8. Bryan
8
brYAN
“ N ova,” I started as I pushed my way into the kitchen. “Have you seen my daughter?”
“Daddy!” Amelia yelled. She wiggled her way off the chair she was sitting on and ran across the kitchen. “Come look at what we’ve been doing.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the kitchen table.
The kitchen looked more like a kindergarten classroom, decorated with paper snowflakes and paper chains and general kid crafts, than it did Emma’s kitchen. Emma wasn’t here right now. I would have to make sure that this was all gone before she came back or saw any evidence of it.
“What are you doing, kiddo?” I asked. I reached into the big bucket of popcorn sitting in the middle of the table and began munching.
“Hey, that’s for my gartlant, gartland.”
“Garland,” Nova corrected.
“That’s for my garland,” Amelia said. In front of her chair was a long strand of popcorn and cranberries on a string. “I’m sewing Christmas decorations.”
“I thought this was the kitchen,” I said with a smirk.
“Yeah, and I thought I was supposed to be a cook, but there’s this kid here,” Nova said as she nodded her head toward Amelia.
“I’m not a kid. I am Amelia,” my daughter corrected in her precise tone, the one that she always used after she had spent too much time with Mother.
“So, you two have already met, I see.”
“You could say that,” Nova said.
“Are you making decorations?”
“Amelia was a little bored and didn’t seem to have anyone to play with her,” Nova said.
Her eyes were wide, and she had a very stern expression on her face. I clearly had missed something.
“She came in to introduce herself because you forgot to mention that you have custody of your daughter.”
That’s what I had forgotten to mention. In my defense, Nova turned my brain into scrambled eggs simply by being in the house.
“I was hoping to make those introductions, but you” —I tickled Amelia under her arms— “weren’t supposed to be home for a couple more hours,” I announced. “I just now received a text from my mother letting me know that she had dropped Amelia off. Nobody came by my office to let me know that Amelia was home.”
“You said not to disturb you when you work from home. If the doors are closed, I have to be bleeding or unconscious,” Amelia repeated my often said words right back at me.
“I know, sweetheart, but you are allowed to tell me that you’ve come home, and your grandmother should have come in to let me know,” I said. “Thank you for finding something for Amelia to do. You know you could have said something.”
I looked at Nova. She shook her head and pointed at Amelia. “I’m with her. You basically said, unless somebody’s bleeding, not to interrupt you. I think we’re going to have to get a little bit of clarification on what’s going to qualify as interruptible.”
She had a point.
“We’re also going to have to have a little clarification on my exact job expectations.”
With the copious amount of crafting going on in the kitchen, I was pretty sure that Nova could manage some time with Amelia.
“I’m waiting for the agency to call me back.”
“Not somebody from the agency,” Amelia whined. She had, heard the term enough to know what it meant.
“What’s that?” Nova asked.
“It’s where Daddy gets my babysitters when Sherry isn’t available.” Amelia rolled her eyes in a move that smacked of her spending a little too much time with a teenager. However, I wasn’t about to limit the work I had Sherry doing for me. She was entirely too valuable, emotionally to Amelia and financially to me. By having Sherry here, I could almost guarantee that her mother would spend more time at work than at home worrying about her wayward teenager, because her wayward teenager would also be here, earning money toward her future college needs.
“I take it you don’t like babysitters from the agency?”
Amelia made a face and shook her head. “They aren’t very much fun.”
“I don’t pay them to be fun,” I replied. “I pay them to mind you. Make sure you do your homework. Make sure you get to bed on time. Make sure that you don’t spend all of your food time with your eyes going crossed staring at your iPad. Which, by the way, is why your grandmother actually texted. Apparently, you left it in her car.”
“I did?” Amelia asked. “I don’t remember.”
“How many times have I told you to make sure you have your iPad with you? Your grandmother is going to have it sent over later.”
“But—” Amelia started to whine.
“But,” Nova cut in, “you haven’t missed it at all, have you?”
Amelia’s eyes went wide and she shook her head, even though her little face looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“She hasn’t needed it, so no harm, no foul, right?” Nova looked at me as if that was my cue to agree with her.
Since she was in charge of cooking and she had kept my child occupied for God knows how many hours since Mother didn’t bother to mention what time she dropped Amelia off, I conceded.
“No harm, no foul,” I repeated.
“Since Amelia is making decorations with the popcorn, is there anything I can have for an afternoon snack?”
Nova held out a messy spoon that she had been stirring with. “You have a convenience store’s worth of snacks in the pantry.”
“I can make more popcorn,” Amelia volunteered.
“Popcorn sounds like an excellent idea. Why don’t you show me how to make it?”
I knew how to make microwavable popcorn. Amelia was little and she loved showing off her skills, and I tried to be a supportive and encouraging father.
“What are you making?” I asked Nova. I was too far away to peer into the bowl in front of her.
“Oatmeal bars, something easy that you can have for either a breakfast or a snack.”
“What have you started for dinner?” I asked.
She pointed behind her to a pot on the stove. “Italian wedding soup. Don’t worry, it’ll be filling enough. It’s full of vegetables and sausage. This way, the soup cooks all day, and that gives me a chance to familiarize myself with everything in your kitchen and figure out what it is that I need to go to the grocery store for. Your cook has this place pretty well stocked.”
She looked good in the kitchen. I liked the thought of her cooking for me and taking care of me. It was a thought I could get lost in if I didn’t keep my head screwed on straight.
The microwave beeped, and Amelia pulled out a steaming bag of popcorn.
“We need a bowl,” Amelia announced.
“Bowls are in…” Nova paused as she ran a pointer finger through the air. She picked a cupboard and gestured at it. “That one.”
I stepped over and opened the cupboard door, and as if by magic, she was correct. There were several large bowls. I pulled one out, and Amelia poured the microwave popcorn from the paper bag into the bowl.
“Thank you, sweetie.” I took the bowl. “Would you go into the pantry and grab a sparkling water for me?”
She opened the pantry and disappeared into its depths.
“So, you have a kid,” Nova said.
“Sorry, I forgot to mention that.”
“She was a bit of a surprise this morning.”
“What time did she get here?”
“I honestly don’t know. I had been here for about an hour when she came into the kitchen and announced her presence.”
I let out a long breath. “I’ll have to speak to Mother about dropping Amelia off without letting anybody know that she’s done so. I should be able to get a nanny in the next day or two. The agency is usually very accommodating and able to get me somebody on short notice. I hope she wasn’t a problem.”
“She’s not a problem at all. She’s quite adorable. However, I was hired to be a cook, not a babysitter,” Nova reminded me.
“That is correct,” I confirmed.
“I thought you might have changed your mind after you learned that I was a first grade teacher.”
“To be honest, that hadn’t even occurred to me,” I said. I had learned long ago that I could easily hire nannies through the agency, but they didn’t cook. And I never expected Emma to watch Amelia for me. As far as I was concerned, cooks and nannies were completely separate people.
“If you don’t already have somebody lined up from the agency, I have a proposal,” Nova said.
Amelia emerged from the pantry holding a green glass bottle out to me.
“Thank you, sweetie,” I said as I took the bottle of San Pellegrino.
“You were saying?” I returned my attention to Nova.
“It will probably save you some money in the long run, but if you increase my agreed pay rate by fifty percent, I’ll watch Amelia for you too.”
“Does that mean Nova would be my babysitter?” Amelia asked. She clapped her hands and danced around the kitchen. “Please, Daddy, please. That would be so great. Please don’t get anybody from the icky agency.”
When Nova laughed at her antics instead of correcting her, I decided that her proposal was a very good idea.