The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin

it. (Okay, not maybe, and not one or two; but I liked to think he hadn’t done anything truly terrible, such as kill someone, up there in dirty little Providence.) It was nearly a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of luxury pleasure craft, but in a way it was also a small thing; when you’re in a boat on the open sea, that smallness is what you feel, and the memory of this feeling is what calls you back. In his haste to depart, Frank had left an open chart on the table of the main salon: the Caymans, of course, world-class haven for tax cheats. Beside it I found a little pad of paper with course headings and distance calculations written in a small, almost girlish print. Too fucking far, Frank had written, underlining the words twice, hard enough to break the tip off his pencil. The thing was, it wasn’t too far for a boat like that, not if you knew what you were doing. It was just too far for Frank.
    From a pay phone at the dock I called Kate. It was just evening, a little after seven, and I hoped she would be back in her room after dinner. If she didn’t answer I was prepared to hang up and head home, but she took it on the third ring, a little out of breath.
    “Hey, kiddo.”
    “Daddy? Hang on a second. I just got in.”
    “Take your time, Kats.”
    She held her hand over the receiver to talk to someone, then came back on the line. “Sorry. Here I am.”
    “There you are.”
    “Is it, like, eighty degrees down there? Because today it fucking, excuse me, snowed. Again. In April.” She laughed at someone in the room. “I’m glad you called, actually.”
    “How’s that?”
    “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” She sighed theatrically into the phone. “ California. Airline tickets. Remember? We were supposed to sort it out by last week.”
    We had talked about it over her spring vacation; at the end of May we were planning to fly, the two of us, out to LA to visit medical schools: USC, UCLA, UC San Diego. Maybe a jaunt in a rental car up the coast to San Francisco, to see Stanford and UCSF.
    “Right you are. Must have slipped my mind. I’ll get on it, Kats, I promise.”
    “I don’t mean to nag, but you know. It’s important. Like, my whole entire life, to be exact. I also wouldn’t mind seeing that Universal Studios Tour. I could use some serious kitsch about now.”
    “Got it. Serious kitsch. Your whole entire life. Roger wilco.”
    “Daddy? That’s not the reason you called, is it?”
    “Sure it was. Planning for California. I’m on the job, Kats.”
    “Daddy.”
    “Okay, you’ve got it out of me. The truth is I just took out somebody’s boat for a little spin, and it put me in the mood to hear your voice.”
    “Not the naked gangster’s Chris-Craft?”
    “Labor official, Kats. Labor official. Nice fellow, too, once you get past the gruff exterior and the grand jury indictment.”
    Kate paused for adjustment. “Dad? This isn’t one of those your-mother-and-I-have-decided-to-take-some-time-apart calls, is it? Because a lot of that has been going around up here. And if you’ll pardon my saying so, you sound a little strange.”
    “No worries, Kats. Your mom and I are fine, unless you know something I don’t. Looks like I’m going to be taking a little trip, though.”
    “I thought Big Pine was a little trip.”
    “A trip from my trip, then. A kind of a business thing.”
    “Hmmm. Very mysterious.”
    “I’d tell you more, but it’s top secret, I’m afraid. At least for now.”
    “Daddy, I know you. You don’t do top secret. Top secret is not your thing.”
    “Don’t be so sure. I might surprise you, Kats.”
    “Speaking of which. You know, there’s a girl in my dorm who thinks her dad works for the CIA.” Kate lowered her voice, having fun. “Supposedly he’s an accountant for the State Department. But then he up and disappears for weeks at a time. She also thought she saw him on CNN, in the background of a shot taken in, like, Turkey or someplace. He was wearing sunglasses and