“Surprise,” I said, pointing. “Milo heard you missed him.”
I’d really shocked her. For a moment she stood frozen, dumbfounded, her eyes wide and her shoulders tensed. “Milo?” she whispered. Then she started laughing, amazed, as she crept a few steps closer. “Miley! Miley! You came home! For how long?”
“Till I go.” He reached out and palmed her head like a basketball. I could tell Isa wanted more, a hug maybe, but felt shy about it.
“When’s that?” she asked.
“Isa, roll with it,” he said.
“Okay,” she conceded quietly. And I was relieved that while Isa was clearly stunned by the fact of him, she also seemed just as happy with her brother’s arrival as with the promise that her dad might have come back. “C’mon, then. Let’s eat, Miley.”
I followed them both through the dining room, into a surprisingly modern but unsurprisingly spotless kitchen. Its corner booth was set with silk napkins, and the silverware was huge, like what rich Vikings might have used. Connie and Dr. Hugh were chatting about local island news, but Milo didn’t wait. He ladled up from the pasta bowl.
So I went for the loaf of bread, sawing off a chunk as Isa picked the sesame seeds from the salad.
“Who would win in a fight?” she asked. “An owl or a raccoon?”
“No thilly talk at dinner,” said Connie.
“Owl,” I said.
“Raccoon by a landslide,” added Milo.
Isa giggled.
“Adultth will eat later.” Connie gave me a look. I didn’t care. Silly talk was the only kind of talk I wanted. Au pair trumps housekeeper on that one. “Jethie, you’ll need to look after your and Itha’th kitchen meth.”
Milo snorted. “Hear that, Jeth? Gotta handle your own kitchen meth.”
“My name isn’t Jessie, it’s Jamie,” I corrected loudly.
Connie ignored me, bustling around the pantry to find a bottle of wine for the doctor. I wished he’d just go—he exuded “pompous know-it-all” like a bad odor. After Milo had shot downstairs to the basement-level family room for TV, I challenged Isa to a yodeling contest. Just to annoy the adultth.
But I could feel it coming. Hugh looked too purposeful, and when Isa escaped downstairs to join Milo, he followed me through the kitchen door and out to the porch, where I’d been planning to sneak a smoke. Tobacco wasn’t one of my addictions, or even habits, but I’d bought a pack of mentholated lites right before I left home, and had stuck one in my jeans pocket while I was upstairs. Just in case I was in the mood for a vice.
“Jamie?”
“You said it.”
“Well, no, I haven’t, yet. But I did want to note that you’ve got yourself a set of challenges this summer.” Hugh cleared his throat. “As you can see, Isa’s a special, sensitive girl.” He spoke gravely, as if confiding CIA secrets. He probably read the grocery list the same way. It made me twitchy. “She’s always been introverted. More so since the unfortunate—tragic—events of last year.”
“You’re talking about the other babysitter?”
“Yes.”
When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “Jessie Feathering died in an accident. It was a terrible thing. Heartbreaking, a shock to the community.” Ha, he was practically begging for me to ask for more. No way. I didn’t want to get into it, to give Hugh an opportunity to ensnare me in any conversation. Intriguing as this topic was, I could learn the whole deal of what happened to Jessie Feathering from anyone.
In fact, I liked not playing along, not asking the natural questions. It bothered him, I could tell in his eyes.
“I get along great with kids,” I said instead. “And Isa’s sweet. So, it’s all good.”
“Yes, well. I very much hope so.”
Then I waited for him to go. He didn’t. “So, to explain a bit about the island,” he started, as if he were answering my question anyway, and then, just like that, he marched off straight into the lecture I’d been hoping to sidestep by not asking about Jessie. Mags had a word for this type of person—a MEGO, as in My Eyes Glaze Over. And Hugh was a total MEGO, right up there with Mags’s gramps and my dentist, Dr. Ogilvy.
Now I stood in faint despair as he went on and on and on. “Little Bly, you’ll find, is an idyll for the loner … and there’s plenty to do … Isa needs structure and play … friends her age and the like.”
“Yep, her dad already told me all this.” Untrue, but I’d have figured out Isa and Little Bly on my own, eventually. Still he kept going. My eyes were more glazed than a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. Why wouldn’t he leave me alone already? Finally, perhaps daunted by my unrelenting silence, Hugh decided to wrap it up.
“At any rate, her father asked me to pay this visit. We’ve been friends since boyhood.”
“Then it’ll be easy for you to narc on me, if I’m not doing my job right.”
That did it. Even the bristles of Hugh’s beard seemed to stiffen. “Why, Jamie, it’s not my intention to make you feel mistrustful,” he said. “I simply want to underline—please don’t encourage Isa’s wilder bursts of imagination. It’s hard for her to distinguish reality from her flights of fancy. Be my scout. If anything troubles you, I’ve left my phone and email with Connie.”
“No problem.” I nodded. Go scout yourself, Doc. “Thanks for that. Night.”
The twins always joked about my problem with authority. Maybe it was because I was the youngest. Maybe it was because I was me. But it wasn’t my job to be Hugh’s anything. So he could forget that.
The cicadas were loud out here, and the air was delicious, carried in on the hush of wind through long grass. Alone, I tucked deep into a wicker chair, listening to it snap and crunch as it adjusted to my body.
“Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”
I startled. Milo must have crept outside through another door to come around from the other side of the porch. He was smoking a cigarette, and my nostrils flared with desire to light up my own, though now it didn’t seem appropriate. I was relieved when he didn’t offer me one, but instead strolled to the railing and swung up. Elevated and looking down on me, he seemed to be enjoying himself, and I was sure he was flexing his thigh muscles for my benefit.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” I said after a moment. “It’s spooky here. Boo! Everyone’s watching. The madwoman in the lighthouse is crying for her husband’s ship to come in. Out in the ocean, we’ve got the mermaid who wanted to be a human. Anyone else?”