"Oh, before I go," said Mr. Jenson as he donned his coat, reaching a hand into his pocket. "I thought this might interest you."
His voice had dropped to a conspiratorial tone as he handed Jessica a tarnished, silver half hunter fobwatch. With an excited gasp and delicate fingers Jessica accepted it from him, looking hopefully at his excited brown eyes. Jessica turned her attention back down to the watch, engraved with an elaborate Celtic design. Though the hands were visible, it was difficult to discern the time for the visible inner workings of the watch distracted Jess's eyes. Upon clicking the device open, Jess was delighted to see the intricate cogs and wheels through a protective layer of quartz. Then, something strange about the Roman numerals caught her eye. The hour and minute hand were both frozen at XIII. "It has thirteen hours!"
"I know, isn't it strange?" he said, looking over his shoulder at the door through which the missus was waiting, likely with impatience. "It doesn't work, but I felt you would appreciate something odd like this."
"Of course I do, it's beautiful," Jessica said, gently tracing the etched design with a forefinger. "Thank you so much."
"Oh, you're welcome, you deserve it for taking care of Rachel tonight." A flash of disappointment, perhaps even embarrassment crossed his face. "But there's something else odd about this watch. I don't know if you'd be interested, but…I've looked all over and inside it, with a magnifying glass, no less, and I can't find any indication of the maker."
"Hm. Well, maybe I'll figure out the mystery of the thirteen-hour watch with no maker," Jess joked. He laughed his pensive laugh, toying with his wedding band as he looked from Jess to the watch.
Mrs. Jenson slammed the door open, red curls flouncing and button nose flaring with frustration, shaped eyebrows drawn sternly over her black eyes. "Timothy, sometime today? We're not paying this girl so you can sit around and chat while our dinner reservation gets passed down the waiting list!"
"Coming, dear," he said with a soft chuckle, shaking his head at Jess. "If she ever gets off that computer, tell her Daddy loves her."
"Will do, Mr. Jenson."
"I've told you, call me Tim."
Jess smiled as he left, weighing the watch in her hand. As she walked slowly down the hall, Jess thought over the issue of the creator-less watch. Perhaps there was a place he had overlooked. Then again, he was a clever man and one with a keen eye; Jess recalled one time he had described every single thing she'd been wearing on a five-second chance encounter at the supermarket. He did not easily overlook anything, and Jess doubted she could find anything he'd missed.
In any case, it was a really beautiful watch.
It was in her nature to avoid babysitting kids like this. But Jess needed the money. She really, really needed the money.
"I'm bored," whined the blond-haired little girl for the fifth time in twenty minutes, letting her pink DSI fall to the floor. "What can I do?"
Jess tried really hard to keep patient, tugging a hand down her face as she thought through a list of ideas she'd already tried. "You're seven, aren't you? That's old enough to read. Go read something."
"But I don't know what I could read!"
Patience. Patience. "Come on," Jess sighed, getting up from her cross-legged ponder session in the family's nice leather chair.
To quell Jess's annoyance at this unimaginative child as she led her to her father's library, she reminded herself why she needed to be here. It wasn't just the money she needed; it was the trust. Mrs. Jenson tended not to like Jess very much, for reasons she couldn't quite put a finger on; and while she normally wouldn't care the opinion of some stuck-up interior designer who had very little to do with Jess's life, she did care in this instance, because she liked Mr. Jenson. He was a really cool guy, and Jess really could talk for hours with him about practically anything. And if she wanted to keep that up, she would have to stay on Mrs. Jensen's good side, and that meant keeping her spoiled little daughter happy.
Mr. Jenson's library smelled like books. It didn't smell like dusty or damaged books, but not quite like new ones; it had the slightly musty smell of well-loved books. It was a small room, about eight by ten feet, with full bookshelves on two opposite walls and a window with a cushioned ledge on the wall opposing the door. Beside the window was a well-worn leather armchair, cracked and faded on the one arm exposed to the sun beaming through the window. There was one heavy velvet curtain at the window and it was always tucked up to one side, dust settled on the folds to show it hadn't been moved in some time.
"Alright," Jess said, thrusting energy into the syllables as Rachel took a seat on the ledge and kicked her legs against the wall under it. Ignoring the sound of the child's heels no doubt scuffing the mint green wall, Jess drew a finger along the spines of some thick romance novels. "Probably not." Her eyes scanned the shelves until Jess found one with thin picture books and bright covers.
"Dr. Seuss," Jess muttered. "Ooh, Charlotte's Web…Huckleberry Finn…Ah, yes, Grimm's Fairytales…" Jess's brow furrowed at the unmarked red spine of a leather-bound book. It bore no dust jacket, and as she slid it out from its spot, she suspected it might even be hand bound.
The leather was soft, scuffed around the edges, the front cover was bordered with two thin black lines about an inch from each other and acting as a track for ten blocky black roses.
"The Labyrinth." Jess ran a finger over the embossed yellow words upon the surface, quirking an eyebrow. "I've never heard of this book." With the care of holding a butterfly, Jess stroked the yellowed pages and pressed a page open, leafing briefly through the pages. She glanced back at the bored little girl, her chubby hands picking at a loose thread in the cushion. There's no way she would be interested in this book.
But Jess would be.
"Here," Jess said, coming to her with the first book of A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
She took Bad Beginnings and opened it just past the title page, scanning it with her nose turned up. Jess watched intently for her to take interest. "I don't like it."
"You've only just started—"
"It's says things what are confusing," she sneered, "just like Daddy. He says silly words that don't make sense."
"Well, he does have an impressive vocabulary," Jess remarked fondly, smirking.
"I can't read that one," she said, pointing to Twain's work. "Mommy said it says a bad word what rhymes with Tigger."
"Well of course it does, it was written in—" Jess huffed in exasperation. The only DVDs this little girl owned were things like High School Musical and movies about talking dogs who acted a lot more like humans than dogs. Jess doubted she even knew who Tigger was. "Do you even know who Tigger is?"
She shook her head. Jess turned back to the bookshelf, scanning with purpose this time. Her finger touched the spine of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh as her eye snagged on a book on the shelf just above. "Oh he even has the Tao of Pooh. I'm impressed."
Jess handed the book to the bored girl and opened it for her, coaxing her to read as Jess took her seat in Mr. Jenson's chair. Upon opening the book in her hands, she noted the curving, twining design on the end-papers. It looked hand-drawn.
The title page simply read "The Labyrinth" and when she turned the page, it was blank. There was no publisher (as you could expect from a hand-bound book) and there was no year, and there was no author. Thoroughly intrigued, Jess began to read.
Tried to. And then, "This book is for babies. I don't like it."
"Well do you want to pick out one for yourself?" Jess offered, patiently.
"No. I don't like reading. Daddy reads too much and it makes him weird," she huffed, throwing the book down.
"Hey!" Jess immediately jammed her tongue into her cheek and dove for the book, leaving The Labyrinth on the chair behind you. "Look, you've dented the pages…augh. New idea. You don't get to be in the library."
"Good!" and she stomped out of the room as Jess stroked and replaced the abused book. Jess had only just picked up the red book when she yelled from down the hall, "So what can I do?"
Jess groaned. "What toys do you have?"
"Toys?" she asked, making an exaggerated effort to sound like she had never heard of the thing before.
"I know you have toys."
She did have toys.
She had six-hundred and twenty-seven of them. "Daddy made me count them when I was bored once."
"That's brilliant," you laughed to yourself. "Well why don't you play with any of them?"
"I do!"
Jess raised an eyebrow.
"I do!"
"Well then, why don't you play with them right now?"
The opening and closing of her mouth and wandering eyes indicated her carefully chosen but failed attempts at argument, and she sighed in defeat.
Woop! First chapter of a new Romantic/Adventure story, hope you enjoyed the chapter. Feedback? Sorry if there's any word's misspelled, I'm quite Ill at the moment.