LITMIR.BIZ

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extensive and varied work history and then he’d hired her. It was the first time in her life she’d ever asked him for anything. She couldn’t remember her mother, who’d died when she was small; she’d been raised by her mother’s mother. Her father had simply cut himself out of her life, although she knew he’d given Gran money every month to support them both financially.

      And now, as during her interview, she was grateful to him for not mentioning the reason she’d been fired by the State of Colorado—which the entire town knew. She’d been an avalanche researcher with the misfortune to be in the field when a United States senator from Colorado accompanied a Realtor and a land developer into a backcountry area just outside Sultan. The group of visitors had stopped to ask about her work and she’d demonstrated the volatility of current avalanche conditions, using a snow pit she’d just dug. After they told her their destination, listened to her strenuous advice to avoid the area because of extreme avalanche danger and started forward anyway, she’d said, Are you on crack? Which was probably not the most tactful way to comment on their foolhardy behavior.

      The senator, to his credit, had tried to prevent her from being fired—he was a politician after all and no doubt wanted her vote. But the Realtor also had friends in high places, and he had been massively annoyed.

      Her previous job had been with the local towing company. Speaking too frankly to customers who told her how to use equipment they’d never been trained to use had cost her that job. Well, actually, it was one snowy night when she’d finally said, Fine. I’ve got other calls. Dig it out yourself.

      She had taught skiing at Silver Slope until she’d told one parent that he was spoiling his daughter and turning her into a brat.

      She’d taught avalanche-awareness classes over the mountains in Telluride until a wolf dog she was watching for a boyfriend destroyed four beacons and two shovels she’d left in her car. He’d also consumed the passenger seat, but since the avalanche school didn’t own that, it hadn’t figured in the complaint. Rory’d replaced the equipment, which had left her in debt, but it hadn’t mattered.

      This time, however, nothing was going to go wrong. She reached for the packet. “Sounds good. When will they be here?”

      His lips smiled slightly. “Today.”

      Rory nodded. “I’ll get right on this, then. Thank you.” She didn’t say for what, because her gratitude took in so many things. Thank you for giving me a chance. Thank you for believing in me.

      Thank you for noticing me.

      She was at the door when her father spoke. “Where is the snake?”

      Rory bit her lip. Of course her father knew about Lola; everyone in Sultan knew. He probably didn’t know Rory had just put down Gandalf. “At the house,” she said. “She’s…contained.”

      “Maybe,” her father suggested, “you three should simply move her home outside.”

      “Yes,” was all Rory said. Let Lola freeze in her reptile palace? At the moment, and despite Rory’s recent loss, the suggestion was not entirely unappealing. Besides, snakes were different from dogs, and Rory could not believe that Lola had any feelings whatsoever for her human family. Finally, she said simply, “She’s not my snake.”

      Just a member of her household.

      SEAMUS LEE HAD a career, money, four children and a recent ex-girlfriend who had left him burdened with a wealth of accusations he was having trouble clearing from his mind.

      Every girlfriend you’ve had since Janine died has just been a glorified nanny.

      Unfair. He’d always employed an au pair, in addition to Fiona Murray, who was essential to his household, far more than just a nanny or housekeeper.

      And it’s not as though you’re any kind of a father. They might as well be orphans, Elizabeth, his ex, had continued.

      He should never have gotten involved with one of his artists. Yes, she was a freelancer; and yes, she had income independent from what he provided. In fact, she was loaded and she worked because she wanted to, not because she had to. He’d wondered if she was behind the anonymous gift he’d received of a deluxe term at the Sultan Mountain School. Elizabeth had certainly approved.

      The drive to Sultan will probably be the most time you’ve spent with them since their mother died, she’d said.

      AND THAT, unfortunately, was true. So he’d accepted the gift without knowing who was behind it. He would spend this time with his children.

      He would manage without Fiona.

      Well, not the entire time. His seventy-three-year-old household manager would be joining them after a month of sea kayaking in Mexico with her son and his wife.

      So alone he was taking the children out of school in Telluride, Colorado, where his own business—the empire of Ki-Rin, the manga and anime character, half-boy, half-dragon—thrived, and over two mountain passes to Sultan to spend three months at the Sultan Mountain School. There, the children would receive school credit while improving their skills as snowboarders, skiers and mountaineers and learning mountain science. The characteristics of aspens and ponderosa pines, the mechanics of avalanches, the rules of water. Four-year-old Belle would learn to ski. And Seamus would demonstrate that “we never stop learning,” by completing the three-month course alongside them.

      He would also prove that he was not the stranger to his own children that his ex-girlfriend had seemed to think he was. At least she hadn’t also become an ex-employee.

      I have no problem with your art, she’d said. It’s very accessible. But you’re not.

      Not emotionally accessible?

      Well, there might be reasons.

      As there was also a reason—a good reason—why he approached any time alone with his children with extreme caution. There was part of his emotional makeup that he definitely wanted to keep inaccessible to them, for the sake of the family’s survival.

      He drove a new Toyota SUV hybrid, the latest in nanny cars. It was his first trip anywhere in the vehicle, which had been the previous au pair’s car while she lived with them.

      Now, fourteen-year-old Lauren had claimed the front passenger seat. In the back, twelve-year-old Beau and seven-year-old Caleb took the window seats while Belle, in her special car seat, endured the position of the youngest—the middle of the backseat, with her stuffed animal, a mouse, in her lap. Behind them, in a metal dog crate, rode the family’s new pet, Seuss, a twelve-week-old German shepherd.

      The drive to Sultan took seventy-four minutes. It felt like seventy-four days, however, with Belle asking far too often when Fiona would be back.

      “I hate this town,” Lauren announced, glowering as they passed the first junk store on the edge of town—The Sultan Flea Market. “The people are, like, backward.”

      Another good reason to spend some time out of Telluride, Seamus thought. Sure, Telluride was “a great place to raise kids,” with world-class skiing, good schools, culture, of a sort, and natural beauty. But he’d noticed a tendency in his children to see themselves as intellectually brilliant and world-class athletes. Seamus, born and raised in the Silicon Valley in California, surrounded by exceptional brains, the brother of a cyclist who’d finished near the top in the Tour de France, knew his children to be simply “above average.” And more than a bit snotty.

      They were beautiful children. Beau was the only one of the four without a horde of friends. He wore white T-shirts on which he wrote, in magic marker, obscure quotations from obscure texts, sometimes in dead languages. Beau actually might be brilliant, a thought that terrified Seamus. Already, he was studying trigonometry and his first love was chess. He had little interest in snowboarding, skateboarding or skiing, and spent too much time indoors playing video games on his computer. Now, Lauren gazed through the windshield with visible dissatisfaction. She’d been chosen homecoming princess of the freshman class that fall. She was so popular and had so many friends that she hadn’t wanted

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