Kelly McClymer-Must Love Black (5 page)

I was halfway through the notes and the sandwich, and all the way finished with the chips when I heard a scrabbling, whispery sound. I braced myself, staring at the door to the twins’ room. If this were a movie, they’d be plotting to put a snake or a frog in my bed. Or waiting to see how I would react
to the one they’d already put there before I even arrived. My best hope was that without TV they hadn’t seen the movies about how to torment a nanny.

I watched the doorknob. Was it turning? No. Just the shadows. The whispery rustle continued and then, finally, the doorknob actually turned and the door swung open.

I expected . . . well, I don’t really know what I expected. Kids, I guess. Like the ones I’d been babysitting since I turned thirteen.

Instead, two miniature people came out. The kind of people who looked like they hadn’t ever been children, even when they’d worn diapers. I don’t know how they did it. It wasn’t their appearance—their plain black pajamas and sleep-rumpled hair. Maybe it was the way they carried themselves. They didn’t peek around the door, just walked out like they owned the place. They didn’t have any of that hesitation that kids usually have when they’re doing something they might get yelled at for.

The taller twin stuck out her hand. “You must be the new nanny. I’m Rienne.”

I wiped the chip grease off my hands with a napkin and shook. “I hope I didn’t wake you.” I know the formality sounds silly, but, really, they were staring at me so solemnly it was all I could do not to curtsy. “I’m Philippa.”

Rienne nodded. “May we call you Pippa?”

Only my Mom had called me that, so the question jolted me a little. “You may, if you like.” What the heck, I was taking my life back from Krystalization, why not take my nickname back?

The other twin asked, “So, do you really like black?”

Rienne looked at her sister with a frown. “Triste, don’t be frivolous. Look what she’s wearing.”

“We’ve been through this before,” Triste answered her sister patiently. I had a strange feeling, like I was the child and they the two grown-ups, discussing me as though I could not hear.

“Look at the jeans. I think she hand sewed those silk squares and that lace on the pockets herself.” Rienne looked at me and I nodded.

Triste opened her mouth to say something else, but Rienne stopped her. “Look at the jeans, that’s great work, and not done yesterday, either, if you were going to suggest it was only done to fit in here.”

Triste said with a world-weary sigh, “Excuse me, Pippa. You wouldn’t believe how many nanny types there are who like pastels like pink and blue.”

Rienne nodded. “Or tan and brown. That’s at least sixty percent of the nanny wardrobe.”

Triste sat down across the table from me. “True. That’s why we specified ‘must love black’ in the ad. We need a nanny who understands us. The pastel types can’t handle the job.”

I was a little curious to hear about the previous nanny runaways, but I knew better than to invite them to try to spook me with horror stories. I had been babysitting long enough to know that I had to take the upper hand right away, or I’d be dead nanny walking.

I said, “I always wear black. It’s a good color. Sensible. Doesn’t show dirt.” I stood up and brushed off a few chip
crumbs. “Do I send this back down on the dumbwaiter?”

“Yes,” they said together. A little creepy. They showed me how. I liked sending the dirty dishes away and forgetting about them. At home a dirty dish in the sink might get me a ten-minute lecture from Krystal.

Then I said, “Time to turn in. We can meet more officially tomorrow.” They stared at me without moving.

Great. No way was I going to let them get away with a summer of not listening to me. I walked toward the door to their room. “Do you like to be tucked in?”

Rienne, obviously the chattier twin, shook her head and moved past me through the door. “No, thank you. Although tomorrow night we will expect you to read to us from our bedtime book.”

“No problem.”

Triste took my hand, I thought she wanted to shake good-bye before she went back to bed, but she turned my hand over and thoughtfully traced the lines on my palm. She turned to her sister. “Just like the handwriting analysis suggested. I think we have a keeper.”

CHAPTER FOUR

You have a responsibility to your children, my lord. A responsibility to help them be better than you, if you will forgive my boldness.

—Miss Adelaide Putnam to Lord Dashwood,
Manor of Dark Dreams,
p. 22

“What?” I glanced down at my palm. Just a plain palm, still a tiny bit greasy from the chips. I refocused on the solemn little girl who was staring at me with enormous—and enormously sincere—brown eyes.

Rienne nodded, and I could have sworn there was a self-satisfied “I told you so” lurking in her tone when she said, “Handwriting analysis is very useful.”

Triste apparently noticed the lurking smugness too, because she frowned a little before she said, “The ‘must love black’ line was equally important.” I had the feeling that had been her contribution, and I wasn’t sure how I felt knowing that two ten-year-olds had written the job advertisement for their new nanny.

Rienne dismissed that contribution. “Maybe, to attract her to apply. But anyone can say they love black, and handwriting is the only way to ensure they’re not lying.”

Rienne turned to me and said proudly, “We convinced Father that that was the best way to find someone who would be compatible with us.”

They looked gravely at each other in some kind of weird twin communication, then at me. “At least for the summer,” they said in unison.

Hmm. That was good, right? They wanted me to stay. I guess I didn’t have to look for rats or toads. Yet.

I tried to sound firm, though I was no longer sure I needed to. They were a pretty serious pair of kids. “Good night, then. See you in the morning.”

“Good night.” They shut themselves in their room and I stood there for a moment, just letting what I’d learned about them sink in. After a few minutes, the weight of the day got to me and I decided going to bed was a good idea.

My bed at home was not nearly as nice, but it was mine, centered against the wall with all my posters and the window that looked out on the tree my mom and I had planted one day when the local tree huggers were giving out seedlings. I’d wanted to plant as many as my chubby little hands could hold, but Mom explained that trees needed space and sun to grow big, and it wouldn’t be good to crowd them.

There was a window in this room, too. I moved the curtain aside and squinted. Thick fog pressed against the glass.

The window opened smoothly. It didn’t have a screen, so I could stick my head out into the fog. It was cool and damp
on my face. The quiet of the house was eased by the sound of the sea and the wind.

I climbed into bed, watching the curtains flap in the breeze, wondering what the outside would look like in the daytime, when the fog had burned off. I left the window open but didn’t turn my back to it when I curled up.

Teacups, commence your whirling. I flipped the pages of my mother’s book with my thumb, enjoying the sound and feel of the page edges too much to stop.

The box that held two dozen copies of Mom’s new book came the day of her funeral. I took one to throw in the grave. The funeral director shooed me away, because I was only nine. I’d had to wait until he was turned away, whispering to my Dad, to drop it dead center on the shiny brown casket. For a moment, the woman on the cover seemed to look at me as if she disapproved of being buried alive when all she was trying to do was escape the menace of the dark and brooding stone manor behind her, but then the book slid down the shiny hump of the casket and tucked itself between the sharp wall of dirt and the glossy glorified box.

Mom said once, when I was squishing the soap bubbles up between my fingers carefully so my hands would be clean enough to pat the pages, that a writer puts all her best lines in her first book. That if you read a writer’s first book, you’ll know who she is. She said that’s why a lot of writers can’t get their first books published—or don’t even try. Because they don’t want to edit themselves out, as much as they need to. She said that was silly, because when you edit a lot of yourself out, the best remains and shines through.

I didn’t pay attention then because she was my mom and I was just a kid and she was alive. But now I know what she meant. Whenever I’m not sure what to do, I check her book for advice. I’ve never told anyone this, because it’s no one else’s business. Besides, it’s not like anyone else cares what she had to say in her first and last novel,
Manor of Dark Dreams.
The book came out, Dad and I drove to the store and took pictures in front of it on the bookshelf, and then it disappeared. She was working on another book she called
Manor of Dark Hope,
but it died with her since the only copy was on her laptop, which got destroyed in the crash.

Whenever I need to hear what my mom would have said, I close my eyes and stick my finger somewhere on the page and read. It may sound twisted, but I swear she hasn’t ever let me down. She really did put all the best of herself in that book. I’d used it a lot when I was little—right through freshman year, when the advice kept me from betraying Sarah over some guy who was cuter than sin and liked to play girls as if we were stones he could pick up and skip across a pond. He didn’t concern himself with the ripples, of course. Still didn’t, as of the end of junior year. But Sarah and I had avoided being rippled apart by his electric smile and careless ways.

Close call, though, and I’m not sure I’d have understood the right thing to do if I hadn’t read my mom’s wise words (page 29, second paragraph):

Friendship is a choice. More to the point, it is a series of ongoing choices, with consequences for each person. And thus I decided that I
would not speak of Arabella’s hoarding of the dinner rolls. As her nanny I could not precisely be her friend, but neither did I need to be her enemy.

When I finally put aside the book and turned out the light, the day’s events made an imprint on my dreams—wedding cake with two tiny twin figures atop the highest tier; Geoff and me driving in the fog, only to find that we weren’t on a road any longer; Krystal throwing me her bouquet of roses and me catching a handful of thorny stems.

Just as I dropped the bouquet and saw the blood on my palms spelling out “beware ghosts,” I woke to a banging sound. I was so disoriented from my odd dreams that I checked to make sure my palms weren’t really bloody. I looked at the window with fear, forgetting for a moment that I was not at home. There was a white wispy face at my window. I lay completely still as my sleepy brain sought to sound the alarm and my reason tried to reassure me that it could not be a face. My room was three floors up. It was only fog.

I closed my eyes and tried to settle back to sleep. But when I opened one eye to double-check the window, the fog face leered at me and moaned a soft and unambiguous, “Helllllp themmmmmm.” I sat up with a gasp worthy of any Victorian nanny and instantly felt like an idiot.

The face dissipated as the fog pressed and roiled outside, a dozen faces forming and bleeding away under my sharp gaze.

I sighed, and calmed my racing heart. No ghost. Only fog. I checked my palms, for good measure. No blood. Just
dreams. I hugged Teddy Smithers in one arm and
Manor of Dark Dreams
in the other. And then I went back to sleep and refused to dream until daylight woke me.

In Maine, in summer, on the coast, that’s really early, about 4:30 a.m. Once the first rays of the morning entered my room, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I picked up my phone and debated whether to call Sarah. Call her early or wait? If I called now, I would definitely be waking her up. But if I waited, I might miss my chance. Her family was supposed to leave that morning on their Habitat for Humanity trip, and once they left, Sarah would become much harder to reach. She had a phone in her bedroom, but she didn’t own a cell. After finding that my phone got a signal only when I stood at my bedroom window (sure enough, it had a gorgeous ocean view), I opted to call now and later beg her forgiveness for waking her up. She answered a little sleepily, but then her voice brightened. “How’d it go with Geoff?”

“Got any tips for getting a guy to talk? He takes ‘man of few words’ to a whole new level.”

She sighed, and I could hear her finger tapping as she thought for a minute. “Ask open-ended questions that he can’t answer with yes or no.”

“Tried that. Anything else?”

She laughed. “Count yourself lucky he’s good-looking and stop pushing for more than that?”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Seriously. You know you’re bad about wanting perfect-perfect. Take the summer off and accept a little loosening of those famous Philippa standards, why don’t you.”

“Easy for you to say,” I grumped.

“Hey! I let the standards fall every summer—some of those guys can’t even hit a nail straight, but if they’re cute or funny, I’m not complaining. Just go with it.”

The spinning sensation in my chest stopped at the idea of just accepting Geoff as he was for the summer. The kids, too. I gazed out at the ocean. Maybe it was time to try a change from the inside out. After all, it was only three months. I could do anything for three months.