Chapter 1 #2
The four Greenaway children sat dully on the sofa.
Henry was the oldest, age nine, with hair that burst out behind his ears.
Sarah was seven, with long hair that she kept in a braid down her back.
Felix was five, with big glasses that made his eyes look enormous and buggy.
And Mona was two and adorable, babbling happily and trying and failing to get off the sofa.
Henry kept her at bay until he got distracted, and she nearly fell.
To help him, Nora hurried forward and sat on the sofa with her hands around Mona’s stomach.
Mona laughed, as though it was the funniest thing.
It was the only laughter the house seemed to know.
“We’ve had a bit of a problem with our most recent nanny,” Aunt Cynthia explained, arching her brow, “which means we’re going to need your help for the time being, if that’s all right with you.”
Nora understood that she had no way to argue with her aunt.
Her aunt and uncle had taken her in, and now they expected her to be a live-in nanny, one who was endlessly grateful and unwilling to accept payment.
Nora’s mouth went dry. She’d never babysat before.
The only job she’d ever had involved helping her parents with the paperwork at the bakery.
When her parents had closed the bakery last year—selling it to a young woman who wanted to try her hand at running it—they’d said they wanted to spend a few years figuring out what was next for them.
Nora knew this meant that they didn’t have very much money when they’d died.
It meant that Nora didn’t have much to call her own, not now and not when she could legally inherit it at eighteen.
It was then that Aunt Cynthia said that she’d be joining Uncle Everett for dinner in another room, while Nora ate with the children.
Nora watched as Aunt Cynthia disappeared, wondering why she’d been asked to change into this swanky dress if nobody saw her save for the maids, the chefs, and the children.
She had half a mind to go upstairs and rip it off.
That first dinner was nothing short of a disaster.
Maybe because they missed their old babysitter, the kids were enraged and eager to throw food and yell.
Nora sat glumly, trying not to show how upset she was.
But when the maids came to clean up the floor, she shot out of her chair, wanting to help them.
The maids ushered her back to her seat, telling her that she couldn’t help.
“No, no, miss,” they said over and over. “You should enjoy your food.”
But how could Nora enjoy anything?
It was after dinner that she realized she was meant to put the kids to bed.
Henry showed her to their rooms, which were lined with iconic and expensive toys, beautiful teddy bears, hand-carved wooden horses, and gorgeous wall decorations.
She knew that the kids didn’t see how stunning it all was.
How could they? But she couldn’t blame them for their circumstances.
No surprise that the kids were boisterous after dinner.
Felix sped around the playroom, throwing toys, while Sarah sang songs and banged on her play piano.
Mona alternated between sobbing and laughing, and she needed a few diaper changes, which Nora understood were her responsibility.
She’d never changed a diaper before, but it was relatively easy, the act of helping a real person become more comfortable.
Henry alternated between acting far older than he was and far younger than he was.
Nora prayed that they would exhaust themselves.
But it was Nora who fell asleep first, strewn out on the playroom floor.
When she came to, she realized that the others had also fallen asleep, Henry with his head on a teddy bear’s stomach, Sarah on the playroom sofa, Felix on the floor, and Mona curled up against Nora, as though she needed protection.
Slowly, Nora carried each of them to bed, burdened by the weight of the world.
That night, alone in her bedroom, Nora reasoned through the following months of her life.
Aunt Cynthia had said that babysitting the kids would be a temporary thing, that they’d struggled with their previous babysitter and needed Nora to fill in the gaps.
But could she trust her Aunt Cynthia to tell the truth?
More than that, what about the children?
It was clear to Nora that they were lacking in love and attention.
They still didn’t trust Nora, which made sense, as she was new and uncertain around them.
But what if Nora could pour all the love she had into caring for her cousins?
What if this was the distraction she needed?
Or what if she had no idea what she was talking about? What if she were doomed to be brokenhearted for the rest of her life?
The following morning, Nora woke early and went down the hall to the kids’ bedrooms to see how they were doing.
Everyone was awake and eager. They had more energy than she thought possible.
Henry said he was “so hungry that he could eat an entire alligator,” so Nora gathered them up and led them downstairs for breakfast. En route, they ran into Aunt Cynthia, who was red-eyed with bedhead and complaining of a wretched hangover.
“Please, Nora, keep them quiet, will you? Or take them out of the house,” Aunt Cynthia warbled.
Nora knew better than to cause a scene. Hurriedly, leaving the kids in the little breakfast nook, where they hollered and sang songs, she went to the massive state-of-the-art kitchen, where she greeted the same maids and chefs from last night—Greg and Tony the chefs, Jan and Pam the maids, and told them that she needed a breakfast and lunch picnic for the kids.
“I’m going to take them to the beach,” she said.
“Is their mother too drunk to care for them again?” Jan murmured.
“Jan!” Pam cried, swatting her and turning her attention to Nora, whom they didn’t know if they could trust yet.
Nora offered them a soft smile, crossing her arms over her chest. “I can make the picnics myself,” she said. “I don’t want to get in your way, though.”
Happily, Jan and Pam showed Nora around the kitchen, telling her where they kept the fruit and vegetables, the cheeses and the breads, the meats and the desserts.
Nora couldn’t believe how well-organized it all was.
She wanted to ask if her aunt and uncle ever came back here, or if they ordered everything via the maids and stayed out of it.
She didn’t know what it meant to be rich.
She also knew she needed to hurry. The kids were getting louder by the second.
“Honey,” Pam said before she left with the big picnic basket, laden with enough food for herself and her four cousins, “we’re so sorry to hear about what happened to your parents.”
Jan, Greg, and Tony nodded, furrowing their brows.
“If you need anything,” Jan offered.
“Anything at all,” Tony added.
Nora was touched. She thanked them, then sped out of the kitchen before she burst into tears.
She then scooped up the kids, went back upstairs to fetch their swimsuits, towels, and beach equipment—like sand buckets, sand shovels, and floaties—and led them to the long white stretch of beach that the Greenaways called their own.
It was unfathomable to her that this was all theirs.
They didn’t have to worry about any public beach-goers and could enjoy every sunrise and sunset over the water as though it was painted on the sky just for them.
At first, things at the beach went okay.
Nora was careful and watchful, with her hand around little Mona’s at every stage.
Henry, Felix, and Sarah ran in and out of the waves, shrieking and splashing.
It was only June, which meant the water was still pretty cold, although it was in the upper seventies and warm enough to swim.
Nora set out a large blanket and fed them breakfast and plenty of snacks.
She remembered sunscreen and smeared it on their faces, frightened of sunburns that would surely make them cry and cry.
But at some point that afternoon, after they’d been outside for hours, the tides turned.
Felix began crying first, and then Mona joined him, conscious that she was the only real “baby” and therefore able to cry as much as she wanted.
Sarah started crying, then Henry. Their sobs echoed out across the water.
Nora, who’d lost everything, began to cry, too, and it felt impossible to stop.
Her chest shuddered so violently that Henry stopped crying for a moment, petrified, maybe, that she was about to die.
Nora was so cloudy headed that she barely registered what happened when it did.
Suddenly, a shadow crept over the five sobbing people.
A voice came out of the blue. “Hold on, hold on.” A few minutes later, that figure returned, bringing with him five ice cream cones, which he passed out, one after another.
The last landed in Nora’s hand. Surprised by this act of generosity, she blinked up at the figure.
Her cousins’ cries had ceased, as they were all hyper-focused on the ice cream before them.
She put her free hand over her forehead so that, even in the harsh sunlight, their savior came into view.
It was a man, a boy. A teenager, maybe slightly older than she was. He had shaggy black hair and eyes the color of the Nantucket Sound. He knelt, worry etched deeply in his scowl, and said, “They shouldn’t be doing this to you.”
Nora couldn’t speak. She didn’t know who he was. Maybe she imagined him. Maybe she’d gone crazy. And then, he stuck out his hand and introduced himself. “I’m Max,” he told her. And for the briefest of moments, all her fears evaporated to the blue skies above.