1. Conrad #2
And then came the eyes. All three of them had somehow inherited different versions of it. Big, sad, devastating expressions that made me feel like the worst person alive for being frustrated with them.
CJ looked genuinely remorseful. Bianca looked wounded beneath all her composure. Billie looked mostly confused but committed to supporting the group effort.
“We just…” CJ hesitated. “We miss you.”
My heart dropped.
Damn it.
That was the problem right there. Not so much the lineup of traumatized childcare professionals fleeing my property under the cover of darkness. It was them—my kids.
I knew they were struggling. I wasn’t na?ve. Things had been hard for a long time now, and kids didn’t always know how to say what hurt. Sometimes it looked like tantrums, acting out, or Billie trying to ferment pancake batter directly onto the walls of our home.
I understood that. At least I thought I did.
“I know,” I said softly.
CJ’s shoulders relaxed a little. Bianca now closed her book fully, watching me carefully. Billie wrapped her flour-covered arms around my leg without warning.
“I missed you the mostest,” she said.
“That feels statistically unlikely, given your small size.”
She squeezed tighter. “I’m bigger than I look.”
I huffed out a laugh despite myself.
Above Billie’s head, CJ and Bianca exchanged a look. A victorious look.
And deep down, buried beneath exhaustion and guilt and love and another failed nanny, I had the vague notion that my too-smart-for-their-own-good children were exploiting me.
Unfortunately, I loved them enough that I let it happen.
Billie’s stomach growled against my thigh. It was aggressive enough that all four of us looked down.
Billie patted her belly. “There’s a monster in here.”
“There is not a monster in there,” Bianca corrected.
Billie scowled at her sister.
CJ, still wearing his professional apology face, glanced toward the kitchen. “Did Mrs. Cornell happen to make dinner before she departed?”
I looked toward the kitchen too, and for one beautiful, stupid second, I imagined a hot meal waiting. Something wholesome, with vegetables. Something that indicated a functioning adult had been present before flour had entered the ventilation system.
Then I remembered Mrs. Cornell had left with her electric kettle and what remained of her dignity.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think she did.”
Billie’s grip around my leg tightened. “Are we gonna die?”
“Not immediately.”
“When?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Hard to say.”
Bianca closed her book and tucked it under her arm. “Starvation usually takes weeks, depending on hydration and body composition.”
CJ rolled his eyes. “Read the room.”
“What?” she asked.
I drew in a breath and released it slowly.
Cooking was an option in the technical sense.
We owned pans. We owned utensils. Somewhere in the kitchen, there were ingredients.
The refrigerator ordered groceries on its own because I’d decided at some point that what my life needed was an appliance with more executive function than I had. The damn thing had its own algorithm.
I could have cooked.
I could have opened that shiny, judgmental refrigerator, assessed its contents, made something passably nutritious, and turned the evening into a character-building exercise.
Instead, I stood in the foyer with a cheesecake, three children coated in flour to varying degrees, one fewer nanny than I’d had fifteen minutes earlier, and a headache attempting to colonize my skull.
“Pizza?” I asked.
Billie gasped and clapped her hands. “Yes.”
CJ perked up. “Actually, could we do sushi?”
Bianca lifted a finger. “Chinese would be better. I’ve been thinking about scallion pancakes since lunch.”
A reasonable parent would have said, “No, we are only ordering from one restaurant for dinner.”
A reasonable parent would have reminded them that the house was not a food court.
A reasonable parent would have taken charge.
Me? I said, “Okay.”
CJ brightened. “Okay to which?”
“All of it.”
Bianca studied me with concern, as if she were witnessing a structural collapse in real time. “You’re ordering from three restaurants?”
“It’s Friday.”
She squinted. “Sorry, Dad, but I don’t think that’s a realistic argument.”
“It’s the only one I have, Bianca.”
Billie released my leg and punched both arms into the air. “Food party!”
Happiness. Immediate, uncomplicated happiness.
CJ jogged toward the family room, which was really just an open-plan den area by the kitchen, to find the stack of takeout menus, even though we could have found every menu online.
Bianca followed him, talking about dumpling ratios while Billie twirled and left pale flour footprints across the dark hardwood.
When the pizza arrived, Billie tried to convince the delivery driver she had personally invented cheese.
Sushi followed seven minutes later, and CJ thanked the driver with such polished sincerity that the man walked away looking like he felt better about humanity.
The Chinese food arrived last, delivered by a woman who took one look at Billie’s flour-covered face and said, “Baking night?”
By the time everything was spread across the kitchen island, the house smelled incredible.
We ate on the floor of the family room because the dining table was covered in an extremely thick mixture of egg and flour that had formed into a cement-like texture. So, to comfort myself, I decided that floor dinner was a whimsical memory they would cherish.
I leaned back against the couch with a plate balanced on my knees and watched my children.
CJ, sitting cross-legged beside the sushi and arranging the pieces with the concentration of a tiny food critic.
Bianca, who had claimed the scallion pancakes and dumplings, though she kept reaching over to steal edamame from CJ’s tray.
And Billie, who had a slice of pizza in each hand and sauce smeared over her chin.
They were happy. That was all that mattered.
CJ laughed when Billie attempted to fold a pizza slice around a California roll.
“Billie, that is a culinary crime,” Bianca said.
Billie stuck her tongue out. “I’m expanding the laws of dinner.”
Sometimes, my five-year-old’s vocabulary surprised me.
I tried to hide my smile as CJ launched into a story about a renegade chef who smuggled forbidden cheese across international borders.
No one knew what he was talking about, but he assured us he’d seen a YouTube video, so it was legit.
Bianca interrupted three times to question the plausibility of the story.
I should have stopped the pizza-sushi combination.
I should have gotten napkins sooner.
I should have made them sit at the table.
I should have been thinking about consequences, boundaries, nutrition, routine, and the fact that yet another nanny had fled our home, telling me that my children needed a miracle.
Instead, I watched my youngest daughter lick soy sauce off her wrist and thought, at least they’re eating something other than chicken nuggets. A low bar, for sure, but still. My children had range.
“Do you think Mrs. Cornell will come back?” CJ asked as he bit into a salmon roll.
“No,” I said.
Billie lowered her pizza. “Even if we apologize?”
I considered lying, then thought better of it. “No.”
“What if we make her a card?” Bianca asked.
I looked over at her in surprise.
She shrugged and picked at her pancake. “People like cards. It makes them feel socially obligated to forgive you.”
“That’s not why we make cards.”
“It’s one reason.”
CJ nodded. “A strong one.”
I pointed at him with my chopsticks. “You are not helping. Mrs. Cornell isn’t coming back. And neither is Miss Kearney.”
Billie frowned. “Which one was she?”
“The one who wore purple every day and said television was rotting your imagination.”
CJ snapped his fingers. “Right. The Incident.”
I set my plate down. “I still don’t know what happened.”
All three children became extremely interested in their food.
“Guys.”
Bianca reached for her water. “The attic contains many mysteries.”
“That’s not an answer,” I pointed out.
“It wasn’t meant to be,” she said primly.
I sighed in exasperation. “And before Miss Kearney, there was Miss Julie Poppins.”
Billie smiled. “She smelled nice.”
“She smelled like peppermint because you put candy canes in her shoes,” I reminded her.
Billie smiled at the memory. CJ coughed into his fist.
I looked at him. “Before Miss Julie Poppins, Miss Mary Andrews.”
“She kept singing,” Bianca said.
“She was cheerful,” Billie added.
CJ snorted. “She rhymed all of her instructions.”
“That was her system,” I said.
“She tried to make us clean the nursery with choreography,” Billie muttered.
I paused. “We don’t have a nursery.”
Bianca waved her hands dramatically. “That was part of the issue.”
CJ leaned back on his hands, grin spreading. “Nanny Franny McFine was fun.”
“Nanny Franny McFine lasted four days,” I said. “But I will admit that’s the best nickname you’ve come up with for one of our nannies. Ten points for that.”
Billie smiled and wiggled her fingers. “She had pizzazz.”
I scoffed. “She used my silk tie to rescue you from the dumbwaiter.”
“I was doing an investigation, Daddy.”
“You were inside the literal wall.”
“It was an immersive experience.” She smiled, obviously proud of herself.
I rubbed my jaw, trying not to smile and wondering how my five-year-old knew what immersive meant.
Now that I thought of it, my children had come up with many impressive nicknames for their nannies. They were all too intelligent for their own good, and they’d inherited that attribute from their mom.
There had been Nanny DoubtPhee, who’d arrived with excellent references and left with a twitch under one eye. Marie Von Fire, who’d claimed she could manage any household because she’d once worked for a duke. And, of course, there was Alice. She had no nickname.
Just Alice.