Chapter 11 #2
“Shit,” Kelly said, pulling Rose into a hug. “You’ve been stupid, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Rose admitted. “I’ve been really, really stupid.”
They hugged for a minute, and then Rose pulled away and walked into the main entrance of the house. Kelly was closing the door behind her when their grandmother stepped out from the parlor, her face stern and thoughtful.
Kelly was shaking her head, although her expression was sympathetic. “You fell in love with him, didn’t you?”
Rose nodded, unable to speak.
“And he doesn’t love you back?”
Rose shook her head, the bleak reality of it breaking her heart again.
Her grandmother tsked her tongue, nothing soft about her expression at all. “You are foolish, young woman. You must believe me. You will wear Georgina Beaufort’s wedding dress soon.”
That beautiful lace wedding gown she’d only worn once when she’d danced in James’s arms.
It would be nice. It would be a dream come true. But her grandmother’s wanting something to happen didn’t mean it actually would.
Despite this reality, Rose couldn’t help but feel a little flicker of hope and awed wonder at the certainty of the words.
Because what her grandmother wanted always seemed to have eventually come to fruition before.
James stayed home from work, calling in to saying he was ill. It wasn’t far from the truth since he was feeling physically sick as he went to pick up Jill and Julie from school that day and told the girls that Rose wasn’t going to be their nanny anymore.
They didn’t believe him.
They thought at first it was a game, and then they told him he was just wrong. He kept trying to convince them, and he showed them her empty room when they got home, but they still didn’t think it was real.
They kept talking about how she was going to come back.
It was a nightmare. He’d thought they would be crushed and heartbroken, crying their poor little eyes out. But they didn’t cry at all since they didn’t believe it was really happening.
The entire afternoon was agony for him. He couldn’t take comfort in his girls the way he’d expected as all of them missed Rose. Instead, he kept having to tell them the truth over and over again.
Maybe tomorrow morning they would believe it, when Rose still wasn’t back.
He’d tried to call Rose a few times—once immediately after getting the letter and a couple of times with the girls so she could tell them it was really happening—but Rose wouldn’t answer her phone.
She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to see him again.
He knew as well as he’d ever known anything that it was over—before it had ever really begun.
The worst thing was not being able to drown himself in his heartache. He couldn’t drink himself into a stupor or go to bed and stew in the dark. He had to go through the normal aspects of life—making the girls’ dinner and taking them out to play and then getting them ready for bed.
All of it was brutally painful without Rose.
He finally got them into bed and they read several chapters of a book, all of them in Jill’s bed together. Then he put the book down and gave them both a hug.
“Rosie will be back tomorrow, I think,” Jill said with a sigh as she pulled away.
“Tomorrow,” Julie echoed.
James had to smother a groan. “I’ve told you over and over again that she won’t. She said she was gone for good.”
“She didn’t mean it,” Jill said, a strange sort of confidence in her voice. “It was like when I said I would never go to the beach again after I got stung by a jelly fish. But the next day I did.”
“She did the next day!”
“It’s not like that, sweetheart. Complicated things sometimes happen with adults. It has nothing to do with how much she loves you, but she’s not able to keep being your nanny.”
“Grandma says she’s a servant,” Julie chimed in.
James stiffened. “What?”
“Grandma said Rosie is just a servant.”
“When did she say that?”
“Yesterday. She was asking me if I was ready to have a new mommy, and I said I didn’t need a mommy because I have Rosie.” Julie’s eyes were wide and guileless. “And she said she’s just a servant and isn’t like a mommy at all.”
James forced the tension out of his muscles so he wouldn’t upset his daughters, but he suddenly wanted to hit something.
He cleared his throat. “There’s nothing wrong with being a servant.
Servants work very hard and do important work.
But Rose was always your nanny and she was very important because of that.
But she’s not like a mommy, sweetheart.”
Julie frowned. “But I thought a mommy loved us and took care of us and was always there when we need her.”
“That’s true,” James said, a crack in his voice.
“But that’s what Rosie did,” Julie said. “Isn’t that like a mommy?”
The little girl had been too young to ever know her mother, and James’s heart ached so much he could barely breathe at the thought of how innocently she loved Rose. In a lot of ways, Rose had been like a mother to her—the only one she’d known.
But in other ways she wasn’t like a mother at all.
“That’s true, Julie,” he said, very gently. “But a nanny gets paid for doing all that. A mommy doesn’t get paid. A mommy is part of the family.”
“But Rosie is part of the family,” Julie said, clearly trying to make sense of a very complicated situation.
“Not exactly, baby.” James stroked the girl’s hair, wishing he was smarter, wishing he was more sensitive, more articulate.
Wishing he was better at all of this.
Jill had been listening and thinking, and now she straightened up a little, turning to look up at her father’s face. “Daddy?”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“If a nanny gets paid and a mommy doesn’t, maybe you can just not pay Rosie anymore.”
James swallowed hard at the words. “Jill—”
Jill was getting more and more excited. “If she lives with us, she doesn’t need money, right? You can pay for her like you pay for us.”
“Jill, honey, it doesn’t work that way. She can’t live with us like that unless she’s part of the family.”
Jill suddenly looked like she’d had a brilliant insight. “Then you can marry her, right? You can marry Rosie and make her part of the family, right? That would take care of everything.”
“Yeah!” Julie cried, perking up at this idea. “Marry Rosie!”
James stared at his little girls, completely frozen. He knew he should be wise and careful and immediately nip this idea in the bud.
But he didn’t want to. Because hearing them say it made it sound like the most obvious solution in the world.
Of course they couldn’t go on as they had been doing. Rose had been exactly right. The lines were hopelessly crossed between nanny and something more, and there was no going back from that.
But she’d quit now. She was no longer his nanny. She was just a woman.
A woman he was in love with. A woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. A woman both he and his daughters could never live without.
Rose might not be in love with him now, but that didn’t mean she never would. She obviously liked him and was attracted to him. There was no denying the chemistry they had together. And they cared for each other and understood each other and took care of each other.
She didn’t have to be exactly where he was emotionally for there to be a chance. Everything didn’t always come in neat little packages—slots with the boundaries clearly marked out.
He could work at it. He could woo her. He could show her how much potential there was between them.
Maybe she could grow to love him, and then maybe the girls’ clear-eyed vision of a future for their family wasn’t as off the wall as it might seem.
He could at least try.
His despair was swallowed in a wave of joy and hope, and it spurred him to ease Jill aside slightly so he could climb off the bed.
“Where are you going, Daddy?”
“I was going to find Rose and talk to her.”
The girls’ faces burst into happiness, and they scrambled off the bed after him.
“Let’s go find Rose,” Jill said, running over to her closet and yanking out a pair of leggings, which she pulled on under her nightgown.
Julie ran over to find a pair of leggings too, copying her sister. “Let’s go now!”
“Just a minute,” James said, suddenly worried that they’d all bombard Rose with their love and excitement and pressure her into something she might not want. “I’m not sure we should all—”
“We have to come too! We have to tell her we want her to be our mommy!” Jill insisted, sliding on a pair of flip-flops. “We love her too!”
“We love her!” Julie echoed.
James sighed. He couldn’t leave them at home, obviously, since there was no one here to watch them. They’d have to come. Maybe he could arrange for them to stay in a room with Kelly while he talked to Rose.
He pictured Kelly futilely trying to hold the excited girls back from getting to Rose.
He sighed again. It didn’t matter. He had to go find Rose now. He had to talk to her now.
So the girls were going to have to come with him.
A half hour later he was knocking on the thick, historic Beaufort front door, with Jill and Julie at his side, so excited they were wriggling and holding their hands over their mouths so they wouldn’t be too loud.
After a few minutes Kelly opened the door, staring in shock when she saw who it was.
“What do you want?” she asked, frowning at him.
“Sorry to turn up unexpectedly. Is Rosie here?” he asked.
“We’re here to see Rosie!” Jill confirmed.
“Rosie!” Julie echoed.
“Yes, she’s here,” Kelly said, her sober green eyes moving from one to another. “She’s in her room.”
“Can we come in?” James asked, starting to get impatient now that Rose was almost within reach.
“She’s pretty upset,” Kelly said, holding his gaze with an expression that seemed a lot older than she was. “I’d rather not let you in if you’re just going to upset her even more.”
Irrationally he felt a leap of excitement at the news that Rose was so unhappy. Kelly had implied it was over him.
If she was that torn up about leaving them, maybe she’d be open to eventually coming back.
“I don’t want to upset her,” James said.
“We’ve come to take her home,” Jill added, hugging her belly with her arms.