Chapter 3
THREE
RIDGE
D espite only being able to have the ad up for the weekend before I absolutely had to interview and hire, I got a decent amount of replies. Now I just have to pray that the stars align and the perfect candidate can also start immediately. And by immediately, I mean tomorrow.
“Dad, how many people are coming to interview, and how many of them are girls and how many are boys?” Lou asks from her seat next to me.
She’s sprawled out on the floor next to my office chair, with three different coloring books open at the same time. It appears she’s started a picture in each of them and keeps bouncing from one to the next and so on. It’s a weird technique, but it keeps her pretty occupied.
I’m not sure if anyone has ever interviewed for a nanny inside a tattoo shop. This might be the first time. They’ll be watching her at my house, and I considered having them meet me there, but the idea of that many strangers knowing where I live felt weird. What if they’re undercover child kidnappers? It’s the perfect ruse. So I felt like a different location was best. I mean, it’s not exactly neutral, because now they know where I work, but it serves as a buffer.
“There are four nice ladies coming to see if they’re a good fit to be your nanny during the day while I work,” I say. “No boys.”
I don’t think I would have been opposed to a male nanny. I just didn’t see any on the website.
“Good,” she says. “I don’t want a boy.”
“You like the boys who work here,” I say. “It would be like that.”
“I know,” she says, looking up from her page. “But there aren’t enough girls around here.”
A pang of sadness hits me in the chest. It’s a very specific kind of sadness. I hate that she doesn’t have her mom around. I hate that she’s lacking women in her life. She has Grandma Alma and that’s it. I don’t have siblings and neither did Vanessa, so no aunts or uncles or cousins. The guys here serve as her uncles, but none of them even have serious girlfriends. And when she says things like this, it’s just one of those subtle reminders of this hard reality.
“Well, maybe we will find one today,” I say before giving her my best hopeful smile.
She turns her attention back to her books, satisfied for the moment. I really do hope we find someone today. I need it. She needs it. We’re a very needy pair right now.
Thirty minutes later, the first applicant arrives and Waylon shows her back to the office.
“Nice to meet you,” I say, reaching my hand out to shake hers.
“Oh, sorry, I don’t shake,” she says.
“Oh. Alright.” That’s weird, right? Maybe it’s just a pet peeve or something.
“So I have your resume here,” I say, holding the piece of paper up. “It looks like you have a lot of experience working in daycares. What makes you want to change to nannying a single child?”
“Less germs,” she says.
That’s it. That’s all she says. She just stares blankly at me, and when she doesn’t elaborate, I ask another question.
“Would you be able to incorporate learning activities while watching Lou?” I ask.
“Of course.”
Again, she doesn’t elaborate. She reached into her purse and pulls out a bottle of hand sanitizer, then squirts a huge glob into her hand and begins lathering it in. Mind you, she’s touched nothing since entering my office.
“And Lou really loves being outdoors, so I’d love for whomever I chose to make that a regular activity.”
“Oh, I can’t take her outside. Too many germs.”
Okay, well that about does it. I double-check the name on the resume. Miss Betty Schmidlin is not as promising as her resume makes her out to be. Which worries the shit out of me. What if they’re all like this? Good on paper, crazy in person. I feel doomed.
I thank her for her time as quickly as I can, not even bothering to introduce Lou to see what she thinks. It’s important for both of us to like the person watching her.
“I didn’t like her,” Lou says, not even looking up from her coloring.
It seems she’s paying attention. I don’t know if that makes this easier or more difficult.
“Yeah, she’s not the one,” I say, reassuring her.
Minutes tick by until Waylon appears at the door with the second candidate.
“Hello,” she says, in a cheerful tone. “I’m Laura Conlin.”
“Hi. Ridge Jessup.”
She pulls my hand in for a firm shake, which is already a huge improvement over the last lady. Taking a seat in front of me, she pulls out a notepad and pen, which also seems like a very good sign.
“So it says here you’ve been a nanny for the same family for the past five years. May I ask why you’re moving on from them now?”
“May I be completely honest with you?” she asks.
“Um, sure,” I say. “Always.”
“I fell in love with the dad,” she says. “And we had an affair.”
Oh shit. Jesus, she just said that, didn’t she?
“And so the wife fired me,” she says. “And he stopped talking to me.”
Why is she telling me this? She should stop talking.
“I’m going to miss the kid,” she says.
Oh, well, that’s a nice sentiment.
“I had started to think of myself as his stepmom, so it was like losing a child,” she says, clutching her chest.
And there it is. My creep-meter just went way the fuck off.
“So you would be like my stepmom?” Lou’s head pops up from her coloring book, staring up at this woman in front of me with a curious expression.
Oh. My. God.
“Maybe,” Laura says.
She looks back at me with what can only be described as “fuck me” eyes. I might be out of the game, but I know that look. I get it sometimes when I’m in the grocery store with Lou or pushing her on the swing at the park.
Before she can say anything else, I thank Laura for her time and tell her I wish her the absolute best recovering from her heartbreak and the loss of her child. I didn’t really know what else to say.
When NanniesRUs said they do background checks, I guess that only really catches the crazies that have been in trouble with the law. It’s obvious I’m going to have to weed out the other kind.
“I didn’t like her either,” Lou says. “She seemed more interested in playing with you than me. I want someone who wants to play with me.”
I really wish she hadn’t said literally any of that. My cheeks are hot and I feel pain behind my left eye. That’s a stress headache, for sure.
Once Lou’s attention is back on her coloring book, I rifle through the stack of papers on my desk as I try to find the resume for the next candidate. If the dates on her job history are any indication, Anita Caldwell is the oldest of the candidates today. Maybe that means she’ll be a little more grounded and proper. She’s at least fifty, so maybe her eyes are all done fucking people.
Several minutes tick by. And then several more. Ten minutes after the appointment was supposed to start, an email dings on my computer screen, and I open it to find a message from Anita.
Dear Mr. Jessup,
I’m sorry but I can’t attend the interview today. I came to the address you provided and it was a tattoo shop. The idea of being in such a place makes me very uncomfortable. I would urge you to stop associating with tattooed people immediately. For the sake of your child.
She goes on for a few more sentences about how she can connect me with some fine male members of her church to mentor me into making better decisions. She also says she’ll pray for my soul in her nightly prayers.
Honestly, that’s not surprising. It’s not the first time either. There’s always one in every bunch who treats me like this. And compared to the rest of today, it barely registers on my scale of shock. Laura still holds the title.
I don’t bother responding and turn my attention to the stack of papers in front of me. I sort through them for the last resume of the day. What was the name? Danielle? Diane? Ah, here it is. Darcy.
Wanting to spare myself from any more surprises, I read over her education and job history with a fine-tooth comb. In fact, I read it twice, trying to use some kind of sixth sense to sniff out anything amiss.
But from what I can tell, she’s pretty young, and this would be her first nanny job. What drew me to her resume was that she’s currently in school for early childhood education.
A knock at my door draws my attention from reading. I look up to find a woman standing there. She tucks a strand of rich brown hair behind her ear and adjusts her glasses on the bridge of her nose. A silent moment scratches longer as I take in her milky skin and the smattering of freckles over her cheeks. Long lashes frame deep blue eyes that flicker with something I don’t have a word for.
It’s only when she presses her plump pink lips into a line and clears her throat that I realize my assessing gaze has made it all the way to her full hips. I snap out of it, pulling my eyes from her body and focusing them back on her face.
“Hello,” she says, her voice happy and soft. “My name is Darcy Anderson. I’m here to interview for the nanny position.”
Shit. Fuck. This is so not what I need right now.