Chapter 32
Eleanor
I’d made a mistake thinking Greyson was the same playful boy he was when I used to know him. Ever since our email exchange, I did my best to keep conversations with him professional—not that we were engaging in many chats.
Over the next few weeks, I learned so much about the Easts as individuals.
Lorelai’s bedroom walls were covered with artwork she’d created.
There wasn’t a day when she wasn’t lying on her stomach, kicking her legs in the air, drawing her next masterpiece—with her butterfly wings on her back, of course.
She had an imagination bigger than the whole world.
With just our minds, we’d be in South Africa running with lions, and then the next moment we were in Hawaii eating fresh pineapples.
Lorelai also wasn’t afraid to hold full-blown conversations with her mother.
They happened every single day. Sometimes I’d walk in on her having talks with her mom like she was right there beside her.
She also put a place setting at the dining room table for Nicole on Mondays, because Mondays were always spaghetti day.
Spaghetti had been Nicole’s favorite meal.
I loved that about her little heart, how she kept her mom close to her.
We had that in common—our daily conversations with our mothers.
Then there was Karla, my new best friend in a Go away, Eleanor kind of way.
I couldn’t even learn about her based on her room, because she didn’t have anything in there other than the computer that sat on her desk.
The walls were empty, and the shelves didn’t hold anything.
The only spark of personality was the Do Not Enter tape plastered all over her closet door, with signs written in Sharpie warning STAY AWAY.
In a way, that summed her up completely.
Lastly, there was Greyson, though I hardly saw him.
He was never really around long enough for me to read him.
I only had my memories of who he used to be to go by, and truthfully, I hardly saw those sides of him come through.
Even when they did, they were so few and far between.
It was as if he tried so hard to not show any emotion, and when it slipped out, he was quick to pull it back in.
Not only did he keep his distance from me; he kept it from the girls.
Even when he was around, it was as if he wasn’t truly there.
He seemed so checked out from reality, I was surprised he was able to even complete his daily work tasks.
Yet that seemed to be the one thing he excelled at doing.
Greyson was a professional workaholic, and he took that role seriously.
If he wasn’t on the phone talking business, there was a very good chance he wasn’t talking at all.
He and Karla were so similar in many ways, so cold and distant, but the difference was that Karla was mean, while Greyson was not. He was just insanely lost.
Whenever Lorelai and I had dinner in the dining room, I swore Greyson and Karla went out of their way to avoid coming anywhere near us. They simply grabbed their food and went to their own personal spaces.
Like father, like daughter.
I didn’t think too much on it. They wanted their space, so I gave it to them. Most of my focus went toward Lorelai.
She was the blessing at the end of hard days. There wasn’t anything that could keep that young girl from laughing. In a house full of darkness, she was the light that flooded each room.
Each evening after dinner, Lorelai and I would pretend we were dragons flying into a new world where our only job was to make people realize that dragons were friendly creatures. It involved a lot of jumping up and down and roaring, of course, something we both were fans of.
One night as the two of us played in Lorelai’s room, our volumes reached a new height as we laughed and laughed at Lorelai’s new, deep guttural roar. Tears rolled down her cheeks from laughing so hard, and every time she tried to catch her breath, she laughed harder.
Those were my favorite moments with children—the wild ones.
As the two of us lost ourselves, we were interrupted by a loud bang on the bedroom door. We looked up to see Greyson standing in the doorway with a stern look on his face. The laughter faded away as we noticed the seriousness in his eyes.
“Hi, Daddy,” Lorelai said, her voice lower than before.
“What’s with all the noise?” he scolded, his brows knitted together.
I cleared my throat and smoothed out my clothing. “Oh, sorry. We didn’t know you were home. We were just having a great round of—”
“A word, Eleanor,” he hissed, cutting me off. “In my office.”
I stood taller, chills racing over me.
“What?”
“I would like a word with you in my office,” he repeated, not waiting for me to reply before he walked away. I took a deep breath before turning toward Lorelai. Her eyes were wide, and she appeared shaken by her father’s aggressive arrival.
“Is he mad because we were loud?” she asked, her voice quivering. Her shoulders slouched forward, and I could see the worry in her eyes. It was as though she’d let her father down in some way.
The shame of it all was that if anyone was letting someone down, it was her father who wasn’t showing up for his daughters.
“No, honey. Your father and I had a meeting scheduled; I just forgot about it.” I pulled her into a hug, and she hugged me back tightly. I savored the sweet embrace. “Now go get ready for bed, all right? I’ll come check on you soon.”
She nodded and hurried off to pick out her pajamas. I headed to Greyson’s office, where the door was wide open.
“No offense, but did you really need to barge in with such a tone? You scared Lorelai half to death,” I stated as I walked in. He was pacing the length of the room, clasping his fingers together as his chest repeatedly rose and fell heavily.
“Where do you take her?” he snapped, completely ignoring my comment.
“Excuse me?”
“Where do you take her?” he barked once more, this time his voice louder, scarier.
I took a step backward, unsure of what he meant.
“I don’t know what you’re asking me, Grey—”
“Mr. East!” he hollered, making me take more steps backward.
He was fuming, and I had no clue why. I’d never seen him so upset. For the most part, he just coasted on a nice wave of detachment. In this moment, though, he was mad—livid, even.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying hard to not take his temper personally.
“I received an email this afternoon asking for an update on Karla. It turns out she hasn’t been to school in weeks, specifically since you’ve been driving her. So tell me, where have you been taking her?”
“I . . .” My voice shook as my mind tried to catch up with the words he was speaking. How was that possible? How was that a thing? “I take her to school every day after I drop off Lorelai. I don’t understand how she wouldn’t be attending.”
“You see her go in every day?” he questioned.
“Well, no, because I drop her off a few blocks away like the other nan . . .” My words trailed off and reality set in.
Oh my gosh, I am an idiot.
Karla had lied about the other nannies dropping her off blocks away from the school building, and I was the stupid person who’d believed her sob story.
Greyson hadn’t caught on to the realization I’d come to, though. He kept staring at me with a hard glance, waiting for answers. I swallowed hard and explained the situation, looking away from him.
“You’re joking, right?” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I—I just thought . . .” I stuttered, realizing I’d been fooled by a fourteen-year-old. My face grew warm, and I couldn’t look at Greyson. I was humiliated by my naive mistake. She had played me. I’d been royally played by a teenager. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t make up for the fact that she has missed weeks of schooling.”
“How does that even happen, though? Don’t they notify the parent if the student is missing from school for more than a day or two?”
He grunted. “That’s what I’m looking into now. Until then, go retrieve Karla from her room and bring her in here so the three of us can talk this through.”
“Yes, of course.”
I hurried out, feeling a sharp pain in my gut from my anger with Karla. I went out of my way to treat her kindly, to make her comfortable, yet this was the result I received. The closer I got to her bedroom, the more upset I became. Greyson had blown up at me because of her lies.
Then my emotions shifted to worry.
If she hadn’t been going to school, where had she been?
What was she doing?
Were there drugs involved? Alcohol?
Oh, great, now I was angry and worried. I wondered if this was what it was like to be a parent, feeling every single emotion all at once. It was exhausting. Each emotion came in like a wave crashing against the shore, and I wasn’t sure what to do with all the feelings I was experiencing.
I felt as if I had too many thoughts flooding my brain. I wanted to yell and speak gently at the same time. I wanted to be the good cop and the bad cop. I wanted to be her friend, and her comfort, but also the drill sergeant.
There is no middle ground when it comes to parenting teenagers. You always have a feeling of being crazed.
Before Karla could even witness my worry-anger, the biggest knot formed in my gut as I walked into her bedroom only to find it empty.
“Karla?” I called out. No response.
She wouldn’t have gone, would she? Sneaked out to go do whatever the heck it was she did during school hours?
I walked farther into her bedroom, toward her ‘Do Not Enter’ closet door, and as my hand landed on the door handle, a sharp shout stung my ears.
“What are you doing?!” Karla barked, forcing me to turn around in haste.
“Karla!” A wave of relief crashed against the shore. “Oh my gosh, where were you?” I asked, my heart racing.
“The bathroom.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you about to go in there? Are you stupid? Can you not read?”
“Don’t call me stupid,” I scolded, sounding more grown up than I actually was. “Your father wants you in his office.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m busy.” She walked over to her desk and went to reach for her headphones to drown me out, but I grabbed them before she could.
“No, you’re not. Now get going to your father’s office.”
“Why?”
“Because we know.”
“Know what?”
“You know what we know,” I stated, narrowing my eyes as I waved a finger at her.
She cocked her eyebrow. “Or I don’t.”
My hands landed against my hips. “Karla, come on. You can drop the act.”
“Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m getting sick of this roundabout accusation stuff, so either spit it out or leave my room.”
“You haven’t been to school in weeks, Karla,” Greyson growled, appearing behind me. His eyes were filled with anger, and his chest rose and fell harder each time he took a breath. “That’s what she’s talking about. That’s what we need to discuss.”
He was pissed off, with good reason.
The second the real parent walked into the room, I felt as if I were out of place. I was, after all, just the nanny. For the most part, Lorelai was my main duty.
“I’ll take it from here, Eleanor,” Greyson told me, placing his hand on the doorknob and stepping back a few steps to make a pathway for my exit.
I took a deep breath and looked toward Karla, who looked both nervous and almost . . . happy? She seemed pleased with the way she was pushing her father’s buttons.
Then I turned on my heels and left the room. Greyson closed the door behind me.
Within seconds, the shouting began. The hollering match between those two made me equal parts uneasy and glad.
Even though they were fighting, I was witnessing Greyson doing something I hadn’t been aware he still knew how to do—parent his children.
Seeing him engaging with Karla, being so angry, demonstrated that somewhere inside his cold, numb heart, he still cared so much.
Somewhere within him, he was still concerned.
That had to stand for something.
I left that night before the yelling came to a halt. It wasn’t my right to listen to Karla and Greyson exchange words that were filled with exhaustion and pain. It was clear that they were both hurting, but the only way they could seem to ease their hurts was by shouting at each other.