Hudson tipped his glass and looked thoughtful. “No,” he said finally. “I’m afraid my summers when I was your age usually involved working in my father’s hardware store and visiting my grandparents in Florida for two weeks. And not in the Disney World part of Florida either, I might add. The buggy, humid part where everyone eats dinner at three o’clock and goes to bed by seven.”

“What do you like to do?” Angela asked Caddie.

Ben waited for her answer. He was curious to find out what his daughter was interested in, as so far she’d shown a fondness only for avoiding him in as many ways as possible.

Caddie shrugged. “The usual stuff, I guess,” she said. “Mostly I hang out with my friends.”

“Let me guess,” Angela said. “At the mall?” She laughed gently.

“No, not at the mall,” snapped Caddie.

“I’m sorry,” Angela apologized. “I just meant that when I was your age, that’s what we did.”

Caddie set her fork down. “I like to write songs,” she said. “The words, anyway. I can’t write music very well.”

Ben, surprised, said, “What kind of songs?”

“Just songs,” Caddie said. She seemed uncomfortable, and Ben decided against asking her if she would share one with them.

“There you are,” Hudson said, putting his hands up.

“What?” said Caddie.

“You can be a roaming troubadour,” he said. “Charge people ten bucks to have you sing for them.”

Ben waited for Caddie to get up and leave the table. Instead, she looked at Hudson and smiled. “That’s not a bad idea,” she said. “I could start with the people in line at the aquarium. It takes forever to get in there. I bet they’d love to have some entertainment.”

“You’ve been to the aquarium?” Ben asked her.

Caddie looked at him, then down at her plate, where she focused her concentration on her lasagna. “I ran in the other day,” she said. “There was nothing else to do.”

“You should have told me you were going,” said Ben. “You could have gotten in free with my member card.”

“It was a last-minute thing,” said Caddie. “Anyway, they gave me the student rate.”

“Well, what did you think of it?” Angela asked.

“It has a lot of fish,” answered Caddie without enthusiasm.

“It’s the best aquarium in the country,” said Angela. “You know your father helped them set up the kelp forest exhibit.”

Caddie said nothing, so Ben stepped in. “It really is a pretty amazing place,” he said. “You know they were the first aquarium to keep a great white alive in captivity.”

“Yeah, so they could get people to pay to look at it,” Caddie muttered.

Ben looked across the table at Angela. She gave him a sympathetic nod. He was grateful for her presence at the table. Even if she raised Caddie’s ire, she made him feel less alone.

“Do you dive, Caddie?” Hudson asked.