Page 66 of Military Daddies' Nanny

Bella nods and leads her brother upstairs after giving me a kiss on the cheek. I recline in my seat when I’m alone again, sighing deeply.What have I done?

Another knock sounds on the door, and I snap my eyes open. It’s not the kids this time, but Karen. She pokes her head through the door, then enters the room, shutting the door softly behind her. “You busy?”

“Not exactly. What’s up?”

She settles into the seat across from me. She has a distant look in her eyes, and toys with a ring on her right hand absently. When she speaks, her voice sounds as if it’s coming from a far place.

“I stopped by a few minutes ago to ask if everything was fine. I was about to step in when I realized you had company.”

I let out a deep sigh. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough.”

“Well, they are kids. Kids tend to blurt out whatever they feel like.”

Karen smiles bitterly. “Except this time, they were largely right.” She rubs her hands across her face. “What are we doing Drew? Honestly. What are we really doing? You heard them. I don’t even know them anymore.”

“Karen—”

“I’m fucking struggling, Drew,” she spits in controlled rage, then erupts into a bitter laugh. “I have to be the worst mother in the world. What did I really hope to achieve coming back like this? What did I expect? That they’d just never grow up? That they’d jump into my arms and act like nothing happened?”

"Karen…" I don’t know what to say. While I believe that everything that happened is her fault, I can also see the raw pain in her eyes, and there are few things I’ve seen in this world as horrible as Karen’s overwhelming sorrow.

She holds my stare for a moment, something like resignation flickering through her expression, before giving a small nod. "I figured this was coming."

I'm acutely aware of the distance between us, a yawning chasm that six years' absence has seemingly rendered insurmountable.

Hell, if I'm being honest, there had been some smaller fractures between us for far longer than that. Some kernel of dissatisfaction or lack of true intimacy neither of us ever managed to rectify before the bottom fell out entirely.

Which makes this whole endeavor seem so much more futile, doesn't it? It’s like I've been desperately trying to sculpt something whole and perfect from the shattered remnants of what we once had. No matter how many times I try smashing the pieces back together, that hairline fracture remains.

Is that what this relentless fantasy has been about? One last grasp at saving the mirage of idyllic family life I somehow convinced myself we could still recapture?

"The kids..." Karen starts after an agonizing pause, her voice carefully measured. "They are never going to accept me as their mother."

It's not a question or even an accusation, just a plain statement of fact.

"You've...been gone a long time," I say at last, the words tasting like ashes on my tongue. "We've all had to find ways of...moving on, I guess. We adjusted to your absence until it became our new normal."

Karen's laugh is brittle, humorless. "And I came barging back in, like I could just insert myself into that dynamic without issue."

"You're their mother," I counter, needing her to understand this fundamental truth that seems to have gotten lost somehow. "Of course the kids were going to be excited to have you around again after so long. I think...we all got a little carried away in that feeling."

"You don't have to qualify it, Drew." There's a wealth of sadness in Karen's eyes now, mingled with that same resignation I'd glimpsed before. Like she's been slowly coming to terms with the same realizations now rattling around my skull.

"I'm the one who took off without warning, who left you to pick up all the pieces alone. I don't get to just...walk back into the lives you've all rebuilt and expect to slip right back into those roles without issue."

The words hang heavily in the air between us, finally giving voice to the elephant in the room that's been looming over this regrettable reunion from the start. Karen seems to deflate a little as she expels a shaky breath, her shoulders slumping.

"I really thought I could make this work, you know?" she murmurs, more to herself than me. "That if I was just patient, put in the effort to reconnect..." She shakes her head slowly. "But I think that ship has sailed."

There's no bitterness or resentment in her tone, just a somber acceptance that twists like a knife in my gut. Because she's right. For all the desperate, futile clinging I've done to make this picture-perfect, my kids are strangers to the woman I once vowed to love forever.

And Karen, for all her remorseful overtures and attempts to reinsert herself into our lives, she's just as much a stranger to the family we've become in her absence.

A heavy silence stretches out as that reality settles over us both, nearly suffocating in its weight. I find myself searching Karen's eyes, wondering if she can perceive the obvious truth I've been so stubbornly refusing to acknowledge.

That as nice as this reunion has been on paper, we passed the point of no return years ago. That no amount of manufactured bonding or wistful nostalgia can unmake the indelible stamp her leaving forged onto the structure of our entire lives.

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