Morgan and Tammy wake up the next morning to find that Skye has sleepwalked into their bed, along with Teddy the cat. They tickle her for awhile, and "soon the room filled with the aroma of bacon," which makes it sound like Skye is some sort of odorizer that releases a bacon scent when you tickle her, but really it just means Maya's cooking breakfast downstairs, which Skye is VERY excited about.
Tammy is supposed to meet with Dr. Rozak to tour the clinic (which I'm pretty sure is all they've been doing the last 2-3 days, but whatever, tour on) so Morgan and Skye decide to go to the beach.
“Go ahead, you and Skye head to the beach. Lance will catch up to you.”
“How will he know how to find me?”
Maya shrugged her shoulders. “You’ll be with Skye. That’s how he’ll find you.”Skye is loud, says hi to everyone she sees, and lures butterflies. She will indeed be pretty easy to track down.
Skye says she wants to leave in 15 minutes, and then we get this exchange, which I think is supposed to be cheerful joking but it's just kind of awkward and plays like there's genuine tension in the house and that Maya really likes pushing Morgan's buttons. (Well, to be fair though, who wouldn't? He gets aggravated so dang easily!)
“She wasn’t kidding. Skye likes to be on time, so now it’s fourteen minutes,” Maya said, gazing pointedly at the kitchen clock.
“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” Maya droned, and Tammy joined in.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Morgan snapped. “Can’t a man enjoy his coffee in the morning?” He walked toward the stairs.
“Thirteen minutes,” Maya joked, as Tammy continued with, “Tick-tock, tick-tock.”
With a theatrically nasty look, Morgan darted up the stairs by twos.
When they heard the door slam, the women high-fived, laughing."Yay! We've succeeded in annoying him! Now Skye can take over doing that the rest of the day!"
They're not kidding, though. Morgan goes to take a shower and shave, and Skye pounds on the bathroom door being all, "HURRY UP, I WANT TO GO TO THE BEACH RIGHT NOW!" She really is an incredibly impatient child. So impatient, in fact, that when he finishes shaving and goes downstairs, she lectures him on how he's six minutes late and if he were late like that to a job, he could get fired. (In case he didn't get that analogy, she also points out that if he were six minutes late to play in a Wimbledon tennis match, he would have to forfeit.)
Yes, Skye, please lecture the adults on how to respect other people's time. Let's start by pointing out that you could also get fired for going to your boss' house in the middle of the night and early every morning to wake him up and demand that he spend time with you. But apparently that's totally OK, because you're nine and bouncy-haired.
Skye runs ahead of him and when he finally catches up to her, she asks if he and Tammy are going to get divorced. He reassures her they're not, but that they have one major issue to work through. She asks if it's that they can't have kids, and he says yes.
“Well, have you prayed about it?” It was a typical, straight-to-the-point, Skye-kind of question.
“Yes, we have.”
“No, I mean really prayed about it?”Because obviously if God hasn't given them a child, they can't have really prayed about it. As she has done before, Skye here insinuates that they just haven't had enough faith yet, and therefore their sorrow and pain is entirely their fault. Morgan admits they haven't really prayed about it, and Skye lectures him on why they should do it while she plays with a butterfly that once again is drawn to her saccharine sweetness.
Morgan is, understandably, done with this topic, so he asks to see some cave Skye was excited about. Turns out the cave is an escape passage dug by POWs when they were imprisoned here during World War II, but they all drowned when the tide came in. She tells this story matter-of-factly, as well as sharing a story that Aristotle drowned himself around here because he couldn't figure out why the tide came in so often. (It's probably because ATLANTIS IS HERE.) Also a ghost story about how the one POW who didn't die, died on the island 40 years later to the day because one of the drowned men grabbed his leg from his grave and tripped him while he was walking around.
This is an extremely morbid couple of pages, and very creepy to hear a child calmly reciting, although Morgan is just amazed at how much like a tour guide Skye sounds.
Morgan decides to explore the tunnel, and as he does so, a strange man shows up on the beach, wet and bleeding, and claims he's a friend of Doctor L. L. and needs to see him immediately.
Without missing a beat, Skye growled, “You don’t know my father. I don’t trust you.”"I only instantly trust strangers who don't know my father when I'm on a cruise ship."
The man says he thinks the Leontious are probably dead and grabs Skye to try to make her give him more information. She yells for Morgan, who shows back up and hits the guy on the head with some driftwood. Turns out he's the evil liberal reporter from the hotel.
Unhindered by his injury, or the conversation, the reporter interrupted, “Why does she call you Dad, Dr. Hamilton? I see a front page story here.” He held his hand in the air, pretending to write. “Billionaire Father is dead, but Dad is alive.”Worst headline ever.
Fortunately, Lance the Tennis Player and two armed guards show up right at this moment and haul the reporter off to, um... clinic jail, where he'll be held for a couple days before they ship him back to Athens. Lance explains the reporter's there for political reasons, and he and Morgan send Skye away for a little bit so they can talk politics.
Turns out the reporter is an evil communist advocating for a one-world government, and they're hoping to leak the story about Doctor L. L. in a way that will topple the Greek economy, and then the European, and then the rest of the world. Skye is somehow really connected to this, as she's set up to receive the Leontiou fortune, but Lance won't tell Morgan how that is likely to help much of anything, instead saying it's up to Skye to tell Morgan the rest of the story that he is "not at liberty to release."
Not only can Skye charm dolphins and butterflies, play piano and sit on piano benches like a pro, speak a trillion languages, discover comets, and make everyone think she's charming when she's not, but she is apparently the only thing standing between the world and complete global collapse.
Mary Sue to the rescue!
(Chapter 21.)
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