Chapter 10 #2
I don’t like fighting with Aleksandr. I never have.
When I was a teenager, I relished arguing with him because it was the only way I could see the cracks in his calm exterior, but it was always lighthearted teasing, seeing if I could get him worked up.
That’s not what this is—on my part, this is actual anger about how he didn’t step in and protect Stella from her uncle.
“She’s in her—” He starts, but then there’s a flash of purple barreling toward me.
Stella’s whole body hits my legs as she wraps her arms around me, and I have to reach out and steady myself on the wall so I don’t fall over from the impact. “Hey,” I say, smoothing my hand over her curls. “Did you have a good day at school today?”
She nods, her cheek sliding against my pants. “Guess what?” she says, looking up at me. “When Jason was being mean to me today, I told him what you said to say. He didn’t even know what to say back. He went and sat with other people, so at least I wasn’t by him for circle time.”
I have no idea what circle time is. “I’m glad it worked.”
“I think he’s lonely. He’s mean to everyone, so no one wants to be friends with him.”
“It’s always good to be kind to people, especially if they don’t have a lot of friends,” I tell her. “But at the same time, you shouldn’t put up with him treating you like that. He has to learn that people will be more likely to want to be friends with him if he’s a good friend too.”
I glance over at Aleksandr, who is watching us closely.
His face is still a mask, and as always, I wish I knew what he was thinking.
He’s only let down his guard around me twice this week, that first night I came over when he told me about wanting to adopt Stella, and last night in his kitchen.
My stomach flips over at the memory of his body that close to mine and the way his eyes swam with desire right in front of my face.
That moment was the basis for all my fantasies last night, and I hate myself a bit for getting off to visions of him fucking me in his kitchen.
I shouldn’t be thinking about him like that, both because I’m still mad at him and because he’s Sasha.
It’s a hard and fast rule that I don’t sleep with friends or clients, and right now, he’s both.
Or at least, maybe we’re working back toward friendship.
“What’s that?” he asks, nodding to the cellophane wrapped plant that I’m holding above Stella’s head.
“This,” I say, “is a little goodbye gift for Stella.” Stella springs back enough to look up, and I hold the plant down at her level. “It’s an orchid, like the ones we saw at the Botanical Gardens,” I tell her.
Her eyes light up and her smile practically splits her face in half. “I’m going to take such good care of it,” she tells me.
“Should we go put it on the windowsill in your bedroom?” I ask her and then look to Aleksandr for confirmation. He nods, and she starts pulling me toward her bedroom.
We’ve unwrapped the plant and set it on the windowsill and I’ve explained to her how to care for an orchid when we hear a conversation in Russian coming from the entryway.
“Who’s that?” I ask her. I can’t make out the words at this distance, but the dialect is clear, as is the firm voice of the female Aleksandr is speaking to.
“Probably my new nanny. She’s stopping by tonight so I can get to know her.”
“You must be excited,” I say with a smile.
“Not really. She’s old, and I don’t think she’ll be as nice as Natasha.”
“Natasha was your last nanny?”
“Yeah. She was the best. She always made sure everything we did was fun.”
I wonder if she was like a big sister to Stella? I always wanted a big sister growing up, but instead I had Viktor, who ignored me in favor of playing with Aleksandr and Nikolai.
“It must have been hard when she left.” There’s a question wrapped up in that statement.
“I miss her so much,” Stella says, “but now you’re here, which is even better.”
Did Aleksandr not tell her I’m leaving?
“Stella, you know that I’m leaving tomorrow morning, right? I have to go home.”
“But you’ll be back, won’t you?” she asks. “To help Dyadya adopt me?”
I freeze, not sure what to say. “I’ll definitely be back in a few weeks, but I don’t know how long I’ll be staying. I have to be in California in a month for something really important for work.”
Stella’s eyes fill with tears. “So you’re not coming back for good?”
“Honey,” I say as I kneel down in front of her. “I’m going to find a way to help you both, but I don’t think that will involve me staying here in New York.”
“But you have to!” she says, and those tears spill down her cheeks. “You have to. Everyone I love leaves me.”
My heart breaks for her. I know how alone she feels, even though I was older than she is when my mom and brother died. But at the same time, she can’t love me. She hasn’t even known me for a week.
“I promise I’ll visit, okay?” I say, but even as the words leave my mouth, I wonder how I’ll find time for that in my schedule.
Though a lot of my events are in the Park City area, my reputation as an event planner means people hire me for events in other locations too.
I travel a fair amount for work, mostly on the West Coast. And besides, I’ll be kind of tied to LA for at least the next six months.
She sobs in my arms as I struggle to figure out how we’ve come to mean so much to each other in such a short period. I really am going to miss her.
“And what do we have here?” The question, in Russian, comes from behind me.
“This is Petra,” Aleksandr says. “She’s a friend of the family.”
“And why does she have your niece in such a state?” the woman asks, criticism dripping from every word. I hate her already, and I haven’t even turned around to see her.
“Stella’s just having a hard time saying goodbye,” I tell her, in English, so Stella can understand what we’re talking about. It seems rude to talk about her in another language in front of her.
“I don’t want you to leave,” Stella wails, doing nothing to try to calm herself down.
“This is ridiculous,” the woman says, and I cast a glance over my shoulder at her.
Stella’s wrong about her being old. She’s probably in her early forties, but she’s got a severe look about her.
I can tell she’s a strict, no-nonsense kind of person, which is fine as long as she’s caring too.
“I have been a nanny for twenty years and have never seen a child so coddled.”
“She’s lost both her parents and a nanny she loved in the past few months,” I say in Russian, because Stella doesn’t need the reminder. “Have some compassion.”
“I do not indulge whiny children,” she says back to me, and now I’m glad Stella can’t understand what we’re saying. Her tears have slowed down as she watches this conversation volley back and forth, undoubtedly trying to figure out what’s happening.
My back straightens, but I don’t let go of Stella.
“She is not a whiny child,” Aleksandr says, in Russian. “She’s grieving. There’s a difference.”
“She needs to learn to deal with her emotions without tears. A child such as this . . . ” She sweeps her hand toward Stella as she turns toward Aleksandr. “I cannot work with her if you are going to spoil her so.”
I rise from the floor with Stella still wrapped around me like a koala on her mother. I stand there facing them, wondering where Aleksandr’s backbone is. Before I leave, I’ll make sure this woman treats Stella right.
“There is a difference between loving and spoiling. Loving means giving someone what they need in order to feel safe and cared for. Spoiling is giving someone what they don’t need, just because they want it. You should learn the difference if you are going to work with children.”
Her beady eyes go wide as the heat creeps into her cheeks.
“I am the most sought after nanny on the Upper East Side for a reason,” she tells me.
“My charges become strong, independent people. And I will not be talked to like this.” She looks over at Aleksandr as if she’s waiting for him to say something.
“Maybe we should give Stella some time to get to know her new nanny, Petra,” he says in English.
The nanny’s eyes meet mine and her look is triumphant, which is fine because this gives me a few minutes to talk to Aleksandr about all the reasons why he can’t leave Stella in this woman’s care. There must be a hundred other people who’d do the job better than her.
“I’m going to go chat with your uncle,” I tell Stella. “But I’ll come say goodbye before I go.”
She squeezes her arms so tightly around my shoulders I’m worried she won’t let go. But she does, and as I set her back on the floor, I realize that at six she’s braver than I was at thirteen. No one this young should have to shoulder so much loss.
We leave them in Stella’s room, but instead of heading to the living room, Aleksandr walks through the dining room, through the butler’s pantry, and into the kitchen.
Which puts two doors between us and the rest of the apartment—like he knows he’s about to get an earful from me, and he doesn’t want Stella to hear.
He walks to the far end of the kitchen, to the small table that sits beneath two large windows, each with a million dollar view. I wonder if I counted all the windows in the apartment, would the total number equal how many millions of dollars he paid for this place? Probably.
I stop at the end of the cabinets and lean my hip against the countertop, keeping the kitchen table between us.
“You can’t come in here and make things more difficult for Stella,” he says. Gone is the easy camaraderie we had in here yesterday evening before Stella saw the spider. Gone is the palpable sense of attraction too.
“I made things more difficult for Stella?”
“Yes. Don’t aggravate her nanny, Petra. You have no idea what it took to get that woman to come work for me. She wasn’t exaggerating when she said she’s the most sought after nanny on the Upper East Side.”