Chapter 6: Bad Press

Archer waited in the car for twenty-two minutes.

I know because Bess timed him from the top of the ladder.

"Twenty," she called down. "He's checking his hair in the mirror. Twenty-one. He's honking. Oh my God, he honked."

I kept sanding.

At twenty-two he spun his tires in the gravel and left a cloud of dust over Gran's tomato plants.

Gran came out on the porch with a dish towel and told the dust exactly what she thought of its mother.

The reporters came the next morning.

Three cars and a van parked all the way up the dirt road.

A lot of people in sunglasses picked their way down to the water.

Somebody had told them where I was.

I had a good idea who.

"Do we let them in?" Bess asked.

"It's a public shoreline below the tide line," Seth said. "They can stand in the mud if they want."

"Do we give them coffee?"

"No."

"Can I give them coffee and be weird about it?"

"Bess."

I was halfway through a plank and very tired.

I'd slept nine hours and I was still tired.

It was eleven fifty-eight.

I put the sanding block down, walked out of the shed, past the line of cameras, and climbed into Seth's hammock.

Seth came out at noon exactly.

He looked at me.

He looked at the reporters, who were all looking at him.

Then he got a lawn chair from the porch and set it up beside the hammock.

He sat in it with his arms crossed and closed his eyes too.

"Miss Wakefield!" somebody shouted. "Miss Wakefield, is it true you pushed your sister?"

I was asleep before he finished the question.

When I woke up, it was one-thirty and the cameras were still there.

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