Free The Turning by Francine Prose Page B

way, at least, maybe their uncle was right about the benefits of their having nothing else to do on the island. Without video games or the internet or TV, the children had no choice but to learn to read—and like it.
    “Lucy made sure the children knew the basics of arithmetic, and she taught them geography and a little bit of science. She had a real passion for plants and botany, and she used to advise Norris about what would grow best in the gardens.”
    Linda paused and rocked awhile, sipping her tea, obviously trying to decide how to tell me the next part of the story.
    I said, “Miles wants to travel to Mongolia. And Flora wants to be a botanist when she grows up.”
    Linda gave me a quick look. “Well, that would have been the best part of Lucy and Norris’s influence.”
    “And the worst part?” I asked.
    Linda fell silent for a long time. I listened to the furious buzzing of a June bug that was just not getting the message that he couldn’t fly through the screen and join us on the porch.
    “I never exactly knew,” Linda said. “I guess it was partly my fault, leaving the kids alone with them. But at that point, I’ll be honest with you, Jack. I had a lot on my plate. Let’s just say I wasn’t giving the situation here my complete attention. There were so many trips to the mainland, to see doctors and spend time in hospitals before my husband died. I guess I could have taken the kids with me, but it would have been awful for them. They were close to my husband; they liked him. And why would I take them, when Jim Crackstone was paying two other people to look after the children? The truth is, I was grateful to have someone to leave them with.
    “By then it was pretty clear that Norris and Lucy had fallen in love. Or fallen in something . Looking back, I wouldn’t dignify whatever was going on between them by calling it love, exactly. But I could sense something sparking back and forth every time I saw them together. At first it was just the way that Lucy looked at Norris when he told his crazy stories about getting captured by bandits in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and having to tread water in the Black Sea when his boat hit a rock and sank. Often, after the children were in bed, I’d see Lucy hurrying across the lawns in the direction of the gardener’s cottage, where Norris lived.” Linda paused.
    “Have the kids ever taken you there?” she asked me. “To the cottage?”
    “No,” I said. “They never mentioned there was a cottage.”
    “I’m not surprised,” Linda said.
    “Where is it?” I said.
    “On the other side of the lake and the tennis courts,” Linda said. “Hidden back in the woods.”
    I remembered how the very first day, when the children had taken me around the island, they’d made a wide circle around the tennis court. Had they been keeping me from the cottage? What would have happened if I’d asked to go that way?
    “Right from the start,” Linda said, “Norris and Lucy kept their relationship secret. Maybe they thought that the children’s uncle had some policy prohibiting on-the-job romance. Though they should have known that the children’s uncle didn’t have much of a policy about anything, really, except about not giving him any trouble.
    “Maybe it sounds a little paranoid, but I sensed something dark, like a storm cloud hovering over Norris and Lucy, something that gave me a very different feeling from the warm sensation you get when you see two nice people falling in love. One problem was that Norris was so much older than Lucy. He had all the power. Sometimes, in the mornings, I noticed that Lucy’s eyes were red, as if she’d been crying all night.
    “But one thing about Lucy and Norris that I found reassuring—maybe too reassuring, as it turned out—was that they were always discreet around the kids. As far as I knew, the children never suspected that Norris and Lucy were involved. Or maybe it’s just how kids are: Miles and Flora seemed to