Tighter (4 page)

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?”

“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?”

“Uh-huh,” Milo answered, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. “You’ll see.”

“Are you warning me?”

His smile faded. “I guess I am.”

I didn’t like the look on his face. I changed subjects. “So why’d they kick you out, camper boy?” I asked. “What’d you do? Hijack a canoe? Cheat in the potato-sack race?”

“Let’s just say … when I’m bad, I’m bad. I was never gonna stick. Dad won’t be surprised when he finds out. He’s just like me.”

Any reaction other than blasé would put me at a disadvantage, so I dismissed Milo with a flick of my hand. “You’re like him, you mean. He came first. And if you’re such a rebel, answer me this—could you jump off those rocks at the halfway point up to the lighthouse?”

He frowned. “If I wanted to spend the summer in a full-body cast.”

“So, no way, nohow?”

“Eh. You’d have to know the water inside out. It’s got different depths, depending on the tide. I mean,
I’d
never do it. So you can cross it off your au pair worry list.”

“Kiddo, I’m not babysitting you, just your sister. Go jump off a cliff all day long, as far as I’m liable.” Then, to soften it, “What I really mean is, I’m not here to tell you what to do.”

He smiled. “Cool. We’re gonna get along just fine.” Then, out of nowhere, “Do you believe in your soul mate?”

“Sticky question. Define soul mate.”

“A person you feel like you knew in another life. You ever make that kind of connection to someone else?”

Annoyingly, all I could picture was Sean Ryan. How for three giddy months, I hadn’t cared about myself except as I existed through his eyes. Like if my hair was shiny enough or if my fingernails were buffed clean or if I smelled irresistible whenever he leaned over my shoulder to look at my ChemDraw printouts.

Milo was motionless, watching me. Did he know my secret? A secret that I hadn’t even told Maggie? Could he tell I was the type of girl who’d be dumb enough to get semi-seduced (and then fully rejected) by her barely-out-of-school-himself science teacher?

What I didn’t want was for Milo to think I was a goopy girl on a quest for summer love.

“Who cares if I have a soul mate? This is my summer to disconnect,” I said.

“I care,” he said. “I think someone’s out there. For each of us.”

He sounded so much like Maggie, it was actually comforting. I looked him in the eye and said to him what I would have said to her. “How adorable. Do you also believe in Santa Claus? Or is it just looking at stars that makes you want to talk in clichés?”

He blinked. I’d hurt him. Then he laughed. “Screw you, Jersey Girl.”

One thing I hate is when people take a free jab at New Jersey. As if it’s the last word in tacky wasteland. I especially disliked it coming from this self-entitled rich kid. Leading me on with his silly poetic thoughts, then reverting to some easy joke about New Jersey when I didn’t act all enraptured. Maybe I
would
find my soul mate this summer, on this island. It wasn’t the craziest idea. But if I did, I wouldn’t be gunning to go tell Milo McRae all about it.

Meantime, I did my best to act unbothered. Leaning back and stretching my arms over my head. “Put out your cancer stick,” I told him. “Forcing me to breathe in your secondhand is illegal. Even in New Jersey.”

FIVE

They arrived in spite of the deadening effects of my sleeping pill. I’d hoped they wouldn’t follow me to Little Bly. I’d even considered not taking anything. But then I popped it on the decent chance it was a muscle relaxer. My grab-bag game always held an element of risk, and the only pill I didn’t want was one of Mom’s weaker antihistamines. Okay by day, but too thin a blanket for night.

Earlier, I’d knelt by the bookcase and rolled the pill in my fingers. I was tired. Did I really need a send-off? Shouldn’t the act of falling asleep be somewhat effortless?

As a compromise, I bit it in half. Sleeping pill. Fifteen minutes later, I was out.

They’d been waiting. Hank was facing me on the small chair by the vanity. Uncle Jim was closer, cross-legged on the duvet I’d pushed to the foot of the bed. The steady pressure of his kneecap against my foot had caused me to wake up, although I’d tried, in my twilit state, to ignore him.

Go away.

My vision adjusted. Hank was slumped in his seat the way I imagine he used to watch television: his arms hanging over the sides and his chin doubled, his gaze lifted. They were distant as twin moons, my dependable companions, visible and yet far out of reach as always.

“You don’t have to watch over me,” I whispered, sitting up. “I think I’ll be okay here. Mom was right. I needed the change.”

Silence. That’s always how it was with Hank and Uncle Jim. They didn’t acknowledge our communion. Then I could stare at them all I wanted. That night, like every other night, Uncle Jim wore his too-big navy suit. The rope marks were like tar streaks beneath his collar.

The way everyone remembered it, Uncle Jim had been cheerful that night, downing a glass of birthday champagne and then excusing himself to slip into Granddad’s study. A private room with a sturdy ceiling light. He’d done it perfectly, a hangman’s noose with coils proportioned exactly to rope thickness, slung in correct position behind his ears. No extra, flopping minutes. He’d been studying to be an accountant, and his death seemed accountably tidy.

The note in his breast pocket had read:
please forgive me.

Hank’s had been the more “predictable” death. Everyone said he’d been “a little off” since boyhood, with a decidedly bad temper. More than once I’d heard family members confess relief that he’d turned that rage on his own body. No note—but my dad’s line on that was that Hank often took himself by surprise.