Page 9 of Between Here and the Horizon
He looked at me for a long time. And then: “You’re right. I wouldn’t. So here I am, apologizing, and here you are, so far from home. A stranger in a strange land.” He turned and looked out of the window beside him, eyes fixed on something in the distance. “I suppose that leads me to the most important rule I’d like you to adhere to. You don’t know anyone here on the island. It would be tempting, I suppose, to try and make friends. Guy friends. Maybe someone special to spend time with. Romantically,” he added on the end, as if his point wasn’t being made quite clearly enough. I was hearing him loud and clear, though, and I was already squirming in my seat.
“Ronan, believe me. I’m not planning on shimmying down a drainpipe to go and hit first base with a local. I’m here to look after the children. That’s it. I have no interest whatsoever in meeting people, male or otherwise.”
He gave me a tight-lipped, awkward smile. “I’m sure that’s true. But like I said. Best to just get these things out in the open and then we can move on. I don’t want any guys brought into the house at any point, okay? I definitely don’t want you to have guests in your room. I don’t ever want there to be a situation where Connor or Amie might find a man they don’t know wandering around in his underwear, okay?”
My cheeks were crimson; they had to be. A mixture of outrage and embarrassment fired through me, fizzling just under the surface of my skin. I felt like I was burning up all over. “I’m not that easy,” I snapped. “I wouldn’t just invite a guy back to my room to hook up, if that’s what you’re implying.”
Ronan shook his head, now looking down into his own lap. “I’m not implying anything. I’m just stating what the rules are. I’m sorry if you find that offensive, Ophelia, but my children are very important to me.”
“I know. Of course they are. But—”
“The only other thing I ask of you is that you don’t ever let them down onto the beach by themselves. Somehow swimming lessons seemed unnecessary in New York. Stupid, I know. I plan on dealing with the matter, getting them enrolled in classes as soon as possible, but for now if they’re outside, don’t let either one of them out of your sight. Agreed?”
I wanted to defend myself further—it was insane that he thought I was going to be throwing myself at random men, left, right and center—but I could see backtracking and arguing with him over this wasn’t going to serve any greater good. “Yes. I’ll be very vigilant of them, you have my word.”
“Good. Now, the library on the top floor is at your disposal. There’s a home movie theatre in the basement that you can use to watch movies with the kids. You can use that for your own personal use in the evenings as well, once the children have gone to bed, but you should always keep your ear out for them. Amie’s usually pretty good at going to bed and staying there, but Connor’s a night owl. He’ll be up and wandering around in the middle of the night if he can get away with it.”
“Yes. Not a problem. I can handle that.” My mind was still reeling from the prospect of an entire library upstairs along with a movie theatre downstairs to register much of the other house features that Ronan then explained to me. I did get something about a guest quarters. A lap lane swimming pool, also downstairs, that the childrenwereallowed to play in while supervised, since it was only four feet deep.
“The only area of the house that is off limits to you is my study,” Ronan said. “I have a lot of sensitive documents in there. I could literally go to prison if unauthorized people caught sight of them. It’s really important that Connor and Amie never go in my study, Ophelia.Never. Underanycircumstances. Promise me right now that you’ll never let them inside.”
An intensity had overtaken Ronan, a fierceness shining in his eyes as he spoke about his office. His tone was sharp, harder than I thought it probably needed to be. So sad that the guy was so desperate to lock himself away in his study away from his children all the time. I knew lots of parents that were like that back in California, though. There were an awful lot of investment bankers and people working in the financial quarter back in Manhattan Beach, and a lot of them had very little time for their sons and daughters. In Ronan’s case, the loss of his wife must have had a lot to do with his reluctance to spend quality time with his kids. I hadn’t seen a picture of Magda, but it would be strange if her children didn’t carry some piece of her in the way they looked, the way their voices sounded, or the things they said. It had to be hard for him to even look at them sometimes, even now.
“I promise I won’t let them into your study. Ever,” I said. “Over my dead body.”
Ronan winced—a flutter of uncharacteristic emotion that made me cringe myself. I should really have learned by now to think before opening my mouth. I had no idea how his wife had died. It could have been an accident. It could have been some awful, fatal mistake that had cost her her life, and here I was making over my dead body jibes. God. Way, way too soon.
“They’re very well-behaved most of the time,” Ronan said. “If you tell them not to do something, they usually obey. You won’t need to reprimand them very often. If you do have to punish them for acting up, I’ve found the most effective way to do that is to have them sit down and write me a letter, explaining what the problem is and why they’re not on best behavior.”
Not what I was expecting at all. Most parents confiscate their kids’ technology to teach them a lesson these days. It was the most unimaginative way to control the way they conducted themselves, and yet it was also the easiest route. The kids weren’t going to kick and scream or create a scene in public if you took their iPads. They were going to be silent as church mice until you gave that shit back. If you threatened to take cell phones away, you could practically work miracles with a child’s attitude.
Ronan didn’t operate like that, though. He wanted his kids to sit down and reflect on their actions, to process them, and to communicate their feelings as best they could. For Amie, only five, writing down her thoughts was probably still next to impossible, but it was a refreshing ideology, that was for sure.
Ronan got to his feet. “I’m glad we got that ironed out. If you don’t have any questions, then I’d say it’s time to meet the little hellions, wouldn’t you?”
CHAPTER SIX
Angels and Demons
Connor and Amie Fletcher were both part angel, part demon. I knew I was going to have fun wrangling them into touch the moment I laid eyes on them. Connor sat across from me in his bedroom, feet hanging off the end of his bed, and he refused to meet my eye. Amie, on the other hand, couldn’t stop staring at me, like I was some sort of ghost.
“You don’t look like Mommy,” she said. Turning to her father, she pouted, staring at him accusingly. “Hilary said she looked like Mommy. I heard.”
“No, he said she reminded him of Mommy. That can mean a lot of different things, sweetheart. If someone speaks or acts or talks in a similar way to another person, you can say that they remind you of them. Understand?”
Amie nodded; she looked like she’d just had her heart broken by this news. Two seconds later, she was running around, giggling in a high-pitched voice, playing with a plastic toy Stegosaurus like the disappointment hadn’t even occurred. Connor sat quietly, staring at his sneakers, chewing on his bottom lip.
“Connor, please stand up and say hello to Ophelia. She’s going to be taking care of you a lot over the next few months. You’re going to like her, I promise.”Great. I really wished he hadn’t said that. If kids wanted to be difficult for the hell of it, they’d go against whatever you told them, regardless of whether it made any sense to them. Connor might have thought I was the coolest teacher cum nanny there ever was once he got to know me, but the moment Ronan told him he was going to like me, to get along with me, he pretty much guaranteed that Connor was going to rail against the very idea of me.
“I don’t even get why we had to come here,” he said under his breath. “I hate this house. None of my friends are here.”
“It’s okay, bud. School’s going to start soon, and you’ll make plenty of friends.”
“What is she going to be doing with us then?” he asked quietly.
“Ophelia’s going to get you up in the morning. She’s going to be make your breakfast and take you to school. And when you get back from school, she’ll take you for a swim downstairs. She’ll play with you. She’ll help you with your schoolwork. That will be okay, right?”
So he really had meant it when he said he didn’t want to be distracted. According to his list of the duties I was expected to carry out, Ronan wasn’t going to have a single interaction with his kids from one day to the next. Didn’t even sound like he planned on sticking his head through the door and kissing them goodnight.
