The Nanny
Late Night Talk
Somewhere between Aria sipping on her hot chocolate and me fighting an internal battle over my feelings for her, we ended up sat on opposite sides of the couch watching the depressingly limited late night television.
Even though she was a good distance away from me thanks to my rather large sofa I was completely aware of her toes nearly touching my thigh due to her legs being curled up beside her. It was such a small part of her, but I almost wanted to reach out and pull her small feet onto my lap just to feel the contact.
We had been watching some ridiculous adverts for things that no one would ever need for hours now but Aria was laughing and I was the only one around so I was going to enjoy it while it lasted.
At the moment I could almost pretend we were more than just quasi friends.
I had a feeling she was just trying to keep the dreams away and I just happened to be here but that was the thing.
I was here.
And I didn’t mind sitting on the sofa with her well into the early morning hours watching the worst over acting in any advert ever.
“Oh man. My mom has one of those.” She managed to get out between giggles as she watched some woman on TV vacuum out ear wax.
But my eyes were on her because that was the first time I had heard her mention her family, besides Jamie, and it sparked my curiosity.
I stared at her wondering if I should even bring it up at all, but the more I thought about it the more I realized I knew nothing about her. Nothing important anyway.
I knew she was an experienced nanny and that she came highly recommended by her past employer. I knew she had no criminal record thanks to the background check my mum ran on her before even meeting with her but I didn’t know a thing about Aria herself, and I wanted to.
“Aria?”
She turned her head my way, a bright smile still spread across her lips even as her eyes looked tired. Suddenly I didn’t know how to ask what I wanted to ask or even if I should.
“Do you.. is your…” I looked away from her to take a deep breath because it was hard to focus when she looked at me like that. “You don’t talk about you’re mum too much. Or really ever.”
When I looked back her smile had fallen. So had her eyes as she stared at her hands.
“So?” She mumbled out.
I wished I hadn’t said anything when she uncurled her legs and placed them on the floor, pushing herself up into a proper sitting position.
“I was just wondering…” I tried to go over the best way to continue on with this without pushing her away, I didn’t want our time to end just yet but I had already started this so now I had to follow through. “I don’t know anything about you?”
Her eyes snapped up. “Yes you do. You know enough.”
I scoffed despite myself. “I know your favorite color and that you don’t have a criminal record. But I don’t know a thing about you.”
She narrowed her eyes at me and it made me feel like I went back in time to three days ago. All friendliness was lost from her eyes and I did not like it at all.
Maybe I had moved too fast, asked this too soon. Maybe I should have given our budding friendship a bit more time. I wasn’t really known for good timing though.
“I don’t want to talk about it Harry.” She hissed out, pushing forward until she was sitting on the very edge of the cushions. I was sure she was going to get up and end… whatever this was.
So I back tracked in hopes of keeping her here. Maybe I could get her to forget I even asked.
“I just thought we might be a little closer now and I just wanted to know more about you but you don’t have to say-” She pushed off the sofa and desperation set in as she kept moving until she was standing near the doorway. My eyes following her every movement. “I’m sorry.” I pleaded. I hated the way my voice sounded. Needy and vulnerable. I hated that she had managed to make me sound like that but I carried on anyway. “Please, just stay. I won’t ask anything else. You don’t have to tell me anything. I get that we aren’t friends like that.”
Aria looked over her shoulder, the uneasiness gone. She was studying me and I felt uncomfortable by it but I wasn’t going to say a word.
And then she sat back down, her hands in her lap and her head bent down while she took a deep breath. “Why do you care Harry? A few days ago you didn’t even want to be in the same room as me.”
I knew the answer to her question but I wasn’t going to voice it. So instead I just bit my lip and shrugged. “Things change Aria. I want to be friends. I… I like this.” I waved my hand between the two of us indicating the easiness we had going on before. “I like having someone living here that isn’t a child and that is going through the same thing I am as a parent. I like having you here Aria and you don’t have to tell me anything but I would like to know more about you; whatever and whenever you want to tell me.”
She didn’t move or say anything for a long time and I was sure I had pushed my luck a little too far this time. My heart was already aching thinking about having to suffer through her being distant all over again, especially when I had just decided that I was a lot more attached to her then I originally thought.
I was just sat here waiting for her to get up and leave me again when she spoke, surprising me nearly enough to knock me out of my seat.
“I haven’t spoken to my mom, or my dad, since before Jamie was born. It’s kind of a sore subject with me.” She never looked up at me, but I knew that she would keep talking so I kept silent, even attempting to keep my breathing quiet. “I haven’t really talked to anyone since I left, really.” She laughed bitterly.
When she didn’t continue to speak I decided that I needed to speak even if I was nervous saying anything would only cause her to stop talking all together. “Why did you leave?”
A small bittersweet smile graced her lips as she breathed out. “It’s a really long story.”
I edged closer to her and ducked my head down until I caught her eye. “I have time.”
Her smile grew at my words. It was nearing five in the morning but that didn’t matter to me right now. Her smile quickly fell, however, before she took a deep breath. I had a feeling I was going to get my way.
“I don’t even know where to start. I haven’t talked about it since…” She furrowed her brow and bit her lip then turned to face me fully. “…ever really. Kendra knew so I never had to re-tell any of it.”
“You can start where ever you want to start, where ever is easiest.” I encouraged.
Her expression remained worried and a bit hesitant but she took a deep breath and began anyway. “You read my resume, my recommendations right?”
I nodded. My mother had given them to me to read when I had first agreed to have Aria become Darcy’s nanny. She had been trying to show me Aria was capable of the job. The family she had worked for before had spoken very highly of her.
I was curious where she was going with this.
“I worked for one of those families for a really long time. The Winstons. I watched their twin girls, Molly and Mallory. I was about 18 when I started working for them. I had just moved out of my parents’ house, taking online college courses and watching them part time. The Winston’s are a really well off family. They have an older son too, Ma- Mark. He was 21 when I first met him.” She paused and looked away, laughing one of her humorless laughs before shaking her head and carrying on. The way she stumbled of the brother’s name made me feel like I wasn’t going to like him at all.
“He’s um….” She was clearly struggling to get her next words out. “He’s Jamie’s father.”
My eyes widened. I knew I wasn’t going to like him.
“I think I fell in love with him the second I saw him for the first time when he came to visited his family from collage. I was so dumb, Harry. I would follow him around the house hoping he would notice me.” She sighed at the memory. “Anyway, he figured it out eventually and I was mortified but instead of letting me down gently or even ignoring it all together he.. um… he kissed me.”
I couldn’t understand how I could be so jealous of someone I didn’t even know. Maybe it was because I feared he might still mean something to her, he might be the person holding her back form everyone else like in one of those stupid love stories. I didn’t like that thought at all.
“We dated for nearly a year. It was a big secret. No one knew. It wasn’t such a hard secret to keep since he was away at collage most of the time anyway.”
She sounded so upset with herself. Like she was disappointed with herself.
“Then one night after I had watched the girls and Mark volunteered to take me home, he um… said he wanted more.”
She paused, thinking how to phrase whatever she was going to say next before turning to angel her body towards me and look me straight in the eye. “Now, you have to understand my family to understand why that was such a big deal to my nineteen year old self.” She took a deep breath before carrying on. “My mom and dad and I… we were really close. It was just us. They gave me everything I could ever want, even if we weren’t super rich. They taught me how to be a good person and my biggest fear was letting them down, I wanted to make them proud. I just… I don’t really want to talk about them too much Harry, it kind of… it just-“
“Okay.” I cut her off, understanding that talking about her parents must be hard for her. It was obvious she missed them just by the way she spoke, or by the tears I could clearly see building in the corner of her eyes at the mention of them.
She nodded and breathed in deeply before continuing her story. “I was always the good girl, the very epitome of it actually. I didn’t rebel like most of my friend had, I never drank or did drugs or… had sex. ”
She looked away from me then, looking back down at her hands. “I had convinced myself I was going to wait until marriage, until Mark started to talk about it.” Again the disappointment in herself was evident in her voice. “I was so stupid. I thought he loved me and I reasoned with myself that if it was really love then I didn’t need to wait, right? So I let him talk me into it.”
I felt a burning in the pit of my stomach at her words. I could picture a young, innocent, love sick version of Aria sitting in a car nodding to the slick words some bastard spoke to her in hope of getting it in. I wanted to reach out and hold her hand, but I didn’t want her to stop.
“I lost it right there in the backseat of his very expensive car, definitely not any girl’s idea of romantic or special, that’s for sure.” She laughed bitterly. “He dropped me off at home right after and I didn’t hear from him for days. Um… so because no one knew about us, I had to keep it all a big secret and keep going to work at his parents’ house. He would be there but he would leave the room if I entered. I was so confused and heart broken and then he left back for school again.”
I could feel the memory of the pain she was reliving for my benefit radiate off of her and I almost wanted to stop her but I selfishly wanted to know more. I wanted the full story so I could understand her better. And maybe a little because I wanted to know someone else was hurt as badly as I had been.
“A month went by and I had just convinced myself that I would be okay. That people get their hearts broken all the time. And then my mom asked why I was so emotional and made a joke about me PMSing,” she shook her head. “I freaked because I realized I had missed my period. I had no one I could talk to back home so I called Ken. I told her everything, mostly because she was here and I didn’t think there was any possibility of my secret getting out if she knew. She talked me through a pregnancy test from London. It was positive obviously.”
Her eyes drifted behind her and up the stairs that I could see over her shoulder. I knew what she was thinking about. I knew that the image of the small little boy curled up in his crib was flashing in her mind right then.
She didn’t look back over at me as she kept talking. “I was terrified. I knew I couldn’t tell my parents because it would break their hearts and I was sure they would never look at me the same again. Kendra told me to tell Mark so I waited.”
Her eyes shifted away from the stairs to just in front of her. I was sure she was back there. Back in that moment when her whole life changed.
“I didn’t have to wait too long. It was Christmas break so he was due to come back home for the holiday.” Another bitter laugh. “He didn’t come back alone though. Apparently, while I had been seeing him at home, he had a pretty serious relationship going on away at school. A relationship both his parents’ strongly approved of, which is why we had been kept a secret, and during the time between the last time I had seen him and his return home he had proposed to her. They were set to be the next power couple. They were the perfect pair.”
Her sad eyes looked back up at me and as she spoke her next words her voice wavered. “So you can imagine my news didn’t go over too well with Mark.”
This time I did reach out and hold her hand because the amount of pain I could hear and see burning in her eyes was too much for one person.
She looked at me gratefully and I squeezed her hand letting her know I understood.
“Um… Mark denied it was his. Then I reminded him I was a virgin when we slept together and I hadn’t been with anyone since, he panicked. He um… he told me to get rid of ‘it’. I told him I wasn’t going to do that, although I was still scared out of my mind. He kicked me out, told me to not come back. I spent my whole Christmas crying in my room.”
Get rid of it. Memories of Rachel implying she’d do just that came back to me and I felt my heart constrict. I remembered the pain of I felt at the thought of Rachel not wanting something that we created and suddenly I understood a lot more about Aria then I had originally.
I squeezed her hand a little tighter and edged a bit closer to her until our knees were touching.
“I called Kendra again and she told me to tell my parents. I refused; I still didn’t want to admit that I was going to disappoint them.” She glanced up at me with damp saddened eyes. It was the most vulnerable I had ever seen any human being before.
“I went to his parents. I was about six months pregnant and hiding it from my parents with baggy hoodies and loose pants. I thought they would be easier to talk to.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and I had a feeling that her assumption had been wrong.
“They called me a life ruining whore. They said I was only trying to ruin Mark’s future political career and relationship by keeping my baby. They offered me money to get rid of it and when I refused they offered me money to disappear.”
She flashed her eyes over to me before pulling her hand out of mine. Instantly I missed the connection.
“I took it.” Again disappointment seeped into her tone. “I knew I wasn’t going to get an abortion but I couldn’t tell my mom and dad either, so I took the money and called Ken. She said I could stay with her for as long as I wanted even though she did try to get me to tell my parents. When I um… when I got here I was about 7 months pregnant. I slept on Kendra’s sofa. I had no job and only the little bit of money I had left over from the trip here. Kendra paid for everything.”
“What about your parents?”
She flinched at my question. “I left them, erm, I left them a no-note.”
My hand itched to clutch hers again but she took that option away as she stood up instead. I watched her pace in silence, the whole time trying to talk myself out of standing up and wrapping my arms around her to get her to stop.
“I, um… I don’t want to tell you the rest of it.”
That sparked my curiosity. She had been so open up until now, what could possibly be so bad that she didn’t want to say?
Now I stood so I was just in front of her staring at her down cast eyes. “Why?”
She glanced up at me. A slightly wild look in her eyes as she spoke. “Harry… I, my resume… the recommendation…. God you’re going to fire me.”
I hadn’t even pieced the two together until just then. How had she managed that? The bastards parents obviously didn’t like her.
But still, I certainly wasn’t going to fire her.
“Why do you always think I am going to fire you?” My hand reached out to cup her chin before I could even think about what I was doing. She looked just as startled as I was by my actions but I choose to speak instead. “I’m not going to fire you Aria. You’re a wonderful nanny and Darcy loves you.” And I think I might also. I’m about ninety percent sure, anyway.
We just stared at each other, my hand still holding her face up to look at me. I could almost see the internal battle she was having, trying to decide whether to tell me or not and then she blurted it out.
“I threatened to come back if the Winston’s didn’t give me a recommendation for this job. I blackmailed them into making you and your mom believe I was the best when clearly anyone who would stoop so low couldn’t be.”
I had to admit I was a bit shocked and honestly if I had known about this at first I would have never let her stay, Thank god I didn’t know about it before because I knew her now. I knew that, blackmail or not, she was the best. She was caring, and kind. She loved my daughter as if she was her own and it was reflected back to her.
She was looking at me, almost in a challenging way. I knew what she was waiting for. I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head one way then the other before biting my lip, the whole time keeping my eyes on her.
“No.”
She looked confused. I could tell she wanted to ask what I was saying no to but she was too scared to voice it.
“I’m still not going to fire you, Aria.”
“You should.”
I laughed at that. As if I could even think of doing that, forget about the fact that I couldn’t imagine her not being here. Darcy and my mum would kill me, not to mention the boys. No, we had all grown much to attached to this little American woman and her baby boy.
I understood, now more than ever, what my mother meant when she told me Aria and I had a lot in common. I don’t think even mum knew just how much.
“Aria, I’m not going to fire you.” I repeated hoping she realized that there was a silent ever in there.
There was a bit of wonder and a whole lot of gratitude in Aria’s eyes as she looked up at me. Her hands reached up to latch onto my wrist where my hands still held her face. I vaguely wondered what it would feel like to kiss her right then, to feel her pouty lips on mine.
That though made me realize that I had finally reached it, I was now sure.
I was one hundred percent in love with my daughter’s nanny.
Even though she was a good distance away from me thanks to my rather large sofa I was completely aware of her toes nearly touching my thigh due to her legs being curled up beside her. It was such a small part of her, but I almost wanted to reach out and pull her small feet onto my lap just to feel the contact.
We had been watching some ridiculous adverts for things that no one would ever need for hours now but Aria was laughing and I was the only one around so I was going to enjoy it while it lasted.
At the moment I could almost pretend we were more than just quasi friends.
I had a feeling she was just trying to keep the dreams away and I just happened to be here but that was the thing.
I was here.
And I didn’t mind sitting on the sofa with her well into the early morning hours watching the worst over acting in any advert ever.
“Oh man. My mom has one of those.” She managed to get out between giggles as she watched some woman on TV vacuum out ear wax.
But my eyes were on her because that was the first time I had heard her mention her family, besides Jamie, and it sparked my curiosity.
I stared at her wondering if I should even bring it up at all, but the more I thought about it the more I realized I knew nothing about her. Nothing important anyway.
I knew she was an experienced nanny and that she came highly recommended by her past employer. I knew she had no criminal record thanks to the background check my mum ran on her before even meeting with her but I didn’t know a thing about Aria herself, and I wanted to.
“Aria?”
She turned her head my way, a bright smile still spread across her lips even as her eyes looked tired. Suddenly I didn’t know how to ask what I wanted to ask or even if I should.
“Do you.. is your…” I looked away from her to take a deep breath because it was hard to focus when she looked at me like that. “You don’t talk about you’re mum too much. Or really ever.”
When I looked back her smile had fallen. So had her eyes as she stared at her hands.
“So?” She mumbled out.
I wished I hadn’t said anything when she uncurled her legs and placed them on the floor, pushing herself up into a proper sitting position.
“I was just wondering…” I tried to go over the best way to continue on with this without pushing her away, I didn’t want our time to end just yet but I had already started this so now I had to follow through. “I don’t know anything about you?”
Her eyes snapped up. “Yes you do. You know enough.”
I scoffed despite myself. “I know your favorite color and that you don’t have a criminal record. But I don’t know a thing about you.”
She narrowed her eyes at me and it made me feel like I went back in time to three days ago. All friendliness was lost from her eyes and I did not like it at all.
Maybe I had moved too fast, asked this too soon. Maybe I should have given our budding friendship a bit more time. I wasn’t really known for good timing though.
“I don’t want to talk about it Harry.” She hissed out, pushing forward until she was sitting on the very edge of the cushions. I was sure she was going to get up and end… whatever this was.
So I back tracked in hopes of keeping her here. Maybe I could get her to forget I even asked.
“I just thought we might be a little closer now and I just wanted to know more about you but you don’t have to say-” She pushed off the sofa and desperation set in as she kept moving until she was standing near the doorway. My eyes following her every movement. “I’m sorry.” I pleaded. I hated the way my voice sounded. Needy and vulnerable. I hated that she had managed to make me sound like that but I carried on anyway. “Please, just stay. I won’t ask anything else. You don’t have to tell me anything. I get that we aren’t friends like that.”
Aria looked over her shoulder, the uneasiness gone. She was studying me and I felt uncomfortable by it but I wasn’t going to say a word.
And then she sat back down, her hands in her lap and her head bent down while she took a deep breath. “Why do you care Harry? A few days ago you didn’t even want to be in the same room as me.”
I knew the answer to her question but I wasn’t going to voice it. So instead I just bit my lip and shrugged. “Things change Aria. I want to be friends. I… I like this.” I waved my hand between the two of us indicating the easiness we had going on before. “I like having someone living here that isn’t a child and that is going through the same thing I am as a parent. I like having you here Aria and you don’t have to tell me anything but I would like to know more about you; whatever and whenever you want to tell me.”
She didn’t move or say anything for a long time and I was sure I had pushed my luck a little too far this time. My heart was already aching thinking about having to suffer through her being distant all over again, especially when I had just decided that I was a lot more attached to her then I originally thought.
I was just sat here waiting for her to get up and leave me again when she spoke, surprising me nearly enough to knock me out of my seat.
“I haven’t spoken to my mom, or my dad, since before Jamie was born. It’s kind of a sore subject with me.” She never looked up at me, but I knew that she would keep talking so I kept silent, even attempting to keep my breathing quiet. “I haven’t really talked to anyone since I left, really.” She laughed bitterly.
When she didn’t continue to speak I decided that I needed to speak even if I was nervous saying anything would only cause her to stop talking all together. “Why did you leave?”
A small bittersweet smile graced her lips as she breathed out. “It’s a really long story.”
I edged closer to her and ducked my head down until I caught her eye. “I have time.”
Her smile grew at my words. It was nearing five in the morning but that didn’t matter to me right now. Her smile quickly fell, however, before she took a deep breath. I had a feeling I was going to get my way.
“I don’t even know where to start. I haven’t talked about it since…” She furrowed her brow and bit her lip then turned to face me fully. “…ever really. Kendra knew so I never had to re-tell any of it.”
“You can start where ever you want to start, where ever is easiest.” I encouraged.
Her expression remained worried and a bit hesitant but she took a deep breath and began anyway. “You read my resume, my recommendations right?”
I nodded. My mother had given them to me to read when I had first agreed to have Aria become Darcy’s nanny. She had been trying to show me Aria was capable of the job. The family she had worked for before had spoken very highly of her.
I was curious where she was going with this.
“I worked for one of those families for a really long time. The Winstons. I watched their twin girls, Molly and Mallory. I was about 18 when I started working for them. I had just moved out of my parents’ house, taking online college courses and watching them part time. The Winston’s are a really well off family. They have an older son too, Ma- Mark. He was 21 when I first met him.” She paused and looked away, laughing one of her humorless laughs before shaking her head and carrying on. The way she stumbled of the brother’s name made me feel like I wasn’t going to like him at all.
“He’s um….” She was clearly struggling to get her next words out. “He’s Jamie’s father.”
My eyes widened. I knew I wasn’t going to like him.
“I think I fell in love with him the second I saw him for the first time when he came to visited his family from collage. I was so dumb, Harry. I would follow him around the house hoping he would notice me.” She sighed at the memory. “Anyway, he figured it out eventually and I was mortified but instead of letting me down gently or even ignoring it all together he.. um… he kissed me.”
I couldn’t understand how I could be so jealous of someone I didn’t even know. Maybe it was because I feared he might still mean something to her, he might be the person holding her back form everyone else like in one of those stupid love stories. I didn’t like that thought at all.
“We dated for nearly a year. It was a big secret. No one knew. It wasn’t such a hard secret to keep since he was away at collage most of the time anyway.”
She sounded so upset with herself. Like she was disappointed with herself.
“Then one night after I had watched the girls and Mark volunteered to take me home, he um… said he wanted more.”
She paused, thinking how to phrase whatever she was going to say next before turning to angel her body towards me and look me straight in the eye. “Now, you have to understand my family to understand why that was such a big deal to my nineteen year old self.” She took a deep breath before carrying on. “My mom and dad and I… we were really close. It was just us. They gave me everything I could ever want, even if we weren’t super rich. They taught me how to be a good person and my biggest fear was letting them down, I wanted to make them proud. I just… I don’t really want to talk about them too much Harry, it kind of… it just-“
“Okay.” I cut her off, understanding that talking about her parents must be hard for her. It was obvious she missed them just by the way she spoke, or by the tears I could clearly see building in the corner of her eyes at the mention of them.
She nodded and breathed in deeply before continuing her story. “I was always the good girl, the very epitome of it actually. I didn’t rebel like most of my friend had, I never drank or did drugs or… had sex. ”
She looked away from me then, looking back down at her hands. “I had convinced myself I was going to wait until marriage, until Mark started to talk about it.” Again the disappointment in herself was evident in her voice. “I was so stupid. I thought he loved me and I reasoned with myself that if it was really love then I didn’t need to wait, right? So I let him talk me into it.”
I felt a burning in the pit of my stomach at her words. I could picture a young, innocent, love sick version of Aria sitting in a car nodding to the slick words some bastard spoke to her in hope of getting it in. I wanted to reach out and hold her hand, but I didn’t want her to stop.
“I lost it right there in the backseat of his very expensive car, definitely not any girl’s idea of romantic or special, that’s for sure.” She laughed bitterly. “He dropped me off at home right after and I didn’t hear from him for days. Um… so because no one knew about us, I had to keep it all a big secret and keep going to work at his parents’ house. He would be there but he would leave the room if I entered. I was so confused and heart broken and then he left back for school again.”
I could feel the memory of the pain she was reliving for my benefit radiate off of her and I almost wanted to stop her but I selfishly wanted to know more. I wanted the full story so I could understand her better. And maybe a little because I wanted to know someone else was hurt as badly as I had been.
“A month went by and I had just convinced myself that I would be okay. That people get their hearts broken all the time. And then my mom asked why I was so emotional and made a joke about me PMSing,” she shook her head. “I freaked because I realized I had missed my period. I had no one I could talk to back home so I called Ken. I told her everything, mostly because she was here and I didn’t think there was any possibility of my secret getting out if she knew. She talked me through a pregnancy test from London. It was positive obviously.”
Her eyes drifted behind her and up the stairs that I could see over her shoulder. I knew what she was thinking about. I knew that the image of the small little boy curled up in his crib was flashing in her mind right then.
She didn’t look back over at me as she kept talking. “I was terrified. I knew I couldn’t tell my parents because it would break their hearts and I was sure they would never look at me the same again. Kendra told me to tell Mark so I waited.”
Her eyes shifted away from the stairs to just in front of her. I was sure she was back there. Back in that moment when her whole life changed.
“I didn’t have to wait too long. It was Christmas break so he was due to come back home for the holiday.” Another bitter laugh. “He didn’t come back alone though. Apparently, while I had been seeing him at home, he had a pretty serious relationship going on away at school. A relationship both his parents’ strongly approved of, which is why we had been kept a secret, and during the time between the last time I had seen him and his return home he had proposed to her. They were set to be the next power couple. They were the perfect pair.”
Her sad eyes looked back up at me and as she spoke her next words her voice wavered. “So you can imagine my news didn’t go over too well with Mark.”
This time I did reach out and hold her hand because the amount of pain I could hear and see burning in her eyes was too much for one person.
She looked at me gratefully and I squeezed her hand letting her know I understood.
“Um… Mark denied it was his. Then I reminded him I was a virgin when we slept together and I hadn’t been with anyone since, he panicked. He um… he told me to get rid of ‘it’. I told him I wasn’t going to do that, although I was still scared out of my mind. He kicked me out, told me to not come back. I spent my whole Christmas crying in my room.”
Get rid of it. Memories of Rachel implying she’d do just that came back to me and I felt my heart constrict. I remembered the pain of I felt at the thought of Rachel not wanting something that we created and suddenly I understood a lot more about Aria then I had originally.
I squeezed her hand a little tighter and edged a bit closer to her until our knees were touching.
“I called Kendra again and she told me to tell my parents. I refused; I still didn’t want to admit that I was going to disappoint them.” She glanced up at me with damp saddened eyes. It was the most vulnerable I had ever seen any human being before.
“I went to his parents. I was about six months pregnant and hiding it from my parents with baggy hoodies and loose pants. I thought they would be easier to talk to.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and I had a feeling that her assumption had been wrong.
“They called me a life ruining whore. They said I was only trying to ruin Mark’s future political career and relationship by keeping my baby. They offered me money to get rid of it and when I refused they offered me money to disappear.”
She flashed her eyes over to me before pulling her hand out of mine. Instantly I missed the connection.
“I took it.” Again disappointment seeped into her tone. “I knew I wasn’t going to get an abortion but I couldn’t tell my mom and dad either, so I took the money and called Ken. She said I could stay with her for as long as I wanted even though she did try to get me to tell my parents. When I um… when I got here I was about 7 months pregnant. I slept on Kendra’s sofa. I had no job and only the little bit of money I had left over from the trip here. Kendra paid for everything.”
“What about your parents?”
She flinched at my question. “I left them, erm, I left them a no-note.”
My hand itched to clutch hers again but she took that option away as she stood up instead. I watched her pace in silence, the whole time trying to talk myself out of standing up and wrapping my arms around her to get her to stop.
“I, um… I don’t want to tell you the rest of it.”
That sparked my curiosity. She had been so open up until now, what could possibly be so bad that she didn’t want to say?
Now I stood so I was just in front of her staring at her down cast eyes. “Why?”
She glanced up at me. A slightly wild look in her eyes as she spoke. “Harry… I, my resume… the recommendation…. God you’re going to fire me.”
I hadn’t even pieced the two together until just then. How had she managed that? The bastards parents obviously didn’t like her.
But still, I certainly wasn’t going to fire her.
“Why do you always think I am going to fire you?” My hand reached out to cup her chin before I could even think about what I was doing. She looked just as startled as I was by my actions but I choose to speak instead. “I’m not going to fire you Aria. You’re a wonderful nanny and Darcy loves you.” And I think I might also. I’m about ninety percent sure, anyway.
We just stared at each other, my hand still holding her face up to look at me. I could almost see the internal battle she was having, trying to decide whether to tell me or not and then she blurted it out.
“I threatened to come back if the Winston’s didn’t give me a recommendation for this job. I blackmailed them into making you and your mom believe I was the best when clearly anyone who would stoop so low couldn’t be.”
I had to admit I was a bit shocked and honestly if I had known about this at first I would have never let her stay, Thank god I didn’t know about it before because I knew her now. I knew that, blackmail or not, she was the best. She was caring, and kind. She loved my daughter as if she was her own and it was reflected back to her.
She was looking at me, almost in a challenging way. I knew what she was waiting for. I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head one way then the other before biting my lip, the whole time keeping my eyes on her.
“No.”
She looked confused. I could tell she wanted to ask what I was saying no to but she was too scared to voice it.
“I’m still not going to fire you, Aria.”
“You should.”
I laughed at that. As if I could even think of doing that, forget about the fact that I couldn’t imagine her not being here. Darcy and my mum would kill me, not to mention the boys. No, we had all grown much to attached to this little American woman and her baby boy.
I understood, now more than ever, what my mother meant when she told me Aria and I had a lot in common. I don’t think even mum knew just how much.
“Aria, I’m not going to fire you.” I repeated hoping she realized that there was a silent ever in there.
There was a bit of wonder and a whole lot of gratitude in Aria’s eyes as she looked up at me. Her hands reached up to latch onto my wrist where my hands still held her face. I vaguely wondered what it would feel like to kiss her right then, to feel her pouty lips on mine.
That though made me realize that I had finally reached it, I was now sure.
I was one hundred percent in love with my daughter’s nanny.
YOOO!!! IF YOU DONT UPDATE I SWEAR...
9/3/16