, her pet, her honey bunny. Lacey, five years younger, had both Sophie and Jonah (and Zack, of course, busy in the background) to care for and be adored by, and Lacey had a different personality. She was curious, people-loving, outward-bound. Sophie and Jonah joked that Lacey would grow up to be the entertainment