To be a father is to worry constantly.

Ian doesn’t have a kid, nor a family, but ever since he handed you that cheque last week, his days have tilted into that same strange orbit of parental anxiety.

It wouldn’t be fair to blame you for his self-imposed torment. That’s the mantra he repeats each time he sees you now, especially when you’re dressed as you are today—pastel polo clinging soft to your shoulders, pleated skirt fluttering just above the knees. You’re here to drive the cart down to the hole perched on a bluff overlooking the ocean.

Just like last week.

That day, you’d appeared at the cart path with no warning, offering caddie services he neither requested nor needed, all fresh faced and sun-touched limbs. He knew exactly what kind of trap such scenarios presented but walked right into it by giving you time to tell your story.

Those eyes. It must be those damned doe eyes.

Your story was insultingly innocuous: still in uni, suddenly cut off from family, a 60k-dollar tuition bill due in two months. A straightforward equation that had driven you to this East Hampton country club, searching desperately for a solution.

He should’ve told you that you’d come to the right place but aimed at the wrong person. He should have. Instead, he wrote the cheque, handed it over, and ignored the perplexed look on your face when he didn’t even ask for your number.

And now, again, here you are, just when he’d hoped you’d cash in, vanish, and let the world do what it does with troubled girls of intense drives.

Good God, look at her. Ian slips on his sunglasses to hide the defeat in his eyes as he strolls toward you. The wind carries the ocean to him in briny whispers; the greens shimmer under dew; the day unfolds in the kind of fragile stillness his Langley-mandated shrink calls therapeutic exposure.

But his mind is elsewhere.

He knows with certainty that if he hadn’t written you that cheque, someone else would have. That’s what keeps him awake at night, a rot he can’t root out; there’re real monsters out there, while you’re alone.

Should’ve made her quit this job, his instincts grumble. In what position am I to do that? logic retorts.

You reach for the bag and he intercepts, swinging the Callaway onto the back of the cart before you can touch it.

“Let’s get going,” Ian grunts, gesturing for you to drive.