Free Kelly McClymer-Must Love Black by Kelly McClymer Page A

see what my most important duty was—and it wasn’t on the schedule, naturally. I had to get Mr. P to start making time for his daughters. They needed
him,
not fun. How to convince him of that? Not a clue.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    It was my duty to protect the children. It was my heartbreak to have to protect them from their own father’s indifferent regard.
    —Miss Adelaide Putnam to Lord Dashwood,
Manor of Dark Dreams,
p. 22
    The next few days were subdued and uneventful. The girls and I stuck to the precious schedule (“dinner in family dining room” was not part of it), and they kept busy doing Internet research on butterflies.
    They were enjoying their research, so I did not interrupt it to force them to have “fun,” but I knew I would have to cajole them into some other kinds of activities soon, or I would have nothing to report back to Mr. P when he asked how the fun was going. Figuring out a “fun” activity that wouldn’t make them miserable was proving as hard as I’d expected. If I were a pastel nanny or a nanny in tan, I might have just pulled out the dolls or the dodgeball ball and forced the twins to play along. But I wasn’t that kind of nanny—I was a nanny wholoves black—so I wasn’t going to force that kind of summer on them. Or on me.
    As I watched Triste and Rienne doing their research I felt a certain awe at how self-contained they were. They didn’t seem to have any doubts about what they were doing or how they would accomplish their goal. I’d only known them for a few days, but I had a feeling I knew exactly what their response would be to the idea of planning fun: a big fat “Why?”
    I decided to make a list of everything the characters in the many books I’d read had considered fun. (I didn’t count Tom Sawyer’s fence painting.) It wasn’t a short list, but I suspected that the girls would very quickly whittle it down to nothing if I allowed them any veto power. Some things were typical summer “fun” things, such as swimming, going to the zoo, and having a bonfire on the beach. Some things were more educational, such as learning to dance or paint or make jewelry. There were some things that wouldn’t go well with the be-unseen-and-unheard rule. I starred those.
    After the girls went to bed I took my list and a yogurt from my little fridge to bed with me. Sarah hadn’t e-mailed or called since that first morning when we’d talked, which wasn’t a big surprise; she was probably bonding with her parents on the long drive south. They liked to play the alphabet game and the license plate game when they traveled. Gag me.
    Even though it hadn’t been foggy since my first night at Chrysalis Cliff, I’d been electing to sleep with my window closed and the curtains pulled. I didn’t need any more ghosts visiting me.
    By the time I’d made my morning cup of coffee the nextday, I had decided how I would approach the subject of fun with the girls. My brainstorm had come from my dreams. No ghosts, no weddings, just my dad and me at the rail of a whale boat, watching the shore grow tiny as we chugged out on the ocean to catch sight of whales.
    My dream had reminded me that pre-Krystal my dad and I used to go to Bar Harbor whenever we couldn’t bear to stay in the house. One of us would get that restless feeling and say, “I wonder if the ocean’s still there?” It was a question I’d asked as a kid, and Mom and Dad always teased me about it long after I understood that the sea comes back on the tide. Surely Triste and Rienne, cooped up as they were, had to feel a bit of that restlessness? It was only day four for me, and I already did. Maybe if I bribed them with the promise of ice cream cones in town, they would come along and fall into having fun without even realizing it.
    I looked at the twins, hunched over their cereal bowls, reading. I didn’t think their father would be satisfied just hearing that we made a trip into town. He was probably going to want them to smile and