Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
“For your research?” I ask, sliding his coffee onto the table.
“Thanks. For the coffee. And yeah. There are a lot of moving parts. I had my first breakthrough at the beginning of my career because I saw some results in my research that connected with some results from some things being investigated by another team and…I don’t want to bore you—”
“You’re not boring me,” I say. “You don’t talk about your work a lot.”
“My family shut me down often enough that I’ve learned not to share.”
“You don’t think they’re supportive.”
“They are,” he says. “But I don’t practice clinical medicine, which sets me apart from Jacob and Beau and my parents. We don’t…I guess we don’t get excited by the same things.”
“They love you,” I say.
“I know.” He’s completely sure in his tone, entirely secure in his parents’ love for him. I can’t help but envy him that. “But we’re different. Did you feel the same with your parents? Did they get you?”
“They didn’t know me,” I say. “We were…almost like cars in the drive. Just something in their lives. Our nannies raised us. The cook fed us. The housekeeper paid the schools fees and…” I shrug. “When I look back at my childhood, it’s not my parents I remember.”
“Wow.” He glances at Guinevere and then back at me. He’s piecing the puzzle together. “And now you’re a nanny, putting your sister through university. And you can’t sue your uncle who took your inheritance. How come?”
“We’re trying to take him to court, but it takes a long time and a lot of money, and we don’t have a lot.”
“Shit, that…that’s awful. People are awful.”
“I have to look on the bright side. I earn relatively good money. I can put Eddie and Dylan through university. So…things could be worse.”
He fixes me with a stare. “You’re amazing.”
It’s like I can feel his body pressed up against mine. I look away.
“I’m anything but.” I cross my arms, trying desperately to keep him out. “You seem to be managing with Guinevere.” I nod at the pair of them. He looks like an expert, holding her, the bottle perfectly positioned. He looks like he’s an enthusiastic father of three, not a reluctant father of one.
“You’re bad at taking compliments. Doesn’t mean they’re not true.” He grins at me like he knows how easily he gets under my skin. “And yeah, she’s…does it sound weird to say I feel like I know her better now?”
I can’t hold back my smile. “It doesn’t sound weird at all. It sounds completely normal. She’s a tiny human with her own personality. Her own likes and dislikes—even at this age. It takes a while to figure each other out.”
“My brothers must have felt the same when I was born—that they had to get to know me.” He picks up his mug and takes a sip of coffee.
“Probably. I remember feeling such love when Dylan and Eddie were born. They were everything. I loved them, I worried about them, I wanted everything to be good for them.”
“And your role model for a caring, nurturing person was your nanny. So that’s who you became.”
I’ve never thought about it, but of course that’s what happened.
“I suppose,” I say. “My parents never expected me to work. They saw Portland as a kind of finishing school for me. As long as it kept me busy and I didn’t ask them for anything, they were happy. Like I say, they didn’t take much of an interest.”
“How did you feel when they died?”
I pause. I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that question. People just assume you’re upset when you lose a parent, and losing two? Well, how could I be anything but devastated? “Vaguely disappointed. I think there was a part of me that thought that one day things might be different between us.” A heaviness sits on my chest. I still wish things could have been different, that I could have missed them more.
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like. I was lucky, I suppose,” Dax says. “My parents were always busy and they were always coming and going and life was crazy. We had help—someone who’d look after us after school. And there were times when Dad couldn’t come to my school play and Mum never came to my football practice because she always had something on. But I never doubted my parents’ love. I never thought of myself as an add-on or an accoutrement to their world.”
“You’re right,” I say. “You were—you are—very lucky.”
He glances down at Guinevere. “I’ve never felt responsible for anyone in my life. I don’t know if it’s because I’m the youngest or I never had a pet or something. Maybe my brothers felt responsible for me. Until Guinevere, I never felt this intense weight that I have a human to care for.”