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After the PLED screens broadcast daylight, I went to collect Kirti for breakfast per usual. I turned right, heading for her room, but something small, fidgety and clothed in beaded chiffon caught the corner of my left eye, shadowing the hallway bend to my left. It was Kirti, dressed and waiting outside Mr. Thorne's room.
“Jane!” Kirti cried, running to me on her dancer's feet, each step a leap. “He's here! Thorne is here!”
“Kirti, what are you doing outside Mr. Thorne's door?”
She stopped on tiptoes and began chattering to me in the most animated, flowing English she'd used in my presence to date. “He got here last night. He tucked me in and told me a story about a little kaur. Guess what—” Here she squinted her eyes, translating in her brain. “—the princess! Guess what the princess-es-es name was!”
“I don't know.”
“She was called Kirti! And in the story, a mean gabroo—old man—goes on tour so he can bring presents for Kirti Princess! But sometimes the presents get lost before they can be delivered...”
I couldn't help but smile. I tilted my head to indicate that she should follow me to the breakfast room. “Art imitates life, I take it?”
She was too excited to waste energy on my question. Neither did she follow my lead away from the “gabroo's” doorway. “And he asked about you.”
Suddenly my feet were stuck to the floor. “Mr. Thorne? Asked about me?”
“He asked if my homeschooler is nickhee makhna.”
I practically started out of my slippers. I felt a little dizzy, but I attributed this to not yet breaking my fast. “He asked if I were little and—” I searched my own mental dictionary. Makhna. Buttermilk. “—pale?”
I was, I admit, embarrassed. This guy might have been older than I, but he couldn't have been so old to think that calling someone pale was a compliment. Bhenji Nealingson had taught us that pale skin once implied that one did not spend one's days out in the fields and thus was of a higher social standing. Quite the opposite of the reality we share, dear reader, where pale skin implies a life trapped inside working to make ends meet, never able to take a break outside and get that elusive balance between sunkissed skin and melanoma.
Kirti bobbled her head in the affirmative. Then an idea lit her already sparkling eyes. “You should knock on his door and tell him to find out when my presents get here!”
“I will do no such thing.” Inwardly I was still too irritated from the previous night's encounter, and this new intelligence from Kirti did nothing to pat down my dander. “Here is a chance for you to practice patience and manners.”
“Patience” and “manners” were two English words she and I had been discussing in depth over the past three months. Inevitably, Kirti began to pout.
“Perhaps,” I suggested, using this as an excuse for her to practice her language, “you should ask Mrs. Fairfacs to tell Mr. Thorne that you want to see him.”
Petulantly, she dropped her back against the nearest wall, folded her arms in front of her and looked heavenward with annoyance. “Mrs. Fairfacs, please,” she drawled.
The servant appeared, the morning light from above making her more translucent than usual. “Yes, Miss Kirti?”
With the bad grace of forced obedience, she queried, “Excuse me, but could you tell Thorne that I would like to see him, please?”
“Mr. Thorne is in his personal terminal on business, and he asked not to be disturbed today, but I will relay the message.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Fairfacs,” the child said with an imperious wave of the hand. “That will be all.”
“Kirti,” I sighed as Mrs. Fairfacs bobbed out of our presence, “I wish you would call Mr. Thorne 'Mister Thorne.'“
“Thorne hates to be called 'Mister.' He says he has too many names, and 'Mister' is not one of them.”
That struck me as odd. “Too many names?”
“His regular names and his Catholic names.”
“Kirti!” I couldn't help but glance over both shoulders so quickly my neck pinched on each side. I couldn't help my fear that the house system might have heard and relayed Kirti's innocent sentence to God knew whom. I drove my voice to an urgent whisper. “Kirti, it's not nice to call someone a Catholic. You could get that person in trouble.”
She refused to whisper along with me. “I said Thorne's names are Catholic, not him.”
“He,” I corrected, wincing, but not at her grammar. “It doesn't matter. Never mind.”
“What does 'never mind' mean?”
“It means pretend I didn't say anything about it, and let's go get breakfast.”
“Pretend like in an actie?”
“Something like that.”
As we ate, Kirti went on to quote Mr. Thorne, further explaining—in Punjabi now—why I should not call him “Mister.” “Thorne says that 'Mr. Thorne' is his mother's father's name.”
“More orange juice?” I asked, still trying to change the subject in the interests of preserving the man's right to ask me to call him whatever he wanted me to call him.
As we walked to the study for our first lesson, I kept expecting to see the “thief” from last night standing around the next bend, the next, or the next. I was disappointed. We did not even run into that dog.
Kirti and I began the day with more drills in “head math.” We had the same argument we always had before these drills.
“But Jaaaaaaane! Why do I need to do this? I'll always have my HandRight with me!”
“What if a virus wipes out the calculator accessory? What if you can't talk because you have a sore throat and your fingers are broken and you have no way of making your HandRight do your math for you?”
From there, we segued into a few light story problems, the kind that did not require any writing on her part, with me guiding her through them question by question. Believing that her brain had warmed up, I tapped a few problems into her HandRight, set a few fences to keep her out of the calculator, and instructed her to work independently for a few minutes.
While she worked, I strolled the perimeter of the room, casually inspecting the bookcases as I always did when our lessons gave me a few moments to myself. My eyes wandered across the crackling bindings, but my mind cavorted elsewhere, across the landscapes of the imagination. I was lost in a daydream of stars floating in a dust cloud when Kirti announced in a triumphant chirp that she was ready to go over her results.
After reviewing Kirti's work, helping her to correct mistakes and ladling out praise for correct answers, we took a ten minute break, for I was far more generous with breaks than my teachers had been with me. Kirti spent most of her break in her terminal “checking for a message from Thorne.”
Then we met in the large, empty room she had shown me during my first week, where we now did our exercises every morning. Since it was all I knew, our exercises were the same ones Bhenji Fleuvbleu had taught in the Naomi dojo. Kirti undertook these with a performer's self-consciousness and concentration, with focus admirable in a child of eight.
“I will use these exercises for warm-ups when I'm in the acties again,” she announced today.
Mrs. Fairfacs sent us water, so we took another break. While we both sat cross-legged on the matted floor, Kirti summoned Mrs. Fairfacs.
“Is Thorne can see me now?” Kirti exclaimed in her own brand of English, jumping up and spilling some of her water on her pink leotard, splashing on the tiny blue and yellow flowers decorating her tights.
“Mr. Thorne is in his personal terminal on business, and he asked not to be disturbed today.”
Same message as earlier. Kirti's lower lip dropped into a full-force pout. In spite of her melodramatics, I did feel sorry for her. I too had been a little girl once, craving the attention of the only adult holding a parental position in my life, only to have those cravings left unsatisfied.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Fairfacs,” I queried, my voice softening with pity, “can we expect to see him today?”
“Him, dear?”
I felt my shoulders solidify with undue irritation. It was my own fault for using a pronoun without an antecedent, after all. “I mean Mr. Thorne. Will we see Mr. Thorne today?”
“Perhaps, dear. I'll tell him you asked.”
“No!” I blurted, summoning a bland curiosity onto the hologram's face. As miffed as I was, I did not want to miff Mr. Thorne. He did, after all, pay my salary. “No, Mrs. Fairfacs. There is no need to tell Mr. Thorne I asked anything.”
“But—” I eyed the trail of splattered water in Kirti's wake and remembered my own position. “Could you please have some dry rags sent to this room?” Then in Punjabi I added, “I need Kirti to clean up her mess.”
“Excuse me, Miss Jane,” Mrs. Fairfacs interrupted, her lined mouth smiling in contrived confusion. “What are rags?”
I exhaled with slow control. No one had ever told her database what a 'rag' was. Of course not. Anyone providing her with data entry would not have expected to be held responsible for cleaning. “I mean something to clean up spilled water.”
“Do you mean for me to send the mops to dry the floor?”
“No, thank you, Mrs.—”
“Oh!” Kirti suddenly cried, her eyes sparkling with poorly concealed connivance. Back to English, she slyly said, “I can go get some towels!”
I knew where she was going with this. She wanted an excuse to pass Mr. Thorne's room. “Kirti, Mrs. Fairfacs said we're not to disturb Mr. Thorne. Why don't you ask—in English—for Mrs. Fairfacs to send you some towels?”
Her foot stamped lightly. “But I don't know how!”
I knew that was not true. Time to invoke the childcare professional's strongest weapon: the forced choice.
“Kirti,” I said in my own native tongue and not hers, “You get to choose. You can ask in English for Mrs. Fairfacs to bring some towels, or you can wipe up the spilled water with your duppetta.”
“It's silk!” The little kaur protested in her native tongue.
I shrugged.
She was stunned speechless, fingering the hem of the fabric she had cast aside just before exercising.
“The choice is yours, nickhee,” I said, and I stepped over to a drier spot of floor in which to continue my own stretching. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kirti standing indecisively in the doorway.
Finally as I moved into my next stretching pose, Kirti announced in perfect General American Dialect tainted with only the slightest drop of a sigh: “Mrs. Fairfacs, please have some towels sent to me.”
I tried very hard not to smile at the victory. In reward for her cooperation, I helped her clean up the mess and carry the towels to the closest laundry chute.
It was a chore to keep Kirti busy for the rest of the day. Her mind wandered even more than usual, while on the same count I was anxious. For all I knew Mr. Thorne was watching us. I wanted to impress him as a perfect private home educator. My nerves made me snap at Kirti a few times during the day.
That evening, as Kirti and Deepali finished their chocolate chip cookie sundae deserts and I sipped at my tea, I was about to dismiss Kirti for the evening when Mrs. Fairfacs appeared before us. “Ladies, Mr. Thorne has told me to bring you to the study.”
“Told,” not “asked.” “Bring,” not “invite.” Irritation supplanted my nervousness. “Mrs. Fairfacs, can't you tell him—Mr. Thorne—where we are and he come to us?” I asked.
Her face darkened with concern. “Mr. Thorne is under doctor's orders not to exert himself too much, and he is reading in the study.”
Kirti jumped from her chair. I ran behind her, protesting that she slow down and give Mr. Thorne the quiet he needed. Kirti seemed not to comprehend my pleas.
Deepali followed neither her mistress nor me out of the dining room. I proceeded to the study with no company besides my own apprehension. What would my first official meeting with my boss be like, here under the harsh light of the house system? I stopped just off of the study's threshold and stretched my fingers to still their mild tremors. I listened for some cue that my entrance would be acceptable.
“Thorne!” I heard Kirti cry. A thud followed—the sound of an energetic child throwing herself into the unwilling arms of a burly malcontent.
“Kid.” The gruff voice addressed my student with scant tolerance. “Go play with Chuck, and be quiet about it.”
No wonder Kirti had trouble polishing her manners, I thought in the solitude of the hall. Her guardian was such a poor role model. I'd been teaching respect to an unruly student for months now. All I needed to do was keep in mind that my boss needed the same lessons. That would, my mind argued, ward off any temptation to feel tiny and powerless before him. I stepped into the brighter light, my head high with forced calm.
Mr. Thorne—for he was still “Mister” to my mind, regardless of what Kirti might say—had stretched himself out on the black leather couch, his broad-tipped fingers holding a book. On his right index finger was a perks ring of solid platinum. It had been burnished in its making, but the perks button on top did not have a single use-scratch on it. It could not have been more than a week old.
I'd never seen a grown man dressed so casually before in such close quarters. He wore a pair of black shorts that stopped right above his knees, revealing a log-like pair of calves. His feet were bare and his toes knobby with calluses that absorbed the light like sponges did water. A loosely knit t-shirt of fading charcoal cotton strained against his blunt wedge of an upper body. There was a palimpsest of an INGO crest, one I did not recognize, embroidered onto his shirt, considerably distorted by the muscles of the chest beneath.
He held the front cover of his book folded over in such a way that I could not read the title, and it shielded most of his face from my view as well. The square cut of his lined forehead and furrowed eyebrows showed above the top of the book. He seemed to be constructed of right angles. This greatly served to accentuate the round clarity of his eyes, which in this indoor light I saw were the hard, crystalline, black-flecked hazel of a street dog's.
He ignored my entrance. I glanced over at Kirti, who was kneeling on the floor with the immense Chuck, patting his shaggy coat and fawning over him in Punjabi.
Mrs. Fairfacs appeared. “Mr. Thorne,” she said, her programmed cheer stark against our keeper's brooding silence. “Mr. Thorne, this is Miss Jane E, the homeschooler you hired.”
“Mmnh,” he replied. It was a sound like brick scraping brick.
The previous night, I had taken one look at him and known that to bring him down I would need to unbalance him. I sensed that showing him politeness in equal measure for his indifference would make him as uneasy as I was. Extrapolating, I placed my palms together beneath my chin and bowed my head.
“Namaste, Master-ji,” I said in the most deliberate tones, using the deepest title of deference I had in my arsenal for someone of his status in comparison to mine.
Those onyxed amber eyes of his fixed on me suspiciously. I looked at him through my lowered lashes and felt my own eyebrows harden as we had another staring showdown. He shifted his weight from one elbow to the other, lowering his book enough for me to see his mouth tighten off to one side. He flipped his thumb in the direction of the nearest easy chair, fixing his eyes in his book once more. I took the indicated seat.
“Tea, Fairfacs,” he growled. “Please.”
Bobbing a nod, the servant dissolved for a minute, taking shape again just as one of those wheeled carts carrying a teapot and matching cups navigated its way to the center of the room.
To fill up the silence between the two adult humans in attendance, Mrs. Fairfacs began to direct some of her chatter at me. She leaned her head in the direction of the still untouched tea cart. “This is the tea Mr. Thorne's doctor recommended to settle his stomach from the re-keying. Is it working, sir?”
“Not right now,” he said into his book. “I'm not drinking any.”
“Miss Jane,” she asked, “would you bring this to Mr. Thorne?”
“I can bring it!” Kirti piped up from her corner.
“You'd spill it,” the sullen reader replied in his still-un-locate-able accent.
While Kirti pouted and I scowled at the man's lack of kindness towards his ward, I nevertheless poured a cup at the cart and brought it to the couch with another deferential, “Master-ji.”
He flinched, holding his book aside with one hand and taking the tea with the other. “Don't call me that. And don't call me 'Mister Thorne,' either. I'm nobody's master, I don't deserve to be called anything-ji, and Mr. Thorne is my mother's father's name, not mine.”
I turned back to the cart and began pouring a cup for myself. I could smell that the pot was filled with an over-steeped black tea blend of some kind—too strong and dark, just like the patient for whom it had been recommended. Mr. Thorne took a sip and seemed not to notice its scalding heat.
I watched him swallow before inquiring, “Then what am I to call you, sir? Is there any term I can use that will carry the honor you're due?”
I would not have known he were laughing if his barrel of a chest weren't shaking and the corners of his slightly open mouth turned down in wry irony. “There is no honor due. My European passport calls me a British National named Parker Garfield Thorne. My baptismal certificate, lost in the closing of St. Rose Church, Reno, Nevada, named me Padráic Gadhra Thorne. So—just Thorne. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
An aggravated grimace took his features. He said, “Speaking of terms of address, what in Baal's name am I to call you? Jane? Just 'E'?”
I paused to consider my answer. “I am your employee, sir. What you call me is up to you.”
“You mean to tell me that 'E' really is your last name? Nothing more?”
“Second Chance Reproductive Rights Center names all their unclaimed female embryos Jane. I was the fifth in their history. Hence, 'E.'“
“An unclaimed embryo? So, no mother to slap you, no father to ignore you, no brothers or sisters to torture you?” His head shook as he lifted the book again. “You don't know how lucky you are.”
I fumed. I knew the remark was spoken out of offhanded obliviousness. Still, it pierced something of the scar tissue surrounding my heart. I remained silent, unable to respond at all for the quiet tearing in my chest.
Mr. Thorne lowered his book and peered at me. “You look like there's something you want to say but won't.”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. “I'm thinking, sir, that abandonment comes in many shapes and flavors, some of which you've never even smelled, much less tasted.”
He gave a sort of quick, bitter laugh through his nose. “You'd be surprised at what I've tasted and smelled. Still, you never thought to give yourself a last name?”
“It's the only name I've ever had for myself. It's been mine, such as it is, as long as I can remember.”
The book fell again, and he studied me as if I were a curious species of sea life. “You're not lying to me. You don't seem the lying type. Like, not only do you not lie, but you'd turn your nose up at anybody who did.”
“It has been my experience that lying hurts the liar more than the lied-to.”
He flinched again. “And what experience is that?”
“I take it you don't recall my resume.”
“Never read it. That was the agency's job.”
“As a girl I used to work for the Naomi Foundation, if you've heard of it.”
He tilted his intense gaze at me, studying me with a mixture of suspicion and reluctant awe. “Who hasn't? It was all over the casts—what—seven years ago?”
“The Kamchatkan incident happened when I was twelve, so that would be ten years ago.”
“You're only twenty two?”
The shock in his voice made my own eyebrow raise. “Your math skills are stunningly accurate, sir.”
“That's not what I meant,” he said, “although I'm flattered that you're already comfortable enough to share sarcasm with me. But really, it's impossible to tell your age by looks alone. Your face is young, but your eyes and hands are old.”
He'd been examining my hands? I tried to keep them from fidgeting and clung more tightly to my teacup.
“Maybe, Mrs. Fairfacs,” he said in a clear voice, “I wouldn't need this doctor-recommended cup of sewage to settle my stomach if Miss Jane here hadn't upset it in the first place.”
Mrs. Fairfacs's face displayed confusion. “Pardon me, sir. I don't understand.”
“She so kindly offered to kick my ass, and not long after that I was calling for my pet seal Ralph.”
“Mr. Thorne?” Mrs. Fairfacs asked, still unable to relate his words to anything in her database.
“Doing the Technicolor yawn,” he continued. “Yodeling solids. Filling the Tory swimming pool. Having an out of stomach experience. Suka, in Tagalog if you prefer.”
“The way you pronounced it just now, sir, means 'vinegar.'“
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“'Su-KAH,' with the accent on the last syllable, means,” I paused to find a more delicate way of expressing myself than he had, “'experiencing reverse peristalsis.'“
Turning from me to Mrs. Fairfacs, Mr. Thorne pointed an accusatory finger at me. “If not for her—”
I broke in. “You still would be stuck in a doggie door?”
“So you're at least bright enough to figure that out?”
“I finally guessed that the biometric pad at the bottom of the Emhain Macha sign is not to measure a small human hand, as I first thought, but a large dog paw, making that square cut in the bottom half of the outer exit Chuck's own personal doorway.”
He raised his mug to me in a mock toast. “Brilliant deduction, Jane E.”
“I could not guess until Mrs. Fairfacs told me Chuck was yours. I'm not so bright as all that, sir.”
“I agree,” he said to the initial bruising of my pride. But then he added, “You're brighter. Maybe not brilliant, but certainly bright enough. You're quite a teacher, if nothing else. My conversation with Kirti last night was proof. She's learned more English in three months with you than she learned from actie customers in six years.”
“Thank—” My throat had become inexplicably dry. I took a quick sip of tea, enough to manage, “Thank you, sir.”
“I expected a homeschooler to be inept,” he said in poor acknowledgement of my thanks. “You know. ''Those who can't, teach,' and all that. But life is full of surprises. I didn't expect a little waif like you to warn me off with an arse-kicking either. That was an empty threat, though, wasn't it?”
My pride went from soothed back to bruised. “Hardly, sir!”
Challenged amusement struck matches in my boss's eyes. “Go on, girl. No need to keep up the charade.”
“Charade?” I tried and failed to keep myself from bristling. “You wouldn't say that if you remembered anything about what we Naomi girls were taught before the UN came in.”
Kirti perhaps was not able to catch the meaning of our conversation, but she at least could catch the tone. She and Chuck came to watch the two adults converse, both peeking over the back of the study's other chair. I realized that I probably sounded defensive. I looked down in forced humility.
“You honestly think you can beat me up?” Mr. Thorne demanded.
“Perhaps not 'beat you up,' but I've been taught how to flip people like you out of my way. If you wish me to prove it, I'll wait until you are feeling better.”
“Why wait?” he asked, dog-earing a page before tossing his book onto the coffee table, placing his mug on top of it. He came and stood over me. His considerable height meant he had to look down quite the distance.
“You're not serious,” I said.
“I am if you are.”
“Sir, I did not want to hurt you last night when I thought you were a threat. Even less do I wish to hurt you now—”
“—now that you know I could fire you?”
“Now that I've gathered that sudden movements are not conducive to your re-keying recovery.”
Mrs. Fairfacs caught the thread of our conversation and tried adding spin to it. “Mr. Thorne is under doctor's orders not to exert himself too much, and he is reading in the study.”
Ignoring her, Mr. Thorne gestured a loose beckoning to me with his cement piling of an arm. “I'm willing to chance it.”
I sat firmly back in my chair. “I'm not.”
“Think of it as a job interview.”
“I have the job.”
“Think of it as a three-month review, then.”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“Would it help if I did threaten to fire you?”
A zap of fear went through my chest. If I did give in and hurt him, I might be allowed to stay, but how would I feel? I literally dug my heels into the carpet. “Throw me out if you must. You couldn't pay me to hurt you just for show, sir.”
I stole a glance at Kirti. Her wide eyes were flitting from me to her guardian as if she were watching a high-speed, two-person ceiling squash match. Mrs. Fairfacs was smiling blankly as I suppose her database absorbed what it could from this exchange.
“How am I supposed to believe your words if you can't back them up with actions, Miss Jane?” he asked, still peering at me.
“Didn't you just say I don't seem like the lying type?”
His expression became a stone mirror of mine. “Never answer a question with a question.”
“Sir,” I said, my voice somehow dropping to a whisper as calm as even Aidann might have used. “I am not intentionally going to smackdown a sick man. That's the end of it. Please save your energy and stop asking. Turn me out if you must.”
He studied me for a second, glowering, until his glower melted by the smallest degree. The—I could barely believe it—shy angle his eyes took away from mine indicated that he had redirected his ferocity from me—at himself.
“Congratulations,” he said, ambling back to his sofa. He flopped sideways on the couch with such force that I was ready for the thing to break beneath him. “You just passed your three-month review.”
“Sir?”
He picked up his book again. “Not as good as some of the ass-kickings I've had in my life, but better than most.”
“Chak de phate!” Kirti exclaimed, face bright.
“Chak de—?” Mr. Thorne wrinkled his nose at her. “—what?”
Ruffled, I replied, “Approximately, 'kick butt.'“
“Right. How appropriate.” The book rose to shield his face like the solid steel door of a bank vault slamming shut.
What had just happened? Had I embarrassed his delicate male ego? Was he feeling ill again? Before I had a chance to formulate a question that might have gained me some information, however, he spoke from behind his book.
“Don't you give that child homework?”
I looked at Kirti again. She'd understood “homework” and turned away from me, back to Chuck, undoubtedly hoping her guardian's reminder would not work on me.
“I do, sir.”
He turned the page. “Then take her to her room to study.”
Needless to say, I was surprised at this abrupt turn in my employer's behavior. I even waited to see if he would change his mind. He only reached out with one hand, keeping his book before him in the other, and took up his mug.
Quietly, I went over to Kirti and beckoned her with a tilt of the head. She came to me with reluctance in her step, but it was not too long before we were leaving the room.
“Good night, sir,” I said.
“Good night, sir,” Kirti mimicked with utmost solemnity.
No response. I took Kirti by the hand and we turned towards her bedroom, sidestepping Mrs. Fairfacs.
Before we got too far, I heard Mr. Thorne. “Chuck. Stay.”
I looked over my shoulder. The dog was peeking out into the hall, following us with his eyes. With reluctance equal to Kirti's, the creature turned on its massive paws and disappeared back into the study.
After installing Kirti before her homework assignment—to write an essay about the native Pima peoples' Saguaro cactus fruit festival—I went to my own room. This was usually my time to work on lesson plans for the upcoming days. However, again I was too disturbed by an evening encounter with Mr. Thorne to welcome customary activities.
I called into the quiet, “Mrs. Fairfacs, please.”
She appeared before me, her dress hem hovering just over the carpet. “Yes, dear?”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Fairfacs, but could you give me some information about Mr. Thorne, please?”
I was hoping she had a handy data spiel she could just spit out. She did not. “What sort of information, dear?”
I bit my lip. If Mrs. Fairfacs could hear and see me, so could the house system. If the house system could see me, it could record my questions—and replay them for Mr. Thorne. Asking, “Why is he such a moody bastard?” was not an option.
“Mrs. Fairfacs, why did Mr. Thorne return to Emhain Macha last night?”
I expected her to say something about his being ill and needing a place in which to recover. Again, I was surprised. An expression of regret flashed onto the servant's features. “I'm sorry, dear, but I couldn't tell you. That is information that I hold in confidence, and I cannot betray confidence.”
I knit my hands together, trying to form another query. “Does Mr. Thorne always return to Emhain Macha so infrequently?”
“I'm sorry, dear,” she said, confusion once again molding her features. “Define 'always,' please?”
“Never mind. Or—clear the query, please, Mrs. Fairfacs.” I gave her a second to run my command while I pursed my lips, almost stumped. “Mrs. Fairfacs,” I essayed, “when did Mr. Thorne arrive at Emhain Macha for the very first time?”
She smiled broadly, as if providing this answer gave her the greatest joy. “Nearly seven years ago, after the accident.”
“What accident?”
“The accident that killed Senator McDonald and the Senator’s wife and daughter. The McDonald family was yachting in the North Sea when a terrible storm blew up and capsized their craft.”
“Do you know why Mr. Thorne would come to Emhain Macha after those deaths?”
“Emhain Macha was left to Mr. Thorne by Senator McDonald. Mr. Thorne was Senator McDonald's next closest living relative.”
“What was the relationship between Senator McDonald and Mr. Thorne?”
Again she re-ran her regret script. “I'm sorry, dear, but I couldn't tell you. That is information that I hold in confidence, and I cannot betray confidence.”
I took another half-minute to formulate in my mind the most direct query I could. “Mrs. Fairfacs, could you describe the frequency of Mr. Thorne's visits to Emhain Macha over the past seven years?”
“Why, Mr. Thorne has visited Emhain Macha an average of every eight point two-seven-five months since his initial arrival. Each visit lasts an average of one point seven-zero-one days.”
“Why does Mr. Thorne come here so infrequently and for such short periods of time?”
Mrs. Fairfacs's lips formed a little round “o” before she replied, “I'm sorry, dear, but I don't know how to make guesses like that. His face often expresses negative emotions like anger and sadness when he is here. Does that help?”
Not exactly, I thought. “How does Mr. Thorne spend the majority of his time when he is here?”
“Mr. Thorne works in his terminal on business for an average seventy point three percent of his waking hours per visit.”
Finally I thought to ask, “And what is Mr. Thorne's business?”
“Mr. Thorne is a professional itinerant spoken word artist. He is founder of Warrior Poets, Incorporated.”
Of course. This explained both the books and the studio Kirti had shown me on my first day.
“Will you be needing anything else, Miss Jane?”
“No, thank you. That will be all, Mrs. Fairfacs.”
She disappeared, and I sat on the edge of my bed, arms wrapped tightly around my waist, thinking. The most telling thing was what was not being told: Mr. Thorne was keeping secrets.
Then again, why should that bother me? Everyone has secrets to keep, most of them relatively benign. Why did I spend as little time as possible with my clothes off while in this house? Because I did not want the house system to have too much footage of my spindly nakedness scurrying about. There was nothing suspicious and everything natural about that.
But hiding the relationship that ended up with one receiving an underground mansion as a senator's bequest—that was different. My inborn nosiness clamored for me to hop into my terminal and do a search for “McDonald and Thorne.” I turned towards the entrance to my terminal, shut like a sleeping giant's eye, and paused.
I'd already asked Mrs. Fairfacs enough questions to busy the house system with adding to the behavior profile I assumed it was keeping on me. In an ideal world, one's personal terminal is a confidential place. But ours, the Naomi-girl in me knew, is not an ideal world. Who knew what suspicions I would kick up—in the house system or in Mr. Thorne himself—were I to inquire further?
I found myself facing a teacher's worst nightmare, having the reminder repeated most frequently to one's students thrust back at one's self: this would be an opportunity for me to practice my patience and manners.
