My Own Island (A Blue Shore Novel)

by Wendy Silk

  He nodded vehemently.

  “That’s what I thought. I have two younger brothers. One is about your age, the other left home two years ago. But what I know about them is that they hate being told what to do or being patronized. Right?” I paused to gather my wits. Then I went on. “Here’s what we should try. You teach me. You tell me how this works. I won’t talk at all, except through the app, just like you. We’ll figure it out together, and you won’t even have to listen to me yammering on about it. Until I get the hang of it. Then you won’t be able to stop me.”

  He was more animated now, excited by a challenge that I didn’t think anybody had given him before. This tall, gangly kid reminded me so much of my own family. Maybe he couldn’t talk, but I didn’t think anybody could stop him once he got going.

  I put my hand out to touch his for just a moment. “All I really knew about this job is that they were asking for teachers that had lots of experience with AP classes. I knew you were looking for a teacher that can handle advanced work. You’re a smart guy. I can tell that about you already. I’m looking right at you, and I can see that.” My words hung there in the still, sunlight room.

  The sound of a man clearing his throat made both of us turn in our seats. Standing in the archway of the foyer was the handsomest man I’d ever seen. Again.

  It was Grant, my sexy snorkeling partner from the Royal Beach Resort. He looked different with his clothes on. He wore a white button-down shirt and crisp khakis. Everything about him looked clean cut. The expression on his face was another matter. His features were clouded with conflicting emotions. I was sure I saw wistfulness when I first glanced at him, before he checked himself.

  By the time we were both staring at each other, his face had closed into a firm expression of disapproval. He had recognized me, I was sure of that. Without greeting me, however, he strode to the side of the teenager sitting across from me. Grant put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed in a companionable way.

  “Toby, I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “I know we were meeting at four, but I got delayed downstairs. I wish you’d waited for me. You could have just let Cindy know that we weren’t ready for the interview.”

  Without waiting for Toby to respond, he looked at me. His eyes were distinctly unfriendly. “I’m so sorry to have wasted your time. We were interviewing for a teaching position, but I’m afraid we filled the job earlier today. Thank you for coming out to speak with us, though.”

  No smile or lightness in his speech gave any sign that he knew me, or rather that he knew and liked me. So that was it? I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, the man was a user and a liar. I’d known that since I waited alone for an entire afternoon for him to come back from his hotel room at the resort.

  “Of course,” I answered. My voice sounded strange, as if it were coming from another room. “I do understand. If you’ve already filled the job, then I’ll be leaving.” I gathered my bag and stood.

  “No.” This came from Toby’s phone. I was already getting used to the way that he communicated, but it looked like Grant was surprised. He turned toward Toby, as if it were a pleasure to break his gaze from mine.

  “Toby, what do you mean? This just isn’t going to work.” As I watched them together, it became clear to me that they were brothers. It all began to click in my brain. This explained a lot about Grant. He’d looked like such a dad when we met, used to taking care of others. Wait. Was he old enough to be this boy’s father? Surely not.

  As my guesses about what was happening flickered through my brain, these two men were staring each other down. They looked so much alike. With effort, Toby stood and squared his shoulders.

  “Yes. I choose her.”

  Chapter 10: Grant

  It’s strange how your past comes back to you. It sometimes seemed like everything I ever did was destined to come right back into my lap to taunt me. As Toby stood there, challenging me, I used all my willpower to avoid sneaking another peek at Alice. She looked great. Her interview persona was a little more formal that her red bikini look from the resort. She wore a dark pantsuit, with her hair in a neat ponytail. It was spot on: she looked exactly like somebody I would hire as an intensive tutor to help my little brother get through those last credits so he could graduate from high school.

  But I couldn’t let that happen, no matter how much Toby liked her. He was ready to fight me on this, and I knew why. The other job candidates we’d seen today had been disasters. I could picture Alice’s resume right now, and I knew she was highly qualified. The agency had stripped all the names from the resumes they sent, at my request, so I wouldn’t grant any interviews from a biased perspective. That was how I arranged all the hiring at the hotel as well. It was always better to run through the candidates blind at least once, especially in a small town like this where I usually knew quite a lot about the people who had grown up here.

  Toby’s insistence on hiring Alice wasn’t about her resume, though. We’d seen other people who were equally qualified. It was about their connection. Hell, I’d seen what she just managed to do in five minutes with him. She had gotten through his walls, convincing him to use his audible speech aids. She had no idea how big a deal that was.

  Despite myself, I blurted out, “I saw what you did a minute ago.”

  Alice looked confused and a little guilty. “What?”

  “No, it’s ok. I can see why Toby wants to hire you. You were able to spend five minutes with him and get him to trust you. All the other teachers we’ve seen treated him like he was a disability, not a person. Or they patronized him as if he were much younger than he is. How did you know that he would hate that?”

  She furrowed her brow at me as if I were crazy. “Well who wouldn’t hate that?” She was still standing, with her purse in her hands. No matter what Toby had said, she was edging toward the elevator. “I told you...when we met before. I have brothers of my own. Toby is your brother, right?” She didn’t pause for an answer. “They hate being fussed over or feeling weak. Honestly, I’ve been teaching teenagers for years, but that’s pretty basic. If you had candidates in here who didn’t know that about high school boys, then you should throw them out and get all new people in here.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Does that mean you’re leaving?”

  “I sure am,” Alice answered. “I don’t know your story, and it looks like some stuff has happened to you guys, but I don’t need to know. This isn’t the right place for me.”

  At my side, I could see Toby fiddling with his phone. I thought he might try some music for comic effect, but I realized I was off base on that. He only did that when he was in a good mood. Instead, he said, “Please stay. I want you to teach me.”

  It was the longest sentence I’d heard from him in ages. Using his speech app was supposed to be easy. It was his unwillingness to do it that was his barrier to communication. I’d been trying for years to get him to want to engage with me in that way. Here was Alice, five minutes into knowing him, and not only had she gotten him to want to hire her, she’d gotten him to say it.

  I looked at her. “Alice, I’m sorry. For everything. But Toby’s asking you, and he never does that. I have grave misgivings about this, but now I’m asking you too. Will you take the job?”

  Alice grew even stiffer in her shoulders. Her glance toward me was scornful, but it softened when she turned toward my brother. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t.”

  I pressed on. “Let me tell you about it, at least. If you come this way, I’ll show you the guest suite that we had planned to offer the tutor.” I led her down a hallway, and she followed me, albeit reluctantly. Her face brightened at the sight of the room.

  “It’s lovely,” she breathed. “Look at the view. What’s it like to wake up to all this beauty every morning?” She gestured out the bank of oversized windows at the vista of the pebble beach, littered whimsically with pale driftwood. Despite herself, she poked around, looking at the well-appointed bathroom and huge closet. />
  Seeing that she was beginning to think it might be possible, I told her the salary details, including the schedule that Toby and I had agreed on. He needed to study hard, but there would still be plenty of time in which his teacher could do her own thing.

  Alice was teetering on the edge, I could tell. The sight of me was moving her resolve in the wrong direction, so I stepped back to let her catch another glimpse of Toby. He had been standing politely in the hallway, waiting for another moment to let me know he wasn’t going to give up.

  “Oh, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yes. Toby, you drive a hard bargain.” Alice sighed at herself. “I am only the tiniest bit swayed by the beautiful place you have here. Mostly, I’m accepting the job because I really want to work with you.”

  She was speaking only to Toby, not to me, but that was fine. “Alice, I’ll make sure to stay out of your way here. You and Toby will build your own professional relationship, and he can report to me how that’s going. You won’t have to run into me much.”

  She nodded curtly. The byplay did not go unnoticed by my sharp brother, who looked from her to me. He must have noticed that I knew her name. We would have our work cut out for ourselves, trying to keep this professional. Maintaining the facade that I had never met this woman before would be hard enough. My heart thudding in my chest as I looked at her made it even more difficult. Fortunately, I could see that she was troubled by no such feelings of attraction to me.

  Chapter 11: Alice

  I knew I might be making a giant mistake, taking this job. But the look on Toby’s face as he watched me considering it was what had sealed the deal for me. He was a nice kid who shouldn’t have had to deal with all the problems life had thrown at him. Back when I had arrived home from the Caribbean, I had resolved to be useful to my students. I had been sure that I would overcome my failures in my romantic relationships by trying my hardest to follow through with a grandiose, selfless mission of helping young people. When I stood in the guest suite of Grant’s gorgeous penthouse apartment, I had to face the fact that both aspects of my life were confronting me at the same time. I could choose both, or neither.

  Toby was the reason I was there, not his arrogant, extraordinarily good-looking older brother. I kept telling myself that, as if repetition would make it true. I was here to help my student.

  I looked at the papers spread all around the dining room table, where Toby and I had been working. His textbooks and laptop charging cord were littered across the surface. He was bent forward in intense focus as he worked on revising the essay assignment I’d given him. I could see that he was invested in the project, so I rose. My chair scraped the floor slightly as I pushed it back, despite my attempt to keep it quiet. Toby looked up at me, but when I silently gave him a thumbs up to keep working, he did. Our work together was done for the day; the rest of the afternoon, he would apply himself to his homework with a commitment that I knew was a reflection of his heartfelt wish to get into college.

  I stopped into my bedroom to change into my swimsuit, putting a daisy patterned dress over it, and slipping my feet into the Crocs that were my perennial footwear weakness. Moving softly so as not to disturb Toby, I let myself out of the apartment. Cindy from the reception desk had been right: with the job had come my own elevator key. I knew it was the smallest of things, but the swanky feeling it gave me had not yet worn off.

  Luxury was evident in every detail of the exquisite hotel. I found myself reflecting almost every day what a difference it was from my budget-minded extended stay hotel in Seattle. Or even from the apartment that David and I had shared, which I had thought at the time was very fancy. I had moved into his apartment when I was a newly minted college graduate and he was already a successful doctor. We had met after he’d finished the rigors of medical school and the early years after that. He was just enough older than me that he had always seemed like a grown-up in contrast to my bumbling, gauche ways.

  When David had invited me to move in with him, I had been overwhelmed with the sense that I would become an adult when I lived with him in that softly carpeted world of sparkling windows, top of the line kitchens, and tasteful views. I guess I had never realized, though, that he wasn’t looking for another adult. His defection to Vicky was a perfect expression of that. He only wanted a younger woman in his life, whom he could boss around and impress with his self-proclaimed expertise on a variety of subjects.

  From my current vantage point, it was a tremendous relief to be out of both of those former habitations. David and Vicky were, presumably, installed happily in his apartment now. She could have the pleasure of cleaning up his messes and bringing him the little things that he asked for in the evenings when he said he was too tired to get up after a long day. The extended stay hotel in Seattle was something I was trying to view as a mere blip in my life, a state of desperation to which I would not return. The morning after accepting the job as Toby’s tutor, I had taken the ferry back to the mainland and driven back down to Seattle to pick up my things. As far as I was concerned, I’d be happy never going back to that dingy street.

  However, staying here in this beautiful setting placed me in the middle of the conundrum of getting along with my boss. I hated him for what he had put me through when we met on vacation. At the same time, though, I couldn’t help following him with my eyes when he couldn’t see me. All the qualities that had drawn me to him at the resort were still there. He was easy to look at, with his broad shoulders and his athlete’s energy. More than that, he was kind to everyone, as far as I could see. He was solicitous toward Toby without being patronizing and effective with his employees without being draconian. The only person around here that he seemed to avoid was me.

  I turned the corner on the first floor, making a beeline for the reception desk. Cindy had become one of my favorite people to see each day. She was old enough to be my mom, but she was friendly in a way that I’d never known with my parents, at least in my adult years. My own mother and father had been emotionally distant from me since I had moved in with David. I knew they were regretful on my behalf when the wedding turned into such a fiasco, but they hadn’t wanted to get too involved in talking it out with me. We were more like acquaintances at this point in my life.

  Cindy, though, had become a fast friend. “Good afternoon!” I called out to her, before I reached the wide desk whose polished marble was partially obscured by brochures. “Have you had any news about Isabel?”

  Cindy had been turned away from the desk, sorting through papers, but she faced me with a broad smile. “Yes! She emailed me this morning. She’s reached her host family’s house in Normandy. She says they are very nice, but she was overwhelmed by the formal dinner they served last night to welcome her. So many courses, each with a different wine.”

  “That sounds excruciating,” I laughed. “If only we all had such problems, right?”

  “I know,” Cindy said. “I’m so happy for her. She worked hard to get there. All those years raising kids, and you never know what they’re going to be like. Of the two of them, she’s my most dedicated to her studies, that’s for sure. Ed is a different matter. He’s always been smarter than his grades showed. Now that he’s grown and working here at the hotel, I find myself wishing that he’d find more drive in himself and move on. He’ll develop his interests when it’s the right time, I’m sure of it. At least, I have to hope so. My husband, Eduardo, would be sick with worry about Ed if he was still alive to see his lack of ambition.”

  “What’s that like?” I asked curiously. “Having children and then watching them grow up and leave you?” It wasn’t just an idle question. I’d been thinking about my own parents and whether I’d been unfair to them when I met David. Maybe I’d jumped into my life with him too quickly, separating myself from my parents more than had been strictly necessary.

  “It’s actually kind of wonderful,” Cindy answered. “When they are little it seems like they will never be able to do anything for themselves. You know, you t
ake care of everything for them for so many years, just keeping them alive. But then over time, they begin to become themselves and take on responsibilities that gradually get larger.” She frowned, hesitating for a moment. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. It’s not anything against Grant. I love him dearly; I’ve known him all his life, and he’s like family to me. But he doesn’t give Toby enough room to become himself.”

  I shrugged. “I can see that they are very close. I don’t think Toby feels rebellious.”

  “That’s exactly it,” Cindy said. “He needs to feel a little bit like pushing against Grant, if he’s going to make his way out into the world. That’s why college is so important to him, I think. For years, we all thought he wasn’t going to be able to live on his own like other people. Now that he has an idea of what he wants, I think he’ll progress very quickly. But Toby needs you to stand up for him. Talk to Grant about the fact that it’s ok if they don’t always get along.”

  “In my professional opinion, as a teacher?” I asked her. I was just stalling for time, to try to cover the fact that I tried my best not to talk to Grant at all.

  She must have seen something in my face that let her know I wasn’t comfortable with her boss. “Yes. Really, he’s easy to talk to. He’s a good man who has had some rocky years. When he lost his parents in the accident, I was afraid that he would give up on everything. Raising Toby was his saving grace. That, and this hotel. It represents a legacy of everything his parents wanted for him. He’ll never leave here.”

  I knew that if I didn’t ask now, I wouldn’t be able to in the future. “What about his wife? He lost her too, right?”