Night Mares in the Hamptons by Celia Jerome

I’ll ask around about someone good with horses.”
    â€œI’d appreciate that. Grant’s looking, too, but we need someone quickly. Give my love to Dad.”
    â€œOh, I forgot to tell you. He was going to call you tonight to warn you to look out for caves and alligators. Can you believe that? There aren’t any caves in Paumanok Harbor, and I ought to know since I was born there. There sure as hell aren’t any alligators on Long Island, unless someone has one in a fish tank. He’s spent too much time on the golf course down here, where you have to be careful retrieving lost balls from the lagoons. How ridiculous is that, even if he was right about boats being dangerous last time? I told him not to bother you with that nonsense, but he’ll want to tell you anyway, just to make you more anxious than you are now. You see how useless he is? All men are, I suppose. Maybe you’re right about Grant. I wouldn’t want my grandchildren living in Britain.”
    She obviously didn’t give a rat’s ass where I lived. I wrote down horses, caves, and alligators on the pad I always had nearby. “Okay, Mom, I better get to putting up my signs.”
    â€œYou know, if you’re out hanging posters, maybe you could make up one or two about adopting a greyhound?”
    â€œGotta go, Mom. Miles to cover.”
    â€œThink about the psychiatrist, dear. You can use one.”
    Didn’t she know they always blamed a patient’s problems on his or her mother? That worked for me.
    Â 
    Despite what I said about hurrying, I knew most of the businesses on Main Street wouldn’t be open yet, so I went to see Grandma Eve at her house up the dirt road.
    She was in the front yard, watering plants. She listened to me while she went from tub to tub of young greenery, with nasturtiums and marigolds mixed in to keep the insects away. I did not recognize half the herbs she was growing, despite backbreaking, boring summers of weeding and repotting and selling the plants from hell at the family’s farm stand. Grandma kept adding more exotic species, with help from fellow herbalists and a blind eye from the FDA.
    When I finished my story about horses, nightmares, and Grant—which I was getting sick of repeating—Grandma put down the hose. She pursed her lips, crossed her arms over her bony chest, then tucked a stray gray strand of hair back under her baseball cap. The Yankees. She stared at me for long enough to make my knees tremble while I tried not to think of Hansel and Gretel. Then she nodded, as if concluding that I was worth the interruption of her day. She said she’d fetch me something that might help and went inside the house.
    I hoped for more strawberry jam, since I was feeding two now, but I figured she’d bring me a new concoction in a tea bag so I could sleep better. Instead, she came back out with a piece of paper with The Garland Farm logo on the top. Dr. Lassiter, it said, with a phone number.
    â€œLet me guess. He’s a shrink.”
    She nodded again. “A world-renowned therapist and an old friend. He retired after his wife died and he had a stroke. He’s on Shelter Island. Call him.”
    I would, right after I started seeing alligators and caves.

CHAPTER 7

    P AUMANOK HARBOR WAS NOT LIKE the other villages that made up East Hampton Township on Long Island’s East End. In fact, none of the neighboring villages looked much like each other, or felt like each other either.
    East Hampton Village was all glitz and glamour, Tiffany’s and Ralph Lauren, with celebrity watching its tourists’ favorite pastime. Old money, new money, big money, money-envy.
    Montauk was a working man’s two-week vacation: beach and bars, fishing and surfing. Downtown was full of T-shirt shops and souvenir stores, with rows of motels that sat right on the beach. Until the next hurricane.
    Amagansett couldn’t decide if it was chic or cozy, with