4. Ethan
CHAPTER FOUR
Ethan
By the fourth interview, it’s already clear this is a waste of time. A waste of my damn office.
I don’t let it show.
That’s the difference between knowing this and reacting to it.
Across from me, the woman finishes answering a question about routine structuring with the kind of confidence that reads well on paper and poorly in practice.
Her résumé was strong, excellent even, but there’s something missing, something that doesn’t translate through qualifications, references, or carefully rehearsed answers.
Oliver hasn’t said a word since she sat down.
That, more than anything, is the problem.
He sits on the far side of the room, watching with quiet, intense attention. He usually engages by now. Asks questions. Tests boundaries in subtle ways. Tries to understand people in the only way children can. Instinctively.
With her, he hasn’t bothered.
That tells me everything I need to know.
“Thank you,” I say, closing the folder in front of me. “We’ll be in touch.”
Her smile falters slightly, just enough to confirm she already understands the outcome.
“Yes, of course,” she replies, gathering her things.
I stand, offering a polite handshake.
The moment the door closes behind her, the room shifts.
The performance ends.
I exhale slowly, pressing my fingers briefly against the bridge of my nose before looking over at Oliver. “Well?”
He shrugs. “She talked too much.”
I nod once.
“And she didn’t listen,” he adds after a second.
That part matters more. “Anything else?”
He thinks about it. “I didn’t like her.”
I push back slightly from the desk, leaning into the chair. “That makes two of us.”
He perks up at that, just a little, appreciating being included in the decision. “Are we done?”
“Not yet. Sorry, bud. We still have a few more to see.”
I message my assistant to send in the next.
Sue responds almost immediately.
Next candidate ready.
Oliver shifts slightly in his chair, his attention already drifting. “Is this the last one?”
“Not quite.”
He exhales with the quiet resignation of someone who’s already decided this process is a disappointment.
I can’t fault him for that.
The next two interviews proceed much the same as the others, following a pattern that has become increasingly predictable over the past few days.
Each candidate arrives with strong qualifications, well-prepared answers, and the kind of professional polish that suggests competence, but none of it translates into what actually matters.
One's too rigid, approaching childcare as though it were a system to be controlled rather than a relationship to be built.
The other is warm but unfocused, lacking the structure necessary to provide any real stability.
Both of them attempt, in their own ways, to engage Oliver.
Neither succeeds.
By the end of the second interview, he’s stopped trying altogether.
Instead of sitting across the room, observing and testing in subtle ways, he’s taken up a position beside me, one hand resting against the arm of my chair as though anchoring himself there.
His silence isn't passive; it’s a quiet withdrawal that tells me more than any answer he could’ve given.
He isn't a child who disengages easily. Curiosity has always come naturally to him, as has the instinct to connect, to understand, to find his place within a new dynamic. Watching that instinct recede, even temporarily, is enough to confirm what I already know.
None of these candidates are right.
When the door closes behind the final interview of the scheduled list, I allow myself a controlled exhale, leaning back slightly in my chair as the room settles into stillness once more.
“That’s enough for today,” I say.
Oliver shifts immediately, the tension leaving him in a way that suggests he’s been waiting for those words for some time. “Good.”
I glance at the stack of remaining files, untouched and increasingly irrelevant. “This shouldn't be this difficult.”
Oliver considers that, tilting his head slightly. “Maybe you don’t want one really.”
There's a flicker that might be close to amusement at that. “That’s entirely possible.”
I rest my forearms against the desk, my gaze lowering to the papers without really focusing on them. There was a time when these decisions wouldn't have required this level of deliberation, when it would’ve been shared, balanced between two perspectives rather than carried alone.
Megan never approached these things the way I do.
She relied on instinct where I rely on process, reading people in ways that often bypassed logic entirely.
Where I assess qualifications and structure, she would observe the details others overlooked.
The pauses, the inconsistencies, the things people revealed without meaning to.
More often than not, she arrived at the right conclusion before I’d even finished evaluating the variables.
It made things easier.
I lean back further in the chair, my gaze shifting toward the window, though I'm not truly looking at the city beyond it.
“It was simpler before,” I say, the words measured, but no less true for it.
Oliver is quiet before responding. “Because of Mom?”
“Yes.”
The word settles between us with a quiet finality.
He accepts it without hesitation, because for him, the answer is straightforward.
Megan isn't an absence in the abstract sense; she's still present in the small rituals that have carried forward, in the habits neither of us has chosen to break, in the way her name still exists comfortably in conversation.
For me, it's more complicated than that.
The official report was definitive.
Pilot error.
A conclusion delivered with certainty, supported by data that was meant to close the matter entirely.
I never accepted it.
Megan had flown in conditions most pilots would avoid entirely, had handled system failures and unpredictable variables with a level of precision that bordered on instinct. She wasn't careless. She wasn't inattentive. And she didn't make the kind of mistake that report implied.
Even now, years later, the details refuse to settle into anything that feels complete.
There were inconsistencies. Small ones perhaps, but enough to raise questions that were never fully answered. Data that didn't align as cleanly as it should have. A sequence of events that, when examined closely, suggested something more than simple human error.
I pushed for answers in the beginning.
Harder than most thought reasonable.
It had taken time, and Oliver, to force me to step back from that pursuit, to accept what couldn't be changed, to redirect my attention to what remained.
Still, the question has never entirely disappeared.
“What are you thinking about?” Oliver asks, pulling me back.
I shift my focus to him, letting the moment close as cleanly as I can. “Work.”
He studies me briefly, as though deciding whether to press further, then lets it go. “Are we getting a new nanny or not?”
“Yes,” I say, this time with more finality. “We are.”
Before I can reach for the next file, there's a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
My assistant at the door, composed as always. “There's one more candidate who’s just arrived. She wasn't on the original schedule, but the agency strongly recommended we still see her.”
I pause, considering that.
Agencies don't make last-minute adjustments without reason, and this one in particular isn't prone to unnecessary risks.
I glance briefly at Oliver, who offers a small, indifferent shrug.
“Very well,” I say. “Send her in.”
My assistant nods and steps aside to let her in.
And then…
She walks in.
The context doesn't align. The setting is wrong. The entire scenario requires a level of adjustment my mind doesn't immediately accommodate.
But recognition is immediate.
Unavoidable.
The same woman who'd sat beside me on the flight. The same woman who met my gaze without hesitation, who matched challenge with challenge, who hadn't once attempted to soften herself to make the interaction easier.
The same woman I expected never to see again.
She stops just inside the doorway.
And for the first time since this process began, I find myself momentarily without a response.
There’s hesitation in her recognition too.
It’s there in the way she stills, the way her gaze locks onto mine with unmistakable clarity.
The room shifts, subtly but definitively, the dynamic altering in a way that has nothing to do with the interview process and everything to do with the fact that neither of us is where we're supposed to be.
Oliver moves slightly beside me, unaware of the shift, but I don't look away from her.
Because she’s still standing there.
Still looking at me.
And in that moment, with absolute certainty, I know…
This interview isn't going to proceed in any way that resembles the plan I had in place.