Girl at Sea Read Free Page B

sixteenth-century Dutch paintings. They’re in very bad condition. They were lost in the Second World War, and they’ve just come to light. They were stored in houses and warehouses and knocked around. They’re a mess. I have to work on them.”
    “That doesn’t sound like a catch,” Clio said. “That sounds like your job. The thing you like to do.”
    “It is. It’s a very exciting opportunity, actually. The trouble is . . . the paintings are in their private facility, a new workshop space they just built. That’s where the work has to be done. And it’s in Kansas.”
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    Clio felt her stomach plunge.
    “Kansas is far from here,” she managed to say.
    “It gets slightly more complex,” her mom went on. “The reason your dad was calling . . .”
    Clio cocked her head. This made no sense. The way her mother said this, her voice going up in pitch, the words slowing down, her eyes no longer looking into Clio’s . . . If Clio hadn’t known better, her mom was about to suggest that she stay with her dad. And that wasn’t possible.
    “He had an idea,” her mom went on. The inflection was even more sad and guilty.
    “I know this sounds crazy,” Clio said, “but it almost sounds like you’re about to suggest that I spend the summer with him, wherever he is. And you know that is a horrible idea.”
    “Clio—”
    “But you would never suggest that,” Clio went on. “You would never, ever, in a million years betray me like that and send me to stay with Dad. Or let him stay here. You’d do something sensible instead, like stick me in an orphanage.”
    “Look—”
    “I have full confidence in you, Mom,” Clio said, her anxiety increasing as her mother failed to deny the fact. “I know you wouldn’t do it. So go ahead. Tell me the clever plan you’ve come up with that lets me stay here. I’m ready for it. Hit me.”
    “He called after I got the news,” her mother said, leaning heavily on the bar. “Just by coincidence, to see how things were. I told him the news. I had to—he’s entitled to know. You two get four weeks every summer as part of the custody agreement.”
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    “I acknowledge that you were fulfilling your legal responsibility,” Clio said. “He knows you will be in Kansas. Fine. He’s in the loop. Now, where am I staying?”
    “He had a counteroffer. A good one, Clio.”
    Clio fell silent. The coffeepot hissed. Her mom quietly poured herself a cup.
    “Define ‘counteroffer,’” Clio finally said.
    “He wants to take you to Italy for the summer. He has a boat there.”
    “And you said ‘no way’ and hung up the phone, right?”
    Now her mother fell silent, poking at her coffee with a spoon.
    Clio put her head down on the kitchen bar. She felt crumbs adhering to her forehead.
    “Why is this happening?” she mumbled.
    “I think this could really work,” her mother babbled on.
    “Fine,” Clio replied, picking up her head. “Whatever. I’ll go to Kansas. Obviously, that’s what you’ve been trying to get me to say. You were trying to show me that it could be worse. Very smart.”
    Clio looked up at her mother. The laughing-gas look was gone. It had been replaced by the expression she had when Clio was seven years old and her mom had had to tell Clio that her dog, Ziggy, had died while she was in school that day.
    “The problem is,” she began, “we’re not even going to be in a city. We’re going to be way out, in a converted farmhouse. I talked to someone who’d just been out there. He said there was nothing around.”
    “You’re not taking me? You’re just going by yourself? What about . . . Rob? Your boyfriend ?”
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    This question seemed to cause her mother the most pain of all.
    “He’s offered to come with me.”
    It was like Clio had been slapped. Slapped hard. Crumbs started raining from her forehead.
    “You’re taking Rob but leaving me?”
    “It’s not like that,” her mom said firmly. “This is just one of those situations where