Page 38 of Dr. Single Dad

“Wow,” I say. Three sometimes felt like we were an army. I can’t imagine what six must have felt like.

“But you come from a big family too, right?”

“It’s me and my brother and sister. Not that big.” My family always felt like the three of us, rather than the five of us. We were a team. A gang. A unit. I can’t help but wonder if my parents were still alive, whether we would ever visit them. I can’t imagine it. Even as we grew, they weren’t particularly interested in us. We were an adjunct to their lives—a compartmentalized section of their existence they’d dip in and out of. They didn’t know us particularly when we were children, so it’s hard to envision a world in which we would have been close to them as adults.

“Do you use it as a base to see all your brothers?” I ask. “Or do you go to spend time with your parents?”

We catch each other’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Both,” he says with a hint of uncertainty that tells me it’s an unusual question. “But don’t tell my brothers that.”

I smile and see the corners of his eyes crinkle, so I know he’s smiling too. I look away. I’ve got to keep some kind of wall between us but it’s becoming more and more difficult. The more I know Dax, the more I like him and the more I want to know.

After a couple of beats of silence, he asks, “Do you see your parents a lot?”

“They died,” I say. “Six years ago.”

“Fuck, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” People always say they’re sorry when they find out my parents have died, and it never makes much sense to me. Maybe because I’m not sure what they’re sorry for—obviously no one is apologizing for murdering them in cold blood. I suppose they’re apologizing for my loss. Except I’m not sure itwasmuch of a loss. They were alive and then they weren’t. And honestly, it hasn’t made a whole lot of difference to me. Okay, so we don’t join them at Claridge’s forChristmas dinner. We don’t write them birthday cards. But our family is intact.

It’s still me, Eddie and Dylan.

As it always has been.

I felt like a fraud at the funeral. So many people crying and saying we were too young to lose our parents. I suppose on the outside it looked that way, but what they didn’t understand was we never had them to begin with. Not much changed for us. Dylan was at university, I was about to graduate Portland. It was only Eddie who was still living in the Mayfair town house. She was fifteen and every spare moment of her day she was studying. That year, my first job was a live-out position, so I could move back into the town house to live with Eddie. The plan was that once I turned twenty-five and inherited, things would change.

“My brother and sister and I are close. Like you and Jacob, except we hate each other less.”

He laughs and I get a flutter of butterflies in my stomach. “We don’t hate each other.” He pauses. “No, we really don’t. He’s just irritating. He’s the oldest, and he tries to over-manage situations. Over-manage me. He just needs to stay in his lane.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. “I’m sure Eddie and Dylan think the same about me.”

“But you’re so capable,” he says. “They must need you.” The sentence lingers in the air as if he wants to add something to it but knows he shouldn’t.

I take it as a compliment. It’s good to be needed.

I stare out the window, watching the oncoming traffic trying to get to the place we just left. Did my parentsneedeach other? Or anyone? Would they have grieved if Eddie, Dylan or I had died suddenly?

“My parents were pretty busy when we were growing up. They had really demanding jobs, working long hours,” Dax says. “And then I was the youngest. It’s easy to get…forgottenisn’tthe right word, because I never felt that, but I was able to get on with things in my own way because of the chaos and the sheer numbers of us.”

Something snags inside me—a sense of understanding. “I know that feeling,” I say. I’ve never thought about it like that, but as I grew up and the nannies were more focused on Eddie and Dylan, I was able to do pretty much do as I wanted, how I wanted.

“Really? But you were the oldest.”

“I flew under the radar in the way you’re describing.”

“Yeah, that’s a good way of saying it. Under the radar.”

“I didn’t do anything bad,” I say.

He lets out a half-laugh. “Right.”

“I just did what I wanted.”

“And you always wanted to be a nanny?” he asks.

“Yeah. Nannies were kind and helpful and made a real difference. I liked that.”

“Does the role live up to what you thought it would be?”

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