Between Here and the Horizon(15)

“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.

The whole thing seemed incredibly strange. Connor slid off the edge of his bed and slumped down onto the floor. He picked up a Lego Star Wars fighter jet and began to dismantle it piece by piece. “It’s too cold here,” he said. “It’s nothing like New York at all.”

Ronan shook his head, bending down in front of his son. Connor didn’t look up, but it was pretty clear he was waiting with baited breath to see what his father would say. “It’s just as cold in New York as it is here,” Ronan informed him. “But no, you’re right. The island’s very different to the city. You’ve got fresh air here. Places to run and play outside. Doesn’t that sound like it would be a fun thing to do? You could even learn how to sail in the summer time. You told me you wanted to do that.”

Connor looked up, over Ronan’s shoulder, straight at me. Only for a second, but the eye contact was long enough to see the fear in his eyes. “I don’t like new people,” he whispered to Ronan.