7. Controlled Distance #2
Her mouth twitched, but the smile did not stay. She looked past me toward the hall, then down at her bare feet.
"Uncle Donny used his mad voice."
I closed my laptop slowly. "A little."
"Daddy used his quiet mad voice."
"That one too."
Ava stepped onto the terrace. The stone was warm from the sun, and she avoided the brighter patches with careful little hops, choosing shade instead. "Quiet mad is worse."
My chest pinched. "Sometimes grown-ups have conversations that sound bigger than they are."
She rubbed her thumb over the headphone padding. "Daddy does emails when he doesn't want to talk."
I tried for a smile and missed. "Emails can be demanding."
"Not more demanding than people."
There was nothing childlike about the way she said it. Simple. Direct. Observant enough to make my throat ache.
She climbed onto the cushioned bench beside me, leaving a few inches of space. Not because she did not want closeness, I had learned, but because she liked deciding when to close it.
"Do you have another job after summer?" she asked.
The question sounded casual. Her eyes stayed on the pool, where sunlight broke into restless silver pieces.
"I'm not sure yet."
"Maybe with flowers?"
"Maybe. Or weddings. Or parties where everyone pretends tiny food is dinner."
This time, her smile came and went again. "So you'll be busy."
"Probably."
Ava traced one finger along the seam of the cushion. "There are seven weeks left on the summer calendar."
I went still.
Of course, she had counted. Ava noticed every crossed-off day, every shift in routine, every ending the rest of us tried not to name until it arrived.
"There are," I said carefully.
"Is seven weeks a lot or not a lot?"
"It depends. Seven weeks can be a lot of pancakes."
"And swim days."
"Definitely swim days."
Her thumb rubbed over the headphone padding. "And when summer is done, you pack your suitcase?"
The words were too indirect to be an accusation, too precise not to be fear.
I reached for gentleness instead of panic. "When summer is done, we'll talk about what happens next. But nobody is packing today."
Ava nodded once, still not looking at me. Then she shifted half an inch closer, until her damp shoulder brushed my arm, and asked, "Is Daddy making you want to pack?"
The question sat between us, small and devastating.
I wanted to give Ava something easy. A bright answer with rounded edges. No, of course not, sweetheart. Everything is fine. Adults are steady. Men with closed office doors do not make women wonder where they belong.
But Ava had not asked for a bedtime story. She had asked because she knew the shape of leaving.
I turned slightly on the bench, careful not to move too fast and make the moment feel larger than she wanted it to be. "Your dad isn't making me pack."
Her fingers tightened on the headphone strap.
"And I'm not done with summer," I added. "I told you I would be here for the summer, and I meant it."
She stared at the pool. "The whole summer?"
"The whole summer."
"Even if Daddy is doing too many emails?"
A laugh pressed at my throat, soft and aching. "Even then."
Ava considered this with the seriousness of a judge reviewing evidence. "What if the emails are mean?"
"Then I will glare at them from across the room."
"What if Daddy is mean?"
The answer came slower.
Luca had been cold. Controlled. Careful in a way that felt sharp because I had seen what lived beneath it. But mean was not the right word, and for Ava's sake, I would not give her the wrong one.
"Your dad isn't mean," I said. "Sometimes he gets scared and calls it work."
Ava finally looked at me. My stomach dropped at the realization that I had said too much. But she only blinked, absorbing it in that quiet, exact way of hers.
"Grown-ups do that?"
"All the time."
"Do you?"
"Yes," I admitted. "Sometimes I call scared being busy. Or having a plan. Or needing coffee."
That earned me the smallest smile. Then her shoulder pressed more fully against my arm.
I looked out at the water beyond the pool, at the impossible blue of the Miami afternoon, and felt the promise settle somewhere dangerous inside me. I was staying for the summer. That was the agreement. A seasonal job. A temporary solution to a temporary problem.
But Ava's weight against my side made temporary feel like a lie.
I had no right to promise more than the contract, no right to let this child tuck my words into the place where certainty belonged. I was not her mother. I was not family. I was the nanny who had stumbled into their lives because one reckless night had tangled itself into a job offer.
Still, when Ava whispered, "So you won't leave because it gets weird?"
I put my hand palm-up on the cushion between us, offering without taking. After a moment, she set two fingers against mine.
"No," I said. "I won't leave because it gets weird."
I found Luca at the marina after the house had gone quiet.
The pool lights were off. Ava was asleep with her weighted blanket tucked around her legs, her headphones on the nightstand, and the promise I had made her still sitting heavy beneath my ribs.
I had gone outside because my room felt too small for it.
Luca stood at the end of the dock with one hand in his pocket, the other braced against the railing. The boats rocked gently in their slips, ropes creaking, water licking against white hulls. Moonlight turned the bay silver and made him look carved from shadow.
"I didn't mean to interrupt," I said.
He did not turn right away. "You're not."
That was all the invitation I got, but I took it.
The dock shifted under my feet as I walked to his side. For a while, we watched the water without speaking. The quiet felt different out here. Less like punishment. More like something waiting.
"Ava asked me if I was leaving because things got weird," I said.
His hand tightened on the railing.
"I'm sorry."
I looked at him then. "Don't apologize to me if you're going to keep doing it."
His jaw flexed. The old Riley would have softened that. Added a joke. Made it easy for him to step around the truth. Tonight, I was too tired.
"She notices everything," I said. "Even what we think we're hiding."
"I know."
"Then why make her guess?"
His eyes closed briefly. When he opened them, the control in his face had cracked just enough for pain to show through. "Because every time she attaches, I see what it could cost her."
"What about what it costs her when you pull away first?"
He turned toward me fully. "You think I don't know that?"
"I think you know and it scares you, so you try to make it smaller."
His laugh was quiet and humorless. "You sound like Donny."
"Donny was right."
Luca's gaze dropped to my mouth, then dragged back up like the movement hurt him. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Stand here and make me want something I have no right to keep."
My breath caught. "You don't get to decide that for both of us."
"No." He stepped closer, his gaze dropping to my mouth. "That's the problem."
His hand rose, stopped, then touched my cheek with such restraint that it felt worse than hunger. My body leaned into him before my pride could object.
For one suspended second, there was no job, no grief, no summer ending too soon. Only Luca's breath against my lips and the violent, impossible hope that he might finally choose me instead of distance.
Then he pulled back. Not far. Just enough to ruin me.
"I can't," he said, voice rough.
I swallowed hard. "You keep saying that like it makes this stop."
His eyes held mine, dark and wrecked.
"It has to," he said.
Then he walked past me down the dock, leaving me with the moonlit water, my shaking hands, and the terrible knowledge that he wanted me enough to run.