Page 12 of On Thin Ice

Which meant that it wasn’t long before the meetings became more of a formality than I would have liked. Sinclair asked that I be dressed in what he called business casual—and, when I looked up on the internet exactly what that meant, I realized I didn’t have much that would be considered appropriate, other than a few dresses and, of course, the jacket I’d worn at the college the night I’d had to leave.

So the dress I put on before heading to his office was one I’d already worn to this meeting twice before. I was able to get away with the sandals, but that also wouldn’t last much longer as the bright pink polish on my toenails was beginning to wear off. My nails had already grown enough that there was a thin line next to the cuticles that sported no polish, but that wasn’t noticeable. What was obvious was how a little of the polish had worn down at the top of the big toes and the polish on the second toe on the right foot had a chip in it.

It would still be several weeks before I would stop wearing open-toed shoes for the season, so I was probably going to have to break down and ask Edna if she would buy me polish remover—or tell me if there was any in the mansion. Surely a place this big had something like that in one of the bathrooms.

I’d also drawn up a plan for school like Sinclair had asked—but I’d backtracked a bit. The school I really wanted to attend, the one with all the bells and whistles, was ridiculously expensive—and, in the back of my mind, I was afraid. What if Sinclair wound up letting me get saddled with that bill after all? Even if I could get a job at a prestigious museum, would I ever be able to pay it all back? Especially having to wait until I was almost thirty to begin? And would I ever be able to rise up the ladder fast enough for it to be worth it?

So I put together a proposal for three different online universities—my dream one, the one that I would never have been able to afford on my own, and two others with decent programs that I would enjoy, even though they weren’t my first choice. The other two were far more affordable—and then I wondered, after all the work to apply, what if I wasn’t accepted?

And that would be my argument when Sinclair would ask why I had been, as he’d called it earlier in the week, indecisive.

When I walked into his office, he wasn’t sitting at his desk as usual. Instead, he was standing at the window behind the desk, his hands in the pockets of his gray slacks, looking out at the greenery. And I wondered what he was thinking. Whenever I caught him doing this—what looked like contemplating—I thought he was lonely. This evening, he wore a long-sleeved light blue shirt, but the cuffs were unbuttoned and rolled up, as if he were getting ready to perform some sort of manual labor.

It was rare that I got to see anything other than his hands, because he dressed in business attire frequently. There had only been a couple of times he’d worn shirts with short sleeves on the weekends, and I’d admired the swell of his biceps as they disappeared under the fabric.

I knew he had to know I was there, unless he was even more deep in thought than I could imagine. My sandals weren’t noisy but they did make a shuffling sound as I walked down the main hall—and then, when I entered his office, the rugs absorbed any noise my shoes might make. But I stopped just inside the doorway, waiting for him to acknowledge me.

When he turned around, I felt my breath catch in my throat. His blue eyes were ablaze, making me think of looking at the burners on the gas stove as a child, how, when the heat was turned down low, the flames were blue instead of orange. Did that mean that he was going to devour me like forest fire, leaving nothing behind but ash?

Or was my mind simply being melodramatic?

“Good evening, Lise,” he said, his voice sounding rather normal.

“Mr. W.”

I could barely hear his sigh before he said, “Please take a seat.” After he did the same, he said, “I’d like for you to call me Sinclair.” In my head, I had been for a while but I couldn’t remember when I’d made the switch from Mr. Whittier. I simply nodded my assent and handed him my timesheet as well as a printout of the spreadsheet showing all I’d catalogued downstairs over the past week.

He flipped through the pages and, as he did, I wondered like I always had what exactly he was looking at. Was he making sure I’d put in an honest week’s work—or, at least, what looked like one on paper? Forty hours with “unpaid” lunch breaks? Or was he seeking patterns or the lack thereof? Did he study his real employees’ timecards like mine?

And then I realized, after having met them as a servant just over a week earlier, that they wouldn’t be the types who had to clock in and out. Every last one of them had to be salaried, and I suspected they probably worked more hours than I did. At least, that was what I’d often heard about business people. Sinclair didn’t seem to, although once in a while he would come home later or have to go back out. But that might have been a perk of being the boss.

When he looked up, he said, “You really think that Downey painting is worth between two and three million dollars?”

I had to fight not to smile, because that was the painting I’d tried talking to him about a while back and he’d blown me off, saying things about art being impractical and not needing more money. “Yes, I do.”

“What did you base this on?”

“Her entire body of work thus far. Many of her recent paintings have sold for millions at auction and—”

“All right. Then I suppose we should find a good place to display it.” He looked up from the papers. “You’re familiar with what it looks like. Where in the house do you think it should be displayed?”

Based on its warm colors—oranges, reds, and pinks, as if it were sunset peeking through a cityscape…or, perhaps, a sunrise—I felt inspired. “I think it should go on the west side of the main hallway.”

“Hmm. I don’t know that there’s room there for another painting.” While I tried to think of another place—or of a painting that could be taken down—he continued. “What else do you have there?”

I looked down in my lap at the remaining three sheets of paper. “You wanted me to bring…an education proposal.”

“Yes. What school have you decided on?”

“Well…I got to thinking. What if I applied to my dream school and didn’t get accepted? I need a backup.” As I searched his eyes, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Was he buying what I was selling or could he see right through me? Maybe I was indecisive, but I also wasn’t stupid. I didn’t want to place the entire scope of my life in his hands—because, even though I found I was trusting him more and more, I knew he could be ruthless.

I couldn’t take that chance.

But he didn’t say a word, so I continued. “So I chose three schools. This one,” I said, flipping the sheet of paper so he could read it before sliding it across the desk, “has the lowest tuition of the three. Classes are asynchronous—as all the school’s offerings are—but I can only take one class at a time, and most classes last one to two months.”

I waited for him to say something, but his eyes were taking in all the information I’d gathered on the sheet, basically a version of the school’s About Us page, copied and pasted onto the Word document, after I reformatted the text to match the rest of what I’d written. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what information was most important to Sinclair, so I didn’t know if I’d overdone it or hadn’t given him enough data to make a decision.

Because he still wasn’t speaking, I slid the next sheet of paper over to him. “The tuition for this college is slightly higher but their courses are self-paced. You pay tuition by the term and take whatever classes you like—but you have to finish one before you can take another. You can take as many classes as you want for the same amount.” If I were paying for it on my own, I had decided that, even though the tuition was a little higher than the first one, I could push myself to complete the coursework fast. At least that was my idea.

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