Chapter 5
A fter catching up with my dad on the phone, I spent most of the next Sunday reading an anthology of contemporary short stories, ones I’d never read before and many by authors I’d never heard of.
As I began growing sleepy, I got up off the bed to stretch and walk around.
I drank the rest of my water and then sat on the edge of the bed, picking up the book again.
And then I noticed.
Inside the book was his name written neatly in ballpoint: Sinclair C.
Whittier . Directly underneath I read the words Furnald Hall .
I wasn’t sure what that meant at first—but when I searched those words on my phone, I discovered it was a dorm at Columbia University.
And that must have meant that the book I was reading now had been one of his textbooks—for a literature class maybe?
Just that knowledge drew me closer to him, knowing that, right now, I was probably the age he’d been when he’d read this book—and it had to have meant something to him.
Otherwise, why would he still have it?
But before I could muse over that any longer, my phone lit up with a text message from a number I didn’t recognize.
Anna, I’m sorry I’m just now reaching out to you.
How are you doing?
There was only one person I could think of who called me Anna on a regular basis—but I hadn’t seen him in over a month, not since the night my life changed forever.
Mr. Sherwood? I texted back.
The response was immediate.
Please call me Alan.
No, I wouldn’t call him by his first name.
He’d wanted to get too friendly as it was.
And there was nothing to respond to, so I simply stared at the phone.
I reread his first message, but I didn’t know that I wanted to tell him everything that had happened to me since my last night at WCC.
But that didn’t stop him from sending another message: Dr. R.
told me what happened.
And I want you to know I told her I refuse to believe you had anything to do with what happened to the sim lab.
All she told me was that you’re in Denver working off your debt.
That seemed simple enough—so I responded.
Yes. It seemed better than jail.
Several minutes passed and I assumed we were done with the conversation, so I picked up the book again and began turning to the story where I’d left off when another message finally came through.
I’m sorry to hear that.
I saw your father at the store earlier today and we were talking about you.
He’s the one who gave me your number.
At first, I wanted to ask him how he knew who my father was.
But what a dumb question that would have been.
Everyone in Winchester knew who we were.
That was the biggest problem with living in a town rather than a city.
But then I thought of the Whittiers, imagining that they were recognized even in an ocean as vast as the Denver area.
I had to know. How does my dad seem?
He looked all right.
Mr. Sherwood continued.
Is there anything I can do to help you out?
My response, though flippant, was true.
If you have a million dollars or so, you could put that toward my debt.
I followed it with lol .
His reply seemed almost sad, even though he didn’t send it with any emojis to tell me so.
I wish I could.
I felt relieved when we typed our goodbyes, my thanking him for his concern and his telling me to reach out anytime I wanted to talk.
I didn’t return to the book, instead musing over the similarities and differences between Mr. Sherwood and Sinclair.
Obviously, there was the difference in class and wealth, and it made me wonder if I was starting to find Sinclair desirable because of those things.
Had I not liked Mr. Sherwood because he didn’t have those things?
No. That wasn’t it. Not at all.
Mr. Sherwood had seemed to cross a lot of boundaries…
but then I realized that was the same thing that was happening here and now.
Sinclair and I had crossed a line once—and we often threatened to do it again.
But then it dawned on me that that was the difference.
Between Sinclair and me, that line crossing was mutual.
Mr. Sherwood’s attention had come out of nowhere.
One day he was lecturing in the classroom, the next he was stopping me in the hallway, inviting me out for a cup of coffee.
And it wasn’t as if he’d ever done anything blatantly wrong.
It was just a feeling.
A creepy feeling that I couldn’t shake whenever I was around the man—and it was now extending through the ether to my phone.
And then I thought of something.
Picking up my cell, I shot a quick text to my dad.
Why didn’t you tell me you ran into Mr. Sherwood at the store when we were talking this morning?
It was a minute or so later that he replied.
Your college professor?
I just saw him at the store an hour ago.
Did he already call you?
I hope it was okay that I gave him your number.
He seemed concerned about you.
I didn’t want to tell my dad that giving Mr. Sherwood my number was like feeding me to the wolves, even though it almost felt that way.
Why should I make him feel guilty over yet another thing he had no control over?
So I just told him, Yes, it’s fine.
And I left it at that.
But having Mr. Sherwood juxtaposed in my mind next to Sinclair, there was no denying that I was falling hard for the man who was deemed by contract my employer .
The Sunday meetings shouldn’t have been a thing.
At first, I was just supposed to make sure I’d turned in my timesheet by Sunday at five o’clock, and Sinclair had asked that I turn them in to his office.
But the first Sunday I’d done that, he’d been sitting there waiting and we’d verbally agreed that I should turn in my timesheet at that particular time—five—instead of sometime before, and that he should receive and review it with me.
Which meant that it wasn’t long before the meetings became more of a formality than I would have liked.
Sinclair asked that I be dressed in what he called business casual —and, when I looked up on the internet exactly what that meant, I realized I didn’t have much that would be considered appropriate, other than a few dresses and, of course, the jacket I’d worn at the college the night I’d had to leave.
So the dress I put on before heading to his office was one I’d already worn to this meeting twice before.
I was able to get away with the sandals, but that also wouldn’t last much longer as the bright pink polish on my toenails was beginning to wear off.
My nails had already grown enough that there was a thin line next to the cuticles that sported no polish, but that wasn’t noticeable.
What was obvious was how a little of the polish had worn down at the top of the big toes and the polish on the second toe on the right foot had a chip in it.
It would still be several weeks before I would stop wearing open-toed shoes for the season, so I was probably going to have to break down and ask Edna if she would buy me polish remover—or tell me if there was any in the mansion.
Surely a place this big had something like that in one of the bathrooms.
I’d also drawn up a plan for school like Sinclair had asked—but I’d backtracked a bit.
The school I really wanted to attend, the one with all the bells and whistles, was ridiculously expensive—and, in the back of my mind, I was afraid.
What if Sinclair wound up letting me get saddled with that bill after all?
Even if I could get a job at a prestigious museum, would I ever be able to pay it all back?
Especially having to wait until I was almost thirty to begin?
And would I ever be able to rise up the ladder fast enough for it to be worth it?
So I put together a proposal for three different online universities—my dream one, the one that I would never have been able to afford on my own, and two others with decent programs that I would enjoy, even though they weren’t my first choice.
The other two were far more affordable—and then I wondered, after all the work to apply, what if I wasn’t accepted?
And that would be my argument when Sinclair would ask why I had been, as he’d called it earlier in the week, indecisive .
When I walked into his office, he wasn’t sitting at his desk as usual.
Instead, he was standing at the window behind the desk, his hands in the pockets of his gray slacks, looking out at the greenery.
And I wondered what he was thinking.
Whenever I caught him doing this—what looked like contemplating—I thought he was lonely.
This evening, he wore a long-sleeved light blue shirt, but the cuffs were unbuttoned and rolled up, as if he were getting ready to perform some sort of manual labor.
It was rare that I got to see anything other than his hands, because he dressed in business attire frequently.
There had only been a couple of times he’d worn shirts with short sleeves on the weekends, and I’d admired the swell of his biceps as they disappeared under the fabric.
I knew he had to know I was there, unless he was even more deep in thought than I could imagine.
My sandals weren’t noisy but they did make a shuffling sound as I walked down the main hall—and then, when I entered his office, the rugs absorbed any noise my shoes might make.
But I stopped just inside the doorway, waiting for him to acknowledge me.
When he turned around, I felt my breath catch in my throat.
His blue eyes were ablaze, making me think of looking at the burners on the gas stove as a child, how, when the heat was turned down low, the flames were blue instead of orange.
Did that mean that he was going to devour me like forest fire, leaving nothing behind but ash?
Or was my mind simply being melodramatic?
“Good evening, Lise,” he said, his voice sounding rather normal.
“Mr. W.”
I could barely hear his sigh before he said, “Please take a seat.” After he did the same, he said, “I’d like for you to call me Sinclair .” In my head, I had been for a while but I couldn’t remember when I’d made the switch from Mr. Whittier .
I simply nodded my assent and handed him my timesheet as well as a printout of the spreadsheet showing all I’d catalogued downstairs over the past week.
He flipped through the pages and, as he did, I wondered like I always had what exactly he was looking at.
Was he making sure I’d put in an honest week’s work—or, at least, what looked like one on paper?
Forty hours with “unpaid” lunch breaks?
Or was he seeking patterns or the lack thereof?
Did he study his real employees’ timecards like mine?
And then I realized, after having met them as a servant just over a week earlier, that they wouldn’t be the types who had to clock in and out.
Every last one of them had to be salaried, and I suspected they probably worked more hours than I did.
At least, that was what I’d often heard about business people.
Sinclair didn’t seem to, although once in a while he would come home later or have to go back out.
But that might have been a perk of being the boss.
When he looked up, he said, “You really think that Downey painting is worth between two and three million dollars?”
I had to fight not to smile, because that was the painting I’d tried talking to him about a while back and he’d blown me off, saying things about art being impractical and not needing more money.
“Yes, I do.”
“What did you base this on?”
“Her entire body of work thus far. Many of her recent paintings have sold for millions at auction and—”
“All right. Then I suppose we should find a good place to display it.” He looked up from the papers.
“You’re familiar with what it looks like. Where in the house do you think it should be displayed?”
Based on its warm colors—oranges, reds, and pinks, as if it were sunset peeking through a cityscape…
or, perhaps, a sunrise—I felt inspired.
“I think it should go on the west side of the main hallway.”
“Hmm. I don’t know that there’s room there for another painting.” While I tried to think of another place—or of a painting that could be taken down—he continued.
“What else do you have there?”
I looked down in my lap at the remaining three sheets of paper.
“You wanted me to bring…an education proposal.”
“Yes. What school have you decided on?”
“Well…I got to thinking. What if I applied to my dream school and didn’t get accepted? I need a backup.” As I searched his eyes, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
Was he buying what I was selling or could he see right through me?
Maybe I was indecisive, but I also wasn’t stupid.
I didn’t want to place the entire scope of my life in his hands—because, even though I found I was trusting him more and more, I knew he could be ruthless.
I couldn’t take that chance.
But he didn’t say a word, so I continued.
“So I chose three schools. This one,” I said, flipping the sheet of paper so he could read it before sliding it across the desk, “has the lowest tuition of the three. Classes are asynchronous—as all the school’s offerings are—but I can only take one class at a time, and most classes last one to two months.”
I waited for him to say something, but his eyes were taking in all the information I’d gathered on the sheet, basically a version of the school’s About Us page, copied and pasted onto the Word document, after I reformatted the text to match the rest of what I’d written.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know what information was most important to Sinclair, so I didn’t know if I’d overdone it or hadn’t given him enough data to make a decision.
Because he still wasn’t speaking, I slid the next sheet of paper over to him.
“The tuition for this college is slightly higher but their courses are self-paced. You pay tuition by the term and take whatever classes you like—but you have to finish one before you can take another. You can take as many classes as you want for the same amount.” If I were paying for it on my own, I had decided that, even though the tuition was a little higher than the first one, I could push myself to complete the coursework fast. At least that was my idea.
He remained silent, and I didn’t like the vibe I was getting from him.
Still, I pushed forward.
“And this is my third choice.” My dream school, the one I really would have liked to attend but one I couldn’t afford on my own.
It was a prestigious university, one I’d heard of before, so if employers were impressed by names, I’d have that advantage.
But the cost…that was what scared me.
It wouldn’t bother Sinclair; I already knew that much.
But I also knew he didn’t necessarily have my best interests at heart.
I told him all the things I loved about the school’s online learning approach—how much of the learning seemed less class-like and more akin to entertainment, taking advantage of some of the ways we learned that weren’t fostered in traditional classrooms, not even mentioning the tuition until, at the end of my speech, I said, “But it’s probably cost-prohibitive.”
This time, his sigh was audible, and I got the feeling it was for my benefit.
“Lise,” he said, looking up from the print, “is this all you think you’re worth?”
Of all the things I’d expected him to say, that wasn’t it.
And it put me in a bit of a tailspin.
What was I worth? If it was the amount I was earning, it was minimum wage, implying I wasn’t worth much.
If it was based on what my community thought of me, it was equally dismal.
Those thoughts were depressing and likely something I should discuss with a qualified professional—but I had to push it all aside to answer his question while, at the same time, not giving away my position.
“Well, no…but it’s not my money to spend.”
“You’re missing the point. I’m asking what you think you’re worth. You’ve got to break out of whatever mindset you’re in. Money does not matter and I want you to stop boxing yourself in. Do you think no more of yourself than to choose a bargain basement college that might not even be accredited—or are you worth the best education money can buy?”
There was something about the way he said it—as if I were a baby bird and his breath pushed against my wings, allowing me to fly for the first time.
Those flame-blue eyes told me they believed in me…
and so I knew how I had to answer.
“The best.”
“Then I suggest you go back to the drawing board. Find one school…the best school. And I expect you to present your decision by Wednesday at dinner.”
He wasn’t going to give me as much time this go round…
and I suspected that was probably for the best. When I nodded, he asked, “Would you like to go for a walk?”
I wasn’t sure why I answered, “I thought you’d never ask.”
But I meant it.
Every word. And walking beside him on that warm evening, it took everything inside me to not grab him about the shoulders and kiss him for…
for what?
For believing in me.