Page 43 of One More Baby for the Boss

Elijah tried to remember what Alex had told him. What Jack really needed was Elijah’s presence in his life. If Elijah could really focus and be there for his son, things would get better. After all, it had worked before. Jack’s behavior had been helped by Elijah taking a more active role in his life.

So he sat down at the table. “Can I draw with you?” he asked.

“Whatever,” Jack said.

Elijah let that roll off his back. “Can you tear me out a piece of paper?”

“No. I need all of this paper.”

“Okay,” Elijah said, keeping his voice cheerful. “No problem. I’ll get some of my own.”

He went over to the kitchen island drawers. They didn’t have a junk drawer — Elijah’s family had had a drawer like that growing up, but Elijah didn’t make it a practice to keep things he didn’t need. Now he wished he had. A junk drawer would have had a pad of paper in it. Eventually, he found a paper bag neatly tucked into the side of the recycle bin. He pulled it out and came back over to the table. Sitting down across from Jack, he picked up a crayon and began to sketch a pattern on the bag.

Jack said nothing.

“So I’ve been thinking,” Elijah said to him. “What if we don’t get a new nanny after all? I know we talked about hiring someone to replace Alex, but I’m not sure that’s something we’re going to have to do. We’ve gotten by with just the two of us for a pretty long time now, right? Maybe we can do that again.”

“You’re too busy,” Jack said. “You need to hire a nanny because you have to work all the time.”

“Not all the time,” Elijah said. “It hasn’t been like that so much anymore, has it, Jack? You and I have gotten closer. We’ve spent more time together. We can keep doing that, can’t we? We don’t need outside help.”

Jack shrugged. “Do whatever you want,” he said. “I don’t need a nanny.”

“Do you want one?”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay,” Elijah said. “If that’s how you feel about it, I think we won’t hire someone. I think it’s best for the two of us to focus on our family right now. For us to spend more time together.”

“Okay, Dad,” Jack said wearily, as if this was something he had heard a hundred times before.

“Jack, if you want me to hire someone, you need to tell me,” Elijah said. “Just be honest with me. We can tell each other the truth, can’t we? I know you’ve been unhappy lately. I want you to tell me why.”

Jack sighed and put his crayon down. “You made Alex go away,” he said.

“I didn’t make her go, Jack.”

“Well, you didn’t make her stay.”

“Jack, I can’t make Alex do anything. She’s a grown-up. You know that.”

“You didn’t even ask her to stay,” Jack said. “Did you even want her to?”

“I liked Alex,” Elijah said. “I liked her a lot. She and I were friends. But she was ready to go, and I needed to respect that. We both need to respect that she wants something different for her life now, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean her time here wasn’t important, and it doesn’t mean she cares for us any less. You know that, don’t you?”

“If she really cared, she would havestayed,” Jack insisted.

“That’s not true,” Elijah said. “Alex needed to move on. She had other things she wanted to do.”

“Like how sometimes you don’t have time for me because you want to work?” Jack asked. “Are you going to move on one day too?”

“You know I won’t. You and I are a team, Jack. Together forever.”

“But I thought Alex was a part of our team too,” Jack said. “I wanted her to be.”

Elijah sighed. This conversation was difficult and painful because the truth was that he felt the same way his son did. He had also wanted Alex to become a part of their team. Even now, seeing her name on the family tree that still stood in his son’s bedroom made his heart beat a little faster. Alex had told Jack that she wanted to leave that tree as a permanent reminder of her time with the family, and it was certainly that.

“Sometimes important people come into our lives and then they have to go,” he told Jack. “It’s hard, but it’s part of life. And that’s okay.”

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