some point in my life, I had learned to change a tire but had never done so since. Or perhaps I had just watched on helplessly all along, feigning interest as someone else did the dirty work. I never did like getting my hands messy.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Dan said. “I’m not letting you off so easy. We’ll practice on my car.”
It slightly annoyed me that he was bossing me around, but he was right, I should be able to change a tire. “That heavy old thing?” I grimaced.
“That’s my point, you shouldn’t feel intimidated by its size.”
“Why not my Land Rover then?” Then I remembered I’d let Kate take it to do the grocery shopping.
Dan talked me patiently through the steps. Showed me the jack, the lug wrench (which surely wasn’t called a lug wrench back home?), and where to place the jack, how to raise the car six inches off the ground, how to unscrew the lug nuts and remove the tire. How to put it back by lining up the rim with the lug bolts and tightening them by hand first, before lowering the car with the jack again—all this before you were even allowed to use the wrench. My hands were filthy, but I smiled away, determined to show Dan what a trooper I was.
“There we go, that wasn’t so bad now, was it? Okay, so let’s do it again,” he said, an annoying grin stretched across his face, his strong jaw set in determination.
“What?”
“Change the tire again. Just to make sure this wasn’t beginner’s luck.”
“I’ll remember,” I said. “I don’t need to do it twice.”
“You might not remember when you’re in a panic and stranded in the rain late at night, with no reception on your phone. I worry about you. I want to know you’ll be safe.”
“Okay, point taken.” My heart warmed to know he cared so much about me.
“This time I won’t give any instruction, not a word, you’ll do it on your own.”
I surveyed his big, bashed-up car. The whole lot could come tumbling down on me. I wondered, for a flash of a second, if this was a crazy idea. “Please don’t go,” I pleaded. “Just in case.”
“Just don’t put any of your body parts under the car and you’ll be fine,” he said, reading my mind. “But I’ll stand here and watch to make sure you’re not doing anything dumb, don’t worry.”
I began the whole process again, asking myself how it came to be that dominant men had a hold over me—that I let them get away with “educating” me. My father. Juan. And now Dan. Whenever I thought I had broken free from one, I invited another into my life, the pattern repeating itself. Men advising what to do, even when they were trying to help me.
I stood there with the wieldy wrench in my filthy, oily hand. “You’re so capable, Dan, you could get a really high-paying job. You could do anything if you put your mind to it.”
“Don’t change the subject, daddy’s little girl,” he teased.
I flinched at his new nickname for me. “Please stop calling me that!”
“Hit a nerve?”
“The joke’s over,” I snapped.
“Sorry, I was just kidding.”
“My father happens to have dementia and is in a very bad way.”
“Oh.” Dan chewed his lip and looked at the ground. “So sorry, man, that’s harsh.”
“Just don’t call me that silly nauseating nickname again, Dan, okay?” My eyes were pins, my gaze icy.
Dan took a step back, his hands up in surrender. But I could tell by the alarmed look on his face that he was scared of me.
Fifteen
Getting to know each of the triplets was like a study in anthropology. I couldn’t decide which of the three I felt the most at ease with, who fascinated me the most. I was still unpeeling their layers, finding out what made each individual mind tick the way it did, what made each heart flounder, or race, or rejoice.
“You know, the other day,” Kate began, “when we were talking about the architect who designed this house?”
Kate was driving me to Mr. Donner’s, to work. My ankle was still playing up, and she was only too happy to act as my chauffeur. She’d drop me off, go to work herself, then pick me up, and we’d drive back to Cliffside.
“The architect?” I said. “Lee what’s-her-name, the woman I had assumed was a man?”
Kate turned out of Cliffside’s driveway. “A lot of people think that. Kind of sexist really.”