At my school, you’d get your butt kicked for inflicting anything that tedious on your fellow students. But I could already see that Isa was a more fragile specimen than Mags and me at the height of our wedgie-yanking, middle school powers.
“Here.” Connie was hopping down the steps to shove the money through the passenger-side window at the cab driver. “It’th not much but it’th not my fault, either, hadn’t got a chanth to get into town to …” Whatever she said next was obscured by wheels spinning as the driver took his lame tip and roared off.
Whoever had arrived, I wouldn’t be making a killer impression. Not in my wet clothes and sweaty face. Isa herself was adjusting one of her dress straps and shaking back her hair.
“Is it Dad? It’s Dad, right?”
“No,” said Connie, “it’th Dr. Hugh. And he’th only thtaying for dinner, and don’t bother him for caramel.”
“Dr. Hugh, cool.” Though Isa still looked disappointed as she darted into the house. “Dr. Hyoooooo! Did you bring me any caramels?”
“Her thychiatritht,” explained Connie. “He popped over to check in. Hardly enough dinner for everyone, but there’th nothing I can do.”
I followed her into the house and to the kitchen, where a man who looked like one of the Smith Brothers cough-drops guys—the one with the Guitar Hero beard—stood formally in his summer suit accepting the glass of lemonade Isa had poured him.
But as soon as I entered, the doctor’s eyes snapped like a terrier bite to my face. And I knew he’d come not just to check on Isa, but also to see about me.
“Hello! You’re the babysitter? Jamie Atkinson?”
I nodded. “ ’Scuse me. Just going to wash up.” I pivoted and ran for it. Up the stairs, down the three turns of hallway to my bedroom, where I locked my bathroom door and stayed there a few minutes, working on some calming breaths.
I hated doctors, I really did. I wasn’t even too crazy about Dr. Gamba, and she’d been the family doctor since forever. But the whole medical profession freaked me out the way they always wanted more from you. More answers about your health, more information about your weight and your eating habits and when was the last time you fill-in-the-embarrassing-blanked.
A quick splash of water on my face and a few drags of my brush through my hair ate up another minute or so.
“Relax,” I told my reflection. “This guy is just some country-fried shrink. He’s not out to dissect you.” But then I dawdled, rearranging the pink soap pigs on their dish. Why had Isa been seeing a psychiatrist? What was wrong with her? Did it have anything to do with what had happened last summer?
McRae certainly had been sparse with the details of this job. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. And I didn’t even have Mags. I didn’t have anyone.
Okay, deal. Game face. One final, unnecessary flush of the toilet—take that, Funsicle—and I left.
Motoring out the door to the corridor, I smashed right into him.
“Oh! Sorry.” I jumped back. “Sorry, sorry,” I repeated.
Behind us, the three portrait children stared.
Maybe it was the slightly affected way he stood there, a bit defiant, a bit entitled, like a rock star at his microphone. Or maybe it was that he so sharply echoed my imaginings of his rogue charmer father. But I knew straight off that this was Milo McRae.
“No, my bad,” he said, uncaring. “Who’re you?”
“Jamie. The babysitter. Or au pair, whatever.”
“Hi-larious. You gonna spoon-feed me applesauce and put me in my pj’s?”
“I’m here for Isa.”
“Yeah, I know.” He appeared more relaxed than I was. “I’m the prodigal Milo.”
I didn’t answer. We took each other in. Most fourteen-year-old boys were a pathetic misery of blackheads and hormones. Not this one. Isa hadn’t exaggerated. He was handsome. More than handsome. I could see in a minute that this was the kid who bought the beer, the kid who broke the locks and knew the passwords, the kid who’d fooled around with older girls late night in the lodge during his last ski holiday. In some ways, he was also the kid I feared most—the ultimate prepster, with his braided rope bracelet and threadworn boaters that probably matched his S.S. Trustpuppy starter sailboat moored over at the Little Bly Yacht Club harbor.
I tried not to stare. I kept staring. Milo looked like he’d just graduated from skinny to slim. Long and lithe, with wavy chestnut hair, olive-dark eyes (the opposite of Sean Ryan—an inevitable comparison—who was vanilla-pink and soft as sponge cake) and a face that would be handsomer, I bet, when he wasn’t scowling. Judging me.
He’s sweet when he’s not intense. Yet Milo seemed like nothing but intensity. I could tell even by the way he fell too close in step as I headed for the landing. This kid was a challenge.
“So, you got a visitor’s pass from camp? Does Connie know you’re here?” I asked.
“Answer one, no, not visiting. Staying. Answer two, yes, she knows. If you’d looked closer, you’d have seen the panic in her eyes.”
“How’d you get here?”
“I hitched a ride in from the train station with the doc.” At the burst of Dr. Hugh’s laughter from below, Milo stopped. I stopped with him. “Hugh and Connie. Might spoil my appetite. Maybe I’ll come down later for leftovers.”
“Sorry, I still don’t get it. Why are you here at all?”
I had a feeling that I wasn’t the first girl Milo gifted with that sudden, Cheshire smile. “I got tossed.”
“Aha.” Thrown out of summer camp. Ideas rockslid through my head—sex, drugs, theft, alcohol? I’d known Milo a minute, and all of it seemed possible.
“Come down to say hi to Isa,” I said. “She’d love it.”
Milo rolled his eyes but then he pounced past me, down the stairs, off balance as he hit the bottom tread and jumped to reach up, his hand batting the finial of the lantern-style brass light fixture that hung from a linked chain. The light went swinging as Milo skid-landed on the carpet, rumpling it from its matting, and nearly toppling the umbrella holder in the corner.
“He shoots, he scores!” Milo cheered himself. Then turned to see if I was watching.
“Two points,” I said.
“Points for who?” Isa had crept up to peep around from the dining room. “Who are you talking to? What’s going on?”