Candy had been on a week-long trip to Europe, a trip planned by her parents that she spent investigating political feelings towards the United States in France and England. They had meant for her to attend some fashion show or other, and buy a "more suitable wardrobe," as they put it. She had given her ticket to an aspiring model that had stared forlornly at the entrance, and instead attended a free concert by a local band. Buying a copy of their CD, she promised to pass around a few more to her friends back in the States. They thanked her enthusiastically, not even knowing who her parents were.
The airline delivered her luggage straight to her home. Stars were taken care of with a level of competitive indulgence that made anything fair game. They knew that the patronage of stars attracted passengers desperate for a bit of celebrity-spotting, and therefore more business. Candy didn't bother returning home after returning from the airport. Her parents were in Los Angeles for the week, and the housekeeper in her cold mansion was a grouchy underpaid immigrant who spoke barely any English. Maddie was much better company, even if Jesse was in one of his more annoying moods.
She didn't bother to knock on the Daltons' door. It quite literally was her second home, and no one would bother to answer the doorbell. Anyone they wanted to see knew enough to just walk in. She found that the front hall was newly mopped, still a bit damp. Her shoes tracked no dirt, but left tracks in someone's work. She looked around, but no one was there to apologize to. She knew Maddie hadn't done it, and no maid in her memory had lasted long enough to get to such a task, between the three permanent residents. Jesse was too demanding, Derek was too suspicious of privacy threats within his own home, and Maddie would tolerate no bad attitudes.
She found Jesse in his room. The door was open. Candy spun in the center of his room, surprised. She didn't even have to act. "Your room is clean," she announced, seeing him at the computer. He was undoubtedly playing one of the violent shooter games with some other person online, bad-temperedly shutting off his power before admitting to losing a game.
"Yes. Some new maid came in while I was still at the hospital. She won't do it again." He didn't look away from his game, intent on a computer-made figure of the highest quality available that had just decapitated an enemy fighter with some combination attack.
Candy made a face. She didn't know why people played those games. "She's a brave girl, then. I wouldn't go through that mess that you have had stacked in here since we were seven. Why won't she?"
"I don't like her. My father and Maddie are near infatuated with her, and Maddie pretty much said that she'll resign if the girl goes. She's taking the thing under her giant maternal wing, and insisting that the girl has nowhere else to go." He pressed a switch, and his computer screen lost its image of his fighter dying from some unseen attack. That was his usual response to a loss.
"Why do you dislike this one?" Candy was resigned to this by now. Jesse found flaws in most everyone, though he hadn't dared try his imperial tactics with her. She had beaten him up when they both were six, after an arrogant little movie star's son had targeted the anchorman's brat. She hadn't been much better, she knew now, but she did try to forget the preconceptions her parents had taught.
"She claims that she's mute, and proved it by writing some gobbledygook on a piece of paper. All that Madeline could read from it was her name." He found the latest plans for her project on his computer after rebooting it, pointing to a new feature. "That one guy in London wrote me back. Apparently, his son the wannabe rock star talked to a certain red-haired Candy about a friend named Jesse, and this guy's a mechanic for a scuba company that wants to help. Your rock-star boyfriend added a postscript."
"I'll look him over at home, and he's not my boyfriend." She didn't fall for his tactic. He was changing the subject. He never did like to discuss the inevitable debate. Nothing she said would convince him that he was a spoiled prig, and nothing he said would convince her that he was right in treating everyone else that way. Still, it was a familiar routine, and one that Candy routinely won when he forfeited. "What's this about the maid?"
"She can't say a bloody word."
"So?" Candy asked tartly. She was easily irritated by her friend, but she knew that he was a good guy. When not being a judgmental bastard, that was. "And what was her name? If she can't say it, the polite thing to do is share it."
"Lily Havfrue."
Candy frowned. "That sounds familiar. I've never heard of her before, but I've heard something with that name." She was fond of self-education, beyond what the text-books showed, which irritated Jesse. She would never have a real life if she always was burying herself in some book.
"Well, you'll meet her. Unless you forget after all your jet lag, Madeline's serving dinner in a few minutes. She already planned on putting out an extra plate. She loves you, calls you 'that nice girl' and even said to my father that I should be more like you." He was angry with Madeline, not her, and was resentful that he should be anyone but himself.
"I'm eating here. My parents don't expect my plane back until tonight, and they'll call at about three in the morning, after completely forgetting, then go into a quieter corner of whatever party they're at and pretend to be in their apartment. I asked about the noise, once. They said it was the people downstairs." She didn't sound angry, either. After so many years, anger and bitter tears turned to a dull apathy.
Dinner that night was an uncomfortable affair for Jesse. Candy told Maddie all about her trip, detailing the way that the prime minister's method of succession was superior to a president's. She claimed that the United States should be a parliamentary democracy, and that educated minds abroad agreed that a two-party system was ridiculous and only spoke of how easily Americans were caught in useless tradition, such as electoral colleges.
She also spoke to Lily. The two had a conversation, as if Lily had no trouble speaking at all. Candy asked questions that needed only a nod, shake, or a gesture, and Maddie helped in keeping up a full conversation. For a moment, Lily glanced at Jesse, almost asking for him to say something. But he only glared, and she looked away suddenly, ripping her gaze away, to answer a quick question.
Jesse had something to think about that night. Candy had not minded the mute girl at all. Before Candy had left for the short walk to her house, she had quite clearly told Jesse that he ought to be nicer to people, and that Lille wasn't at all one of the star-chasers that he despised. Perhaps he had been a little harsh on a speechless person, taking advantage of the fact that she couldn't talk back to retort a reprimand. But that was folly, of course.
He was Jesse Dalton, already slated to be on the cover of People for his eighteenth birthday. The party would be just a few days after his birthday, coinciding with the release of his father's next movie. In show business, every last appearance was about attracting fans, entertaining them, and keeping them pleased with whispers of rumors that would never headline the most outrageous publication, but kept fans murmuring.
He fell asleep with a much easier train of thoughts in his mind. Surfing was out of the question for the winter, after the recommended rest period and the months of bad waves until the next year. He could always help Candy with her latest project. She wanted to be a journalist as well as a marine biologist, an odd combination for anyone, and her new SCUBA machine would revolutionize exploring under the coast. Without bulky, dangerous oxygen tanks, dives could be longer than ever, and in smaller spaces.
He woke with a start, just before seven in the morning. An instant of dream had shocked him from sleep. A tentacle was again constricting his chest, squeezing until his lungs would burst, and all he heard was the beautiful voice speaking quickly. The image thankfully did not last long. However short it had been, he would not be sleeping again for the night.
Throwing on an outfit haphazardly from various pieces of designer clothing that cost enough that most would treat them with kid-gloves, he decided to go outside. Even if surfing wasn't an option, he still loved to watch the waves crash against the shore. He did not even tell Candy of this small thing, not wanting anyone to know that he wasn't fully a tough guy. He had his moments of being dangerously sentimental, and his like of the sea was not going to headline a sparse tabloid.
There was someone else on the beach. It was January, and this was private property. It had been some time since his August incident in the ocean, and the paparazzi had given up hope of finding a somehow forever-scarred invalid. He had faint circular marks from the odd bites, but that was the only physical reminder left of the encounter. He moved closer, frowning. He hadn't seen another car in the area.
It was Lily. She had barely stayed in the same room as him for the last five months, but didn't seem skittish. He had caught her staring at him, blue-grey eyes unreadable, but she had not looked ashamed. By the tilt of her chin that she had while watching him, he should feel repentant for some unknown sin. The thought was laughable. As was his response to many such topics, he was Jesse Dalton. He did not have such problems.
He felt irrationally angry. The beach had always been the one spot that he could come to be alone. Maddie usually prepared breakfast early in the morning, before leaving for town to help an invalid friend. Candy had her own beach to wander in the early morning. His father had no time for such a thing, walking the beach while he could be working on some new movie, his many investments, his standings with the press. Aisling, still the girlfriend of the year, would not go on the beach unless absolutely necessary. She hated sand. That had left him, until she had come. Thinking back, he realized that he hadn't needed his beach sanctuary for six months. That did not make it hers, though.
He was about to say something. Without explanation, he stopped. He could not give a specific reason. She looked at the ocean hungrily, not with the passing fascination that was all he could offer. She wrapped her arms around herself, drawing a bathrobe tighter. He could see pajama pants with little fish on them, some from an animated movie his father had laughed at a few years ago.
Her eyes did not look so boring. They were still some shade between blue and grey, but this time he saw them next to the sea. The sky was overcast and grey, and the oceans a midrange blue that seemed to take the grey into its shade. Her eyes matched the sea, or were close enough that he could see a resemblance. The early morning wind whipped past, making her dark hair blow past her shoulders in groupings of strands. For a moment, an errant beam of sunlight showed a blonder tone in her hair.
Lily turned, so gracefully that he hardly noticed the motion. She had caught him staring, for once. Good. Let him stare. She could get used to that. She gave him the smallest of nods, a civility one might grant to a rock of particular interest, and walked back to the mansion. She used a side door, one close to the wing of the house that the serving staff always used. He saw a light turn on, dim through just-closed curtains. She was not about to give anyone a showing.
He walked back inside, contemplating thoughts he had always managed to stop before. Only when he was eating a breakfast of freshly made French pastry did he realize that he had never once looked at the waves that he loved so much. The waves sometimes held dolphins, which he had always listed unhesitatingly as the most captivating sight. Thinking of how the image of a maid on a beach had frozen him, he may have to reconsider. He may be Jesse Dalton, but he may just have to change his mind.
That day, Lily took a step that was daring, for her. Usually, laundry in baskets was left in the hall, and empty baskets were collected later. A small chore was no real work for Jesse, and it kept the girl he had taken a disliking to out of his room. She stepped inside. He and Candy were altering some image on the computer screen. Seeing her, Jesse raised no objections, but shrugged slightly. Candy, looking from one to the other, did not say a word and instead went back to the diagram. Sometimes, it was better to just not comment. Jesse enjoyed playing the part of Hollywood's favorite actor's bad boy of a son far too much for his own good.
Small changes were made, nothing drastic, over the next three months. Jesse gradually began to eat lunch at a set time, but would often delay without any real excuse until Lily arrived. Neither said a word, or made any real gesture, for any of the meals. Jesse was still uncomfortably aware of the fact that she couldn't talk, and almost felt that speaking would be somehow mocking. She kept his room neater than a pin, satisfactory to the toughest of drill sergeants. She mock-ridiculed him sometimes, when she was in a teasing mood and he wasn't glowering, waving a dust-covered cloth fiercely as she ineffectively hid a smile. She did not know how a room could get so mussed in just a few days.
Dinners were something else entirely. Jesse felt safer with Madeline there. She had been surprised when he had asked if she preferred Maddie, which she did. She had attributed the change to Candy, who had called her Maddie for years. But watching the way that he would glance at Lily when she felt no one was looking, she guessed there was another motive involved. Jesse finally had a friend who had far less of an income than him, someone who worked for a living.
Lily did work. She single-handedly restored every room in the manor without a locked door. Once those were done, she painstakingly relayed a request for a key. Derek had provided a master key, one that would unlock any room in the house. Lily had blushed with surprise that he would trust her so, and silently promised to not disappoint him. She always had her one time of day, however, that wasn't devoted to work. No one said a word about it, except for the one time that Maddie had remarked a little ritual never hurt anyone, and that people were all the more productive with a break of some sort.
Every morning before dawn, a single figure would stand on the beach. She never let the ocean touch her skin, an odd fact that never escaped Jesse. He had encouraged her to just once, diving in fully clothed to show her that the water wasn't dangerous. She had looked longingly at the water, but finally shook her head. It was too risky. He promised that she wouldn't drown, but she had merely left without another gesture. Her robe billowed out behind her, and her slippered feet made odd tracks on the sand. She would never walk barefoot, another thing she could or would not explain. Odd tracks or not, she would not go back to the water that day, despite the fact that her usual time had been cut by three quarters. Jesse never brought the subject up again.
The happiest day was the time that Lily and Jesse, with no help but a speaker telephone call to Candy, decided to make cookies. Chocolate chip cookies, to be exact. Lily laughed at the odd measurements, and at the flour that dusted his nose. Candy couldn't help but laugh through the phone that neither knew how to soften butter. The lopsided and admittedly lumpy cookies finally made it into the oven. Candy came over almost an hour later, giving them time to learn for themselves that burnt sugar was disgusting, and allowing time to dispose of burned cookies without any blows to their pride as chefs. To her surprise, a few dozen awaited her on cooling racks. Most were ellipses or some other fragmented shape rather than circles, but they tasted fine enough.
Candy was helping them clean up when the doorbell rang. All three looked that way, curious. No one rang, if they knew the family. They would simply walk in. Lily looked away. She couldn't answer doors, not without completely confusing whoever was there. Candy shrugged. It wasn't her house. She kept doing the dishes, which Lily dried carefully.
Jesse opened the door to find the most beautiful woman he had ever met. She wore a dress that would be too small on most anyone, but it seemed to fit her perfectly. It was black, and matched her high heels that Candy dismissed as ankle-breakers and the alligator-skin purse she held. A cabdriver carried a large trunk, a black leather construction that did not have a single scuff mark on it. She wrapped her arms around him without hesitation, cooing into his ear.
"I'm in love with you already, Jesse Dalton. I'm Sirene Seple," she said, backing away only when he looked suitably shocked, and not likely to shoot off a negative response to her proposal. "Sirene to you. I know it's a bit sudden, but I can't help myself. The trunk can leave with me, if you don't want me to stay. But can't you give a girl just one night? I have the perfect place to go."
"I'm free tonight, Sirene," he said, with his most charming smile. This was more common than people guessed, really, and this woman was gorgeous. It would help his image, being seen with such a person. Even if she wasn't what he was looking for, one night wouldn't hurt. How could it?
