“Or, no!” Patra pulled one bent leg under her. “I’ve got something better for you. I’m good at this kind of thing. Let’s see, you, Linda, you deserve something you haven’t seen—a city to explore, you know? A bunch of people trying to get in your doors. You should be—” She snapped her fingers, flashing a grin. “A hotelier. A restaurateur.” She looked so pleased.
“A restaurant-er?” Paul asked.
I grunted to keep from smiling. “Like a waitress? I did that already.” I swept my hand across the room, like, what’s all this then? “I quit for you.”
She widened her eyes, feigned shock. “You left the restaurant business to be a babysitter? That’s a whole lot of pressure for us here, isn’t it, Paul? We should give you a better title then. Where did the word ‘babysitter’ come from, anyway?”
I shrugged.
“An ugly word, right? Should we call you nanny instead? No, no, that sounds like an old lady. What about governess? Oooh, let’s call you governess.” She was laughing now. “That’s so much better. A babysitter would never be hired for Flora and Miles. You’ve read The Turn of the Screw? Or, a babysitter couldn’t fall in love with Mr. Rochester, right? And be the heroine. Governess you are.”
“Governess!” Paul shouted from under the table. He waited for Patra to define it, and when she didn’t he pulled a fist of pebbles from his stash in the glove and threw them.
“Watch it,” I told him. To Patra: “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Sounds like kind of a sissy thing to be. Plus, people will think you’re, like, millionaires or something.” I was trying to keep from grinning at her.
“You’re right.” Patra pouted.
“Time for my bath.” Paul pouted, too. He crawled from the floor onto her lap.
Patra let him nestle into her chest while she stroked his hair. She patted his cheek, but her eyes were on me. “You’re right, Linda. You’re right. People here already think I’m a snob or something. An anomaly.” She furrowed her brow, following a new train of thought. “I’m still figuring this place out, what’s what. It’s funny. I’ve been to the diner with Paul four, maybe five times? For lunch? I see the same people every time I go in, and they all look at me. They all smile and say hi. But no one has asked me one thing about myself. Not my name, not a thing. People are nice in a way, but also—”
“Not,” I said.
She pulled Paul’s hand away from the buttons on her shirt, so he took up her hair instead, winding his fingers in her blond curls. “Was it a good idea to come here?” she asked me now. “The idea was that while Leo was in Hawaii this spring, we’d come out to the new summer house. Go somewhere quiet and nice. Just me and Paul, as kind of a hideout—”
“A hideout from what?”
She spun her free hand around in a general way.
“You on the run?” I teased. “You rob a bank over there in Illinois?”
“Ha, ha, ha,” she said. Paul was yanking on her hair—not hard, but slowly and repeatedly.
“If so, no one cares too much what you do here, so long as you keep to yourself,” I joked. “And don’t, like, take all the good fishing spots.”
“Hmm.”
I winced at how lame a line it was. But that didn’t keep me from trying again. “And as long as you’re not something really unforgivable, like divorced or an atheist or something—”
“Gentle, hon.” Patra was prying open Paul’s fingers, pulling out her hair.
“Or, or—”
“Paul, stop.” She scooted him at last off her lap, patting his rump to offset the burst of irritation in her voice. “Go get your puzzle, bucko. Let’s do the owl puzzle, how ‘bout?” When he’d left, she started stacking plates and bowls, making noise, moving quickly. Then she sat down again, suddenly. “I really don’t know if it’s a great thing for us, all this quiet. Why did I think it would be a good thing for us? Maybe it would be better for Paul to go back to preschool, to be around people who … Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come here in the first place?”
She looked up at me then, and there was something I didn’t expect in her eyes.
“It’s still a pretty good idea,” I said, unsettled by her guilty expression.