Chapter Six
Olivia
He didn’t even say goodbye to his daughter, I thought with a head shake as I watched Mark leave. He didn’t even pop in to see her before he left. This whole thing was very strange. In all honesty, it left me a little uneasy. I didn’t know how to take any of it. One minute, I was in Virginia living my very normal, if not a little depressing, life. The next, I was flying to New York City to interview for a job, and now I found myself in this millionaire’s apartment with a child who didn’t seem to like me much and a father who was jet-setting off to a different country. I wasn’t sure if it was the start of a wonderful dream or a nightmare that I would struggle with.
I glanced down at Mark’s schedule, drinking it in as much as I could. Then I flicked to Justine’s. Her days really were busy, but there was an entry for today’s date which seemed to be new. An appointment with a therapist. Okay, so I knew that all rich kids saw therapists, that was kind of common knowledge even if it wasn’t anything that I saw back at home, but it still felt really strange to see it as a part of this girl’s schedule. It instantly made me wonder what had happened to her in her life to make her need to speak to a professional about it.
“Right,” I muttered to myself. “It’s time to get started. I need to get ready for today.”
I didn’t feel ready for it. I wasn’t sure I had the skills to get through this day very much alone, but I was going to have to try. As intimidating and overwhelming as it was, if I didn’t give it my best shot, I knew that I’d regret it. I wouldn’t get another opportunity like this, so I had to just try. I would have to face Justine.
I moved through the house with a deep sense of unease racing through my veins. I felt a little bit like the uncool kid in school about to face the popular chick and deal with her wrath. It was completely stupid.
You have two decades on this girl, I reminded myself. Stop letting her intimidate you.
I peered into her bedroom and saw her sleeping there. She spread across her bed on the top of the sheets with a calm, angelic face. I paused for a moment, leaning against the door frame while I watched her. She looked beautiful and really sweet. Maybe she wasn’t as bad as I thought she was, I just needed to break down her walls. Clearly, she’d been through something, not that I knew what, and she just needed some love.
“Justine,” I said quietly as I tugged open the silky curtains. I hoped that the morning sunlight would do most of the waking her up. “Justine, it’s time to get up now, it’s time to get ready for school.”
“Urgh,” she grunted in reply, turning over onto her side to ignore the bright lights. “No.”
I sucked in a deep breath, trying to keep calm. That ‘no’ struck me to the core; there was something so bitter and angry about it. All the good feeling I’d experienced while seeing her sleep ebbed away. “Justine, I know that you might not want to wake up, but you have to go to school. You don’t want to be late.”
“Don’t care,” she muttered, without even opening her eyes. “School is stupid.”
I was getting worked up, unnecessarily so. I had worked with children with issues before, children with tempers. This wasn’t anything really; I was only getting myself in a state because I had so much riding on this.
“You might not like school, but you really do have to go. I have your schedule here on my phone…”
Her eyes snapped open, and she gave me a piercing glare. “Trust me; I know all about the schedule. It’s on my phone too so I can see it whenever I want. Everything I do is on that stupid thing.”
Okay, so blowing past the fact that a seven-year-old had a cell phone, clearly the schedule was an issue. I would have to remember that it wasn’t something she enjoyed talking about. I locked that in my brain bank.
“Right, well let’s forget about that for now and get dressed so we can eat.”
“Argh!” Justine pushed herself into a standing position, gave me another look and stomped off to the bathroom.
While she got herself cleaned up, I made my way numbly into the kitchen and I idly washed Mark’s plate. I tried to scan through my brain to work out how I was going to get through to this girl. She had walls up much higher than any other child I knew. I wondered if it had to do with her nonexistent mother.
“Do you want an omelet?” I asked as brightly as I could manage as she finally came into the kitchen.
Justine screwed up her nose in disgust. “Grandma only made me cereal in the mornings.”
This was the first that I’d heard of any grandma, and the fact that Justine mentioned her in a way that suggested she looked after her was strange. Mark hadn’t mentioned that, which was just another secret. Or maybe it was an oversight; things had been very rushed when we met one another. There were lots of things missed out.
“Okay.” I chose not to take the bait. “I can work with that. Cereal, nice and easy.”
Justine ignored me and grabbed her cell phone while I sorted out her food. She looked like a mini teenager sitting there, typing away. I wondered if she was texting other rich kids who also had phones. This truly was a world which I didn’t understand. These kids lived in a very different world.
“What the hell is this?” Justine suddenly shrieked like a banshee. “What the hell is this new thing?” She looked at me expectantly while pointing to the therapist appointment put into her schedule. “I haven’t had to do this before. What’s it all about? What did my dad tell you about it? Tell him I don’t want to.”
I had a feeling that it was new because it had been entered in a different color, but I certainly expected Justine to know about it. I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t told his daughter about this. He’d left it to me. That was madness! I couldn’t believe that he would treat either of us this way. It was awful. I was starting to think that he wasn’t just a forgetful man but one who didn’t care about anything other than his work. I didn’t like that at all.
“I… I don’t know,” I admitted. “I haven’t fully discussed the schedule with your father. He just told me to follow it. I mean, I presume that your driver will know where he’s going, right?”
“Ring him,” she snapped at me. “Ring him right now. I want to talk about it. Ring him, or I will.”
My heart balled up in my throat; I couldn’t let things fall apart within moments of him leaving. I needed to keep a handle on things. “Your father is on a flight now. We can’t get through to him. For now, we just need to get through this day, okay? We can start making complaints tomorrow about things.”
There was an unexpected firmness to my tone which somehow worked. Justine pushed her half-eaten bowl of cereal away, and she jumped up. She chucked her cell phone casually to the side, with no regard for the fact that it was so much better than my own, and she raced into her bedroom, hopefully to get dressed.
As she left, I decided to take a deep look at the schedule, to learn it inside and out. I needed to see if there was anything I wanted to email Mark about. The therapist thing had really thrown me. I didn’t realize that it would go down so badly, and I didn’t want to have a shock like that again. It sucked.
“Right, I’m ready.” Justine’s sulky voice dragged me from my reading. “I need to wait downstairs.”
I nodded and stood up, and we both walked towards the elevator in silence. Anger rolled off Justine in waves; I could tell that today was going to be a very long and unhappy one for her. I wanted to take that burden off her shoulders, I didn’t want her to suffer, but I couldn’t. Not until she decided to let me in.
All the way down, we remained in silence. Neither of us spoke a word until we saw Lincoln on the bottom floor. “Well, hello there, Justine,” he said to her in a charming voice. “How are you today?” She huffed angrily at him, but I could almost see her shoulders unfurling a little bit. “Oh, well I hope you have a good day, Miss.”
Lincoln tipped his hat towards me, and I gave him a genuine smile. He really was a ray of sunshine in this quite bleak morning. I felt glad that he was here; he made me feel at lost less uneasy.
“The car is outside, Olivia,” he informed me. “If you would like to walk Justine to the vehicle.”
I did, because I wanted to talk to the driver. Justine’s therapy session was after school so he could have easily just taken her alone. I got the impression that was the point, but I wanted to go with her. It didn’t seem right to leave her to deal with something that clearly made her uncomfortable all by herself.
I introduced myself and asked the driver to pick me up first. I could have driven myself to the appointment, but since I wasn’t used to New York yet, I didn’t want to trust myself to turn up on time. He agreed, quite happily actually; he didn’t seem too annoyed that I was giving him extra work. If anything, he appeared happy that I wanted to be with Justine. The same couldn’t be said for her; she didn’t even say goodbye to me.
Once the car pulled away, I want back inside, and I made myself one of those delicious omelets. As I ate, I wondered what I was going to do today. I didn’t have enough time to do any exploring, and I couldn’t get lost today, not when I had something so important to do. I suppose I could have sorted out my stuff back home to get it shipped to me, but that wouldn’t take me too long. I was going to be lost…
“Oh…” All of a sudden, the elevator doors pinged open, which made me jump. I leaped up from my seat with my heart pounding, wondering what the hell was going on. I knew no one could come into the house without permission, but still, this felt strange. “Erm, I’m… I’m… Olivia,” I finally stammered out. “The nanny.”
The lady was shorter than me and Hispanic. She appeared to be a little bit older than me, but with a very happy smile. “Hello, Olivia, yes, Mark emailed me about you. I’m Rosa, the housekeeper.”
Ah, now I knew who she was. I could remember her name from the schedule too. The house was so clean, I didn’t imagine that it needed much work doing to it, but immediately I felt ready to help. This way, I could get to know Rosa better. Hopefully, I would learn more about the family since she obviously knew more about them than me, and it would give me something to do.
“It’s nice to meet you, Rosa.” I extended out my hand to shake hers. “Boy, am I glad to have you here.”