Chapter 5: Nanny
650 Words
The door closes.
I sit with the quiet for a moment then push the covers back and stand. My legs hold. My back doesn't love me for it but it holds too.
I go to the door and open it.
He's still in the hall. Phone to his ear, back to me. I don't know why I step out. I just do. I lean against the doorframe and look at him and I feel something I have absolutely no business feeling for a man I woke up in front of an hour ago and I feel it anyway, which is embarrassing, and I have nobody to be embarrassed in front of except myself so I just stand there and hold it.
He says something into the phone. His head turns slightly and I catch the line of his jaw and I look away.
The hall is long. High ceilings, dark wood, the kind of house that has been a house for a long time. There are paintings on the walls, real ones, visible brushstrokes, small brass plaques underneath. A table with flowers that are actually fresh. Windows at the far end that look out over grounds white and flat with snow, tree line just visible at the edge.
Everything in here costs more than I could probably calculate. I don't know how I know that. I just do.
There are two. The staircase at the far end and the door beside the painting of the mountain.
I look back at him.
He still hasn't moved. Shoulders set, free hand still at his side, giving the phone call everything. I watch the back of him and think about the glass of water and three seconds of skin contact that went up my arm like something live and I think: I need to stop.
I am clearly concussed.
Running feet from the far end of the hall.
A boy comes around the corner, dark hair, pyjamas, something tucked under one arm, and he runs the full length of the hall and collides with the man's leg with the full confidence of someone who has done this many times and knows exactly how it will be received.
Luka's phone hand drops.
The boy says something. Luka's whole body turns toward him the way a door turns on a hinge and his free hand comes down on the back of the boy's head, brief and warm, and the boy laughs.
I stay very still in the doorframe.
The boy pulls back and looks up at Luka and says something else and Luka responds in a low voice and then the boy turns his head and sees me.
He goes still.
We look at each other down the length of the hall.
Then he starts walking toward me.
I stay where I am.
He stops two feet away and looks up. Baby fat still soft in his face, a small scar above his left eyebrow. He's holding a stuffed dog, brown, battered, tail missing, loved hard over a long time. He looks at my face. My bandage. Then he points at it.
"Does it hurt?"
"A little," I say.
He considers this. Then he holds the dog out toward me.
I look at it. Then at him.
"Coco helps," he says. Completely matter of fact.
I take it. It's soft in the way that only comes from years of the same small hands. I hold it carefully and something shifts in my chest, quiet and without warning, and I don't look at it directly.
I hold the dog back out to return it. He shakes his head.
"You can keep him for now. Until it stops hurting."
He turns back toward his father.
"Papa."
Luka says nothing. Just looks at his son.
The boy looks at me one more time, checking something in my face, then back at his father.
"Is she my new nanny?"
- Writer
