17. Hannah
Hannah
Acopy of Cryptid Confidential lay faceup on the coffee table between the teacups.
My heart dropped. Lola had told me about the photos while we stuffed poblanos.
I’d never actually seen one. The boy on the cover was slumping sideways in his high chair with drool on his chin and his eyes gone somewhere far away.
The nanny had framed him so the big empty kitchen swallowed him up.
THE brUTE’S FORGOTTEN BOY, the headline said.
My eyes went hot, and I made myself look up from the table at Otto’s grandparents. They’d buried their daughter and then opened a magazine and found this. I’d have been on the first flight too.
“I can only imagine how upsetting that was to see,” I said. “Truly. But this photo is old. He doesn’t look like this anymore. He’s eating, he’s gaining, he’s saying new words. If you’d like, I can?—”
“Sit down, Miss Brooks,” Theron said.
I sat. I took the far end of the sofa, the edge of the cushion, the seat you take when you’re staff in a room full of family. My hands didn’t know what to do without a tray to carry, so I folded them in my lap.
“His weight,” Orsala said. She had Otto facing out on her knee like she was posing him for a portrait. “You said he’s gaining.”
“He is. A whole pound in two weeks.” I’d been keeping meticulous records.
“He’d fallen behind because of the teething.
His tusks are coming in, and the pain was putting him off his food.
We saw his healer, Hesta Vurn, out in Breakstone.
She gave us a gum ointment and an herbal bath brew, and his appetite came right back.
He took two helpings of eggs at breakfast yesterday and asked for more. ”
“Asked,” Orsala said.
“Grunted,” I admitted. “Pointed. But he means it.”
“What is he eating?”
“Eggs, shredded chicken, yogurt. Some fruit. Protein is the priority since he’s a growing orc. I keep a feeding log. I could get it for you right now if you’d like to see it.”
I half rose. Theron looked at me, and I sat back down.
“His sleep,” Orsala said.
“Eleven hours at night, one long nap after lunch. He was waking at three in the morning from the tusk pain, but we’ve got that managed now. Cold compress and counter-pressure on the ridge, right where it’s erupting.”
I was talking too fast. I made myself slow down.
They were grieving, I reminded myself. Grieving people need information the way drowning people need something solid.
I could be something solid. For a minute, I honestly thought it was working.
Orsala asked and I answered. Otto was healthy and getting healthier.
They just needed to see it. I could show them.
“Where did you train?” he asked.
“The University of Texas. I was an RN at Dell Children’s in Austin. Four years in the NICU, then pediatric oncology.”
“And now you’re a nanny.”
“Private care, yes. I work through an agency, Austin Family Caregivers. They place medical professionals?—”
“An agency.” Theron said it to Brakkus, not to me. “You found her through an agency?”
“Vetted twice,” Brakkus said. “Theirs and mine.”
“The last one came through an agency as well.” Theron turned his hand over, palm up, toward the coffee table and the cover. “And this is what an agency’s word is worth.”
I opened my mouth to say that wasn’t fair, that one bad person didn’t prove all employment agencies were bad. But I closed it again. It wasn’t my place, and the questions had stopped being about Otto.
“You live in the house,” Orsala said.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s a live-in position. My room is next to the nursery, so I can reach him at night.”
“How convenient,” she said, “for everyone.”
I didn’t know what to do with that, so I did what I always do with things I don’t know what to do with. I smiled and kept going.
“It really is the best arrangement for a child his age. The overnight wakings, the routine?—”
“Tell me, Miss Brooks.” Orsala shifted Otto on her knee. He whined and bent backward against her arm. She straightened him without looking at him. “What do you know about raising an orc?”
“I cared for monster infants at Dell Children’s. Orc newborns, naga hatchlings, a little gargoyle who?—”
“I didn’t ask about that. I’m sure you’re very good at teeth and weights.
” Her voice stayed perfectly pleasant. “When he’s old enough, who teaches him to hold his form?
Who sings him the naming songs? His mother’s clan has held the same ground for eleven generations.
His mother spoke two languages that have never been written down. Can you give him any of that?”
“I…” My hands had gone tight in my lap. “No, ma’am. I can’t. But I’d never try to replace?—”
“Who is his clan, Miss Brooks?”
“The… Vossics. Of the Old Quarter. And the Drakkars of Breakstone.”
“She read a file,” Orsala said to her husband.
“I read everything I could find,” I said. “And anything I can’t give him, I make sure he gets. That’s the whole job. The healer, his routines. I have references from monster families. I could give you their numbers, and the feeding log, and Hesta said if we ever?—”
“Why is a human raising Nadia’s son, Brakkus?”
She said it right across me. Not cruelly.
That was the worst part. She said it the way you’d ask why the gate was left open, a reasonable question about an obvious lapse.
She was talking over me, and I was sitting right there.
It all made me feel incredibly small. My shoulders slumped, and I folded my hands tightly in my lap.
“Because she’s the best there is,” Brakkus said.
I looked at him without meaning to. He hadn’t moved. He sat exactly where he’d been the whole time, hands flat on his knees. His stillness was the loudest thing in the room.
“The best there is,” Theron repeated. “High praise.”
“I’m sure Otto’s medical care is excellent,” Orsala said. “That was never the question.”
Otto chose that moment to let everybody know he had questions of his own.
He bent back into an arch, his legs stiffening.
It was past lunch, closing on his naptime.
He’d been out at the park all morning and now he was performing for virtual strangers.
From the kitchen came the smell of butter and tortillas.
I glanced through the entry. Lola had started lunch.
Otto’s little head turned toward the scent like a flower.
“He’s due for lunch,” I said. “And then his nap. He’s done so well, but he’s right at the end of pleasant behavior this morning.”
“He’s fine,” Orsala said.
He was not fine. He twisted on her lap, reaching toward me. When I didn’t move, he filled his lungs and wailed.
I was on my feet before I’d decided to be. “I’ll just take him and get him fed, and you can?—”
“Sit down, Miss Brooks. Children cry.”
She didn’t bounce him or turn him in against her shoulder. She held him facing out on her knee, crying. Like his tears were proof this house was bad for him. She kept her eyes on Brakkus.
“You see how it is,” she said over the noise. “The household runs on hired help. A stranger to feed him, a stranger to bathe him, a stranger in the room next to his. Nadia’s son, raised by the help, in a house at the end of the earth. And you ask us to be reassured by her resume.”
“Please,” I said. My hands went out on their own. “Please, he’s hungry, he’s overtired. Whatever you need to say, you can say it to me after he’s gone down. Just let me get him his lunch first.”
Otto screamed and reached for me, fingers wide, his whole face folded up and red under the crooked sun hat. Everything in me strained toward him. But I stood there in a house that wasn’t mine, in a family I didn’t belong to. I couldn’t take him. It wasn’t my place.
Orsala held him where he was. “As I was saying,” she said.
Then Brakkus stood.