“Are you telling me nanny and nothing else? No other relationship with you?”
I can read it in his eyes. I can see it now, as plain as day.
“Sully feels this is the safest route. For all of us. We were really impressed… touched… by your instant rapport with Sophia.”
I know it’s crazy, but this hurts my feelings. I realize I’m being offered a dream job, a job anybody else would kill for, and somehow my heart is still aching. Somehow, I feel like I’m losing more than I understand.
“Yeah… no.”
His eyebrows go up again. “Excuse me?”
I push the papers toward him. “I’m not signing that. That’s not the job I’ve been interviewing for. I mean, it is… but no. It’s not enough.”
“Bunny, this is a six-figure salary with innumerable fringe benefits. Are you saying you’re going to turn this down?”
I lean forward, making sure he can’t look away.
“I’m saying that I want the job I interviewed for. I want the whole thing.”
Spencer chews the inside of his cheek. “Okay. I didn’t see that coming. I’ll have to see if I can get everyone together for discussion.”
“With me?”
He looks confused.
“You know what,” I continue, a little bit angrily, a little bit frightened, “I think we definitely need to all get together for discussion. All of us. And I think we need to get all of you in the room at the same time. Don’t you ever do that? Can we please just look each other in the eye at the same time?”
“I can… propose it.”
“In Nantucket,” I add.
He actually gasps, sitting back. “What did you say?”
“Yeah, that’s what I want,” I huff, picking up steam as I stand and snatch my bag full of fancy underwear off the other chair. “We’re going on a family trip, Spencer. To Nantucket. Make it happen!”
Chapter 12
Trey
The house on Nantucket is exactly like I remember it. Windswept beach, white picket fence. The wide low porch and sage-green shutters. It sprawls from side to side, with the main door facing the sea, stubborn and proud.
While everyone gets unpacked, I walk around alone. It’s almost too much all at once. I haven’t been here in fifteen years or so. But everything is still the same. Sometimes our friends might use the estate, and we have a staff here to keep it up. But it looks the same as the last day we left it.
That day must’ve been Independence Day. Cousins were here and we played on the beach, waiting for fireworks to start. We had a barbecue—of course it was a gourmet barbecue with seven chefs—and we ate and talked and laughed and swam until it was dark.
My mother used to call Brock and me her “golden boys.” It was a sweet nickname, but based mostly on the fact that we look like her. She had long, thick blonde hair. Green eyes. A kind smile. My father was a handsome, dark-haired man and my other brothers favored him. But since Brock and I got the blond hair, which was practically white when we were young, that’s what she called us.
There is a painting of her over the fireplace that I can’t take my eyes away from. I’d like to move. I’d like to leave this room so I can stop staring at her and missing her and being completely helpless in the face of her loss. But somehow I can’t.
It’s like all the years between then and now just collapsed into a single blink. I blinked, and here I am.
Though we’re all adults, it still feels like we lost our parents too young. I wouldn’t mind being able to ask Dad for advice. I probably wouldn’t even mind him overseeing our activities the way Royce does. I might even dislike it less.
But, unfortunately, the small plane that they had hired to take them across the Maldives had a functional problem. They crashed in the ocean. No survivors.
That was thirteen years ago. A very long time, and yet, apparently just one blink away.
“She always liked you best,” I hear Sully say behind me. “Or Brock. Maybe Brock. It was sort of hard to tell you apart for a while there.”