Page 6 of The Nanny Next Door

Finally, I made it to a train and then to my hotel, and I practically sang her name in my head all the while. There was no room inside me for anxiety about whether the scheme I’d concocted would actually work, whether Aaron or Miles would hire the girl who clearly needed a job. How could they say no to such a lovely creature, especially when neither of them could afford—for the first time ever, maybe—to be picky? Lila Dawson was maybe a godsend, the answer to my colleagues’ prayers, an angel who had dropped into my path just in time. And I was halfway to believing she could be an answer to my own deepest wishes, too.

4

MILES

Most people probably felt relieved when they came home from work for the evening, but the second I crossed the threshold into my familiar brownstone after a long day of meetings and research, I just yearned to be back in my lab. These days, the lab was the only place I really felt at home. Hell, it was the only place I felt anything at all.

Well, anything I was interested in acknowledging. The haunting presence of grief still clouded every room of this house, and I had no interest in breathing it in. It was only recently that I’d gotten it to stop choking me.

Stress tightened the muscles in my neck and shoulders as I walked further into the house, but I willed my rigid body to power through it, to continue my slow exploration of the near-cavernous house that was supposed to be a home despite its sparse decorations and distinct feeling that we’d just moved in, though we’d lived here for years now.

The brownstone was horrendously overpriced, as was every dwelling in New York City, but we’d opted for something less flashy than we could really afford with what Felipe called my “genius money”. I cared less and less for physical signs of my wealth as time passed, and I’d never been materialistic to begin with. Some may have called the house clinical. Its lack of color, sparse decor, and clean, modern furniture didn’t scream “welcoming family home”. It suited me fine, though. Especially because no amount of homey interior design could make me more excited to be here, especially with the oncoming storm of my nanny leaving. While I knew that Mrs. Nyugen was currently, blessedly, still here, entertaining my child in the upstairs bedroom I often avoided like the plague, I also knew that each second that passed pushed us closer and closer to the time when she’d be leaving us for good. Leaving Olivia with me.

A poorer replacement the world had never seen.

My anxieties screamed in their walled-off, silent way at the back of my brain, threatening to break free and unleash their noise. I couldn’t have that, so I added an extra padlock, a vault door with a ten-digit code, an alligator-infested moat to keep them from getting to me. The tension eased a little the further I shoved the feelings down.

This was a talent of mine, a hidden one the world would never try to reward or pay me to display. Compartmentalizing, the grief counselor I’d briefly seen had called it. I liked to think of it as overcoming. Asserting my dominance over any strong feeling that threatened to rear its ugly head. Before I’d overcome mine and Olivia’s greatest loss, when I was still in the thick of the darkness, my feelings had almost destroyed me. But I had work to do, and it was too important to abandon. So, I’d simply decided not to allow something as petty as human emotion to get the better of me ever again.

That fortitude was what allowed me to walk up the stairs to my child’s bedroom. Just to check on her, make sure I was doing my duty as her only parent despite my complete trust in Mrs. Nyugen’s childcare abilities. The door was open, the room’s warm light and my daughter’s effervescent laughter spilling out into the hallway in stark contrast to the rest of this place. I swallowed hard as I stepped into the doorway.

Olivia’s room looked like it belonged in a different house—the kind where happy families lived and loved. Pink paint and a giant princess castle decal decorated the walls. The floor was plush carpet, and a plethora of toys that were not scattered because of Mrs. Nyugen’s diligence. The small girl, three years old and full of more fire than her father ever had, was tucked into her princess canopy bed for her nightly bedtime story, her tight curls of caramel-brown hair tucked under a small silk bonnet (pink, of course). Tonight’s story was a brightly-colored picture book about—what else?—a princess. While I hovered in the line where the dark hallway transitioned into a pretty pink paradise, Olivia’s loving nanny was reading to her with plenty of silly character voices. They were just wrapping up the tale when Olivia’s warm brown eyes found me lurking in the doorway and she let out a heart-wrenching, “Daddy!”

“Hello, Olivia,” I said quietly and with far less enthusiasm. I wasn’t capable of that level of energy anymore. My daughter’s smile was a thousand watts, bright white baby teeth illuminated against her warm brown skin—a blend of her mother’s deep ebony and my own indoorsy pallor. I couldn’t see a hint of me in that face otherwise, though. She was all Janessa.

I didn’t use that name anymore, though. A wave of… something threatened to rear its head. Overcome, my inner voice demanded before what would surely be a sharp agony could get to me. I took a sharp breath through my nose and steeled my nerves, and then it was back to the everyday gray.

Mrs. Nyugen turned over her shoulder to look at me, her well-lined face soft with encouragement. “Hello, Mr. Kramer. Would you like to come tuck Olivia in?”

My child squealed in delight, excited by the prospect. There was hope and sympathy and worry all tied up in the kindly nanny’s expression, too, and all of it only amplified when I shook my head silently at her. I tried not to notice how Olivia’s small face seemed to sink, too. Now it was guilt that threatened to escape the impenetrable fortress in my head. I had to outrun it before it could gain a foothold.

“I’m going to grab some dinner and then get some work done,” I said through tension clogging my throat. It was true, but only partly a real excuse. I could make my own hours, prioritize other things in my life over work if I really wanted to, but the part of me that was capable of prioritizing family had died long ago. I avoided Olivia’s gaze as I gave a perfunctory, “Goodnight, you two,” and headed back downstairs to eat leftovers at the kitchen island.

After a quiet dinner alone, I felt some of the heaviness in my body leave at the prospect of getting some more work done. The logical side of my brain, the scientific side I’d used to amass a fortune I wasn’t particularly interested in, was safer ground for exploration than anything emotional. When I was locked safely in the cold comfort of my home office, fiddling with calculations through the expensive scientific software on my computer, the ease of everyday life came back to me at last. I settled into the usual grind, not a worry or pesky emotion in sight.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been working when my phone buzzed in my pants pocket. I answered it automatically, still typing away, my eyes never leaving my computer screen.

“Kramer,” I barked.

“What a way to greet your dearest friend,” Felipe’s smooth voice answered me over the line. I sighed.

“Hello, Felipe. To what do I owe the pleasure?” My voice dripped with sarcasm, and he laughed in the incandescently happy way he always did when faced with my sullenness. A more mismatched pair of business associates had never existed, surely.

“Well, mi amigo,” he started carefully, something like mischief slightly altering his usual tone, “I may have found a solution to your nanny problem.”

Felipe told me about a girl he met on the street, her serendipitous need for nannying work. Though it was ostensibly a business matter, my friend had nothing of the sort on his mind. I could hear something dreamy in his voice, practically picture him looking wistfully into the sunset from a comfortable chair in his high-end hotel room, imagining a future full of romance with this down-on-her-luck young woman in a starring role. It wasn’t an unusual state for Felipe. He rarely got this way about actual real-life women, though. I was tempted to tease him about it, point out the transparency of his infatuation with this Lila Dawson, but the prospect of finding a potential nanny for my daughter took precedence.

“Have you vetted this girl?” I asked Felipe. “Seen her credentials?”

“Not yet,” he admitted.

“Do you know when she’s available to start?”

“Miles, please. You can give her the third degree when you meet with her.”

“So that’s a no.”

“Well, I’m guessing she’s available right away, since she was so panicked about finding work. But come on, Kramer. You know you can’t exactly afford to be picky, especially if you want to avoid any unsupervised kid time during Mrs. Nyugen’s transition out.”

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