Three distant but sharp beeps snapped her out of her daydream and she looked up, annoyed. Three hundred yards away she could see a yellow bulldozer moving around at the Moores’ place. Did these people have to ruin everything? Julianne shook her head and turned her attention back to the ocean, allowing herself to be soothed by the light sparkling off the waves. Then her father’s voice drifted up from the deck below, so she headed back inside to get ready for her day.
After a quick change, Julianne was sitting with her father and Chloe downstairs. “Excuse me, miss. Can I get a refill?” Dad pushed his empty lemonade glass across the glass patio table toward his daughters.
Julianne rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “First you want sunblock, then you want the umbrella down.”
She pointed to the oversize blue-and-yellow umbrella jutting out of the middle of the table like a Technicolor palm tree. “And now you want refills? I bet you’re not even going to tip… .”
Refilling her father’s glass from a huge, blown-glass pitcher, she turned her eyes back to the beach in front of her. It was a perfect early-summer afternoon—hot without being humid, the sun the color of butter.
“I’ve got a tip for you—don’t quit your day job.”
Edward Kahn chuckled softly to himself, pulling Jules’s attention back. “You have many talents, Julianna Banana, but waitressing isn’t one of them.”
Chloe reached across Julianne, grabbing a piece of corn on the cob. “Good thing you decided not to fill out that singing-waitress application at Nifty Fifties then, huh?” she teased.
Julianne practically wrapped herself around the umbrella post in pursuit of the potato salad and sloppily scooped a helping onto her neon plastic plate. “Alas, no roller skates and poodle skirts for me this summer. Just fresh air and building things.”
Chloe sat up straight in her chair and squinted through her giant gold-rimmed sunglasses. “Speaking of building things, what’s going on over there?” She jerked her thumb toward the construction equipment gathered around the new neighbors’ property. All sorts of destructive-looking vehicles were lined up around the house.
Julianne followed her sister’s gaze with one eye while monitoring her dad’s face with the other. “Beats me. I heard some construction noise when I was out on the balcony before, but that’s it. Dad?”
“Nuuhmuh.” Dad shrugged between mouthfuls of fruit salad.
“Come again?” Chloe asked.
“I said, ‘Nothing much,’” their father repeated. “It’s the same thing that always happens. People move here for a summer kingdom and start building their castle.
They’ll get bored and go back home soon enough.” He leaned over the side of his chair to pick up a grape that had escaped his grasp and wedged itself between the wood slats of the deck.
“The bulldozers don’t strike me as a sign of bore-dom,” Chloe started, shaking her head.
“They showed up last month, immediately dug a foundation, and erected this crazy greenhouse-looking thing. It looks like they’re trying to expand down toward the beach now.” Julianne glanced over at the mess of Tonka trucks come alive. From a few hundred yards away they almost looked like a bunch of mechanical bees swarming around a big glass hive.
“Can they do that? Just keep going and going like that?” Julianne wondered out loud.
“Yeah,” Chloe added incredulously. “If they keep moving at this rate, they’re going to plow that whole stretch of beach right under.”
“In a few weeks, they’ll decide it’s all more trouble than it’s worth and sell the property for twice what they paid for it. Just wait. Don’t lose any sleep over it, girls.
It’ll be fine,” their father assured them. “But, speaking of sleep, it was nice of you to wake up and join us for lunch, Julianne …” he continued slyly.
In the distance, Julianne could hear kids laughing as they rushed up to the water’s edge and dashed away, squealing, as soon as the tide approached. Wow, I can’t believe he noticed … she thought.
Chloe said as much out loud. “Gosh, Jules, you must have been out cold to make Dad notice you snoozing the morning away. He’s been in his studio all day. Way to make your absence known. Hmm … I wonder what you possibly could have been dreaming about until almost noon …” Julianne could hear the slightest shade of glee coloring her sister’s voice. She was right, though. Their father, a children’s book author, was pretty single-minded writing. Mom had always joked that if she hadn’t illustrated his books, her husband would have forgotten who she was entirely while he was writing.
Abruptly changing the subject, Chloe burst out with,
“Hey, didn’t the Moores come over with their surveyor practically first thing when they moved in?”
“Chloe, don’t get all worked up over nothing,” Dad said. “Both of you girls worry too much. The neighborhood might be changing, but it doesn’t mean much for us.
Well, except for longer, meaner lines in the supermarket,”
he added, winking. “The Moores aren’t going to win any conservation awards for building up all that ground, but their crazy glass mansion won’t really affect us.”
Well, if Dad isn’t worried, I won’t worry, Julianne thought to herself. She glanced over at Chloe and saw her sister’s shoulders starting to ease their way down toward their typical relaxed height. “Nothing to worry about,” Julianne said softly, right as something went whizzing through her sight line, smacking Chloe directly on the forehead. Julianne and Chloe whipped their heads toward the opposite side of the table, where their father was chuckling quietly, fingers still poised from flicking a particularly round grape at Chloe’s head.
“Now there’s something to worry about,” he declared before the table broke out into an
