Chapter 4 - THE SIXTH NANNY
• • •
By six o’clock the next morning, Kevin had listened to Lauren’s message nineteen times.
The first eighteen times, he heard only Victor’s warning, Lauren’s fear, and the accusation hidden inside her final sentence.
On the nineteenth, he heard the twins in the background.
Jordan was asking whether they were going to Aunt Claire’s house.
Justin was singing two notes from a lullaby Lauren used at bedtime.
Their voices were ordinary.
They had no idea their lives were about to divide into before and after.
Kevin sat alone at the kitchen island while dawn entered the mansion through tall windows.
Annie had gone upstairs at four to check the boys.
She had returned twenty minutes later and found him in the same position.
“They are still sleeping,” she said.
Kevin nodded.
He had removed his jacket and tie.
His white shirt was creased, and the cuffs were unbuttoned.
For once, he did not look like the man whose photograph appeared on business magazines.
He looked like a widower who had spent the night discovering that his wife had died while trying to warn him.
“I need you to stay,” he said.
Annie stopped beside the coffee machine.
“I am scheduled until three.”
“That is not what I mean.”
She turned toward him.
Kevin’s tone returned to the controlled precision he used when proposing a deal.
“I want to revise your employment.”
Annie’s face revealed immediate caution.
“You want me to become their nanny.”
“I want you to become their primary caregiver.”
“No.”
Kevin stared at her.
He had expected hesitation, perhaps negotiation.
He had not expected a refusal before he named a salary.
“You have not heard the terms.”
“I have heard enough.”
“You are currently working eleven-hour shifts for a fraction of what I would pay.”
“That does not change my answer.”
Kevin stood.
“Five specialists failed to reach them.”
“I am not a specialist.”
“You accomplished in six days what they could not accomplish in months.”
“I lay beside two frightened children until they fell asleep.”
“That is precisely the point.”
“No.”
Annie faced him across the island.
“The point is that you are searching for a sixth person to do what you are afraid to do yourself.”
Kevin’s expression hardened.
“You are overstepping.”
“Then fire me.”
The answer came without drama.
Annie removed the white apron from around her waist and folded it on the counter.
Kevin looked at the fabric.
Upstairs, Justin might wake and reach for it.
The thought changed his next words.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Annie’s hands stopped.
“You assume this is a negotiation.”
“Everything is a negotiation.”
“That may be why your sons do not believe love can stay without conditions.”
Kevin absorbed the sentence in silence.
Annie picked up the apron.
“I will continue cleaning the house under the agreement I accepted.”
“I will be kind to Jordan and Justin whenever I see them.”
“But I will not become the new woman you hire so you can remain absent.”
Kevin looked toward the staircase.
“What would make you accept?”
“I said no.”
“What conditions would change the answer?”
Annie studied him for a long moment.
Perhaps she saw that he was not asking as an executive anymore.
Perhaps she saw only a desperate father trying to purchase a solution because money was the tool he trusted most.
“If I agreed,” she said slowly, “you would have to come home for dinner at least five nights a week.”
Kevin’s first instinct was to calculate his schedule.
Three board meetings, two international calls, and a merger review occupied the next seven days.
Annie saw the calculation cross his face.
“That hesitation is your answer.”
“Continue.”
“You would attend every counseling session unless the therapist said your presence was harmful.”
“I already receive summaries.”
“You would attend.”
Kevin’s jaw tightened.
“Continue.”
“You would stop asking employees to remove every reminder of Lauren.”
“I never gave that instruction.”
“The staff takes down her photographs before you enter a room.”
Kevin looked at her sharply.
“They do what?”
“Mrs. Bell told them you become distracted.”
“I did not know.”
“That is another condition.”
“What is?”
“You stop allowing people to make choices in your name because you are too busy or too sad to ask what they are doing.”
The words landed close to the center of the night’s discovery.
Victor had negotiated the settlement.
Evelyn had handled the therapists.
Martin had managed the security system.
Mrs. Bell had managed the house.
Kevin had signed, approved, delegated, and disappeared.
He had confused authority with involvement.
“What else?” he asked.
Annie looked surprised that he had not ended the conversation.
“The boys decide what to call me.”
“You are Miss Reed.”
“They may choose Annie.”
“That is too familiar.”
“So is sleeping with both hands wrapped around my clothes.”
Kevin had no response.
“And I am not replacing their mother,” Annie continued.
“You will never ask them to call me anything connected to her.”
“I would not.”
“Your mother might.”
Kevin’s eyes cooled.
“My mother will have no role in your employment.”
Annie gave him a look that suggested Evelyn already had a role in everything.
“Last condition,” she said.
“You tell the boys the truth.”
“About Victor?”
“Not yet.”
“About what?”
“About why you kept leaving.”
Kevin turned away.
“I was working.”
“That is what you did.”
“It is not why.”
He walked to the windows.
The eastern lawn extended toward bare trees and a stone wall Lauren had wanted covered in climbing roses.
The gardeners had planted them the previous spring.
Kevin had not noticed whether they bloomed.
“I kept leaving because being near them reminded me of the hospital,” he said.
The confession sounded weak in the bright kitchen.
Annie did not rescue him from it.
“When Jordan tilted his head, he looked like Lauren.”
“When Justin laughed, he sounded like her.”
“Every room contained something she touched.”
“At the office, nobody expected me to remember her every second.”
Annie’s voice was quiet behind him.
“The boys remembered her every second without a choice.”
Kevin closed his eyes.
“I know that now.”
“Knowing is not the condition.”
He turned.
“Then what is?”
“You tell them.”
Kevin looked upstairs again.
“All right.”
Annie did not smile.
She extended her hand across the island.
“One month.”
“What?”
“I will try the arrangement for one month.”
“If you stop showing up, I return to housekeeping.”
“If you treat me as a replacement parent, I return to housekeeping.”
“If you use money to avoid a difficult conversation, I return to housekeeping.”
Kevin looked at her hand.
“You negotiate more aggressively than half my senior executives.”
“Maybe you hired the wrong people.”
He shook her hand.
The agreement was made without lawyers, signatures, or a single number discussed.
It felt more binding than most contracts Kevin had signed.
At 7:20 a.m., Jordan appeared at the kitchen entrance.
He wore one blue sock and one green sock.
His hair stood up on one side.
He saw Annie first and relaxed.
Then he saw Kevin.
His body became careful again.
Kevin crouched.
“Good morning.”
Jordan looked toward the folded apron on the counter.
“Is she leaving?”
“No.”
“For how many sleeps?”
Kevin glanced at Annie.
“One month to begin.”
Jordan counted silently on his fingers.
“That is a lot.”
“It is.”
“Are you staying too?”
The question required more courage from the boy than his voice revealed.
Kevin stood slowly.
“I am staying for breakfast.”
Jordan’s face did not change.
“And dinner.”
A little hope appeared.
“And tomorrow?”
Kevin felt the entire agreement narrowing toward this moment.
“Tomorrow too.”
Jordan walked into the kitchen.
He did not hug Kevin.
He did not smile.
He simply climbed onto a stool and sat near him.
For Kevin, the distance between them felt enormous and newly crossable.
Justin arrived a few minutes later holding Annie’s missing shoe.
He placed it at her feet with solemn importance.
“You forgot this.”
“Thank you.”
Justin looked at Kevin.
“Did you fire her?”
“No.”
“Grandma said you should.”
Kevin became still.
“When did Grandma say that?”
“On the tablet.”
Annie’s eyes moved to him.
The twins had a monitored tablet used for educational games and video calls.
Only approved family members could contact them.
Kevin had not known Evelyn had called.
“What exactly did she say?” he asked.
Justin placed both hands on the counter.
“She said Annie was confusing us.”
Jordan spoke without looking up.
“She said Mommy would not like strangers in her bed.”
Kevin’s pulse sharpened.
“When did she call?”
“Last night,” Jordan said.
Kevin had been in the security room with Annie.
Evelyn had spoken to the children after her conversation with him.
She had moved immediately to isolate the one person they trusted.
Kevin walked to the study and retrieved the tablet.
The call history showed no conversation with Evelyn.
The record had been deleted.
He opened the parental control log.
An administrator account had accessed the device remotely at 12:38 a.m.
The account was registered to Morrison Dynamics information security.
Kevin called the head of the department.
A nervous manager answered and explained that only two executives possessed emergency family access.
Kevin was one.
Victor was the other.
Before Kevin could ask another question, the front doorbell rang.
Mrs. Bell crossed the foyer and opened it.
Evelyn Morrison entered wearing a pearl-gray suit and carrying a leather folder.
Behind her stood a woman Kevin recognized from the state family court system.
Evelyn looked past him toward Annie and the twins.
“I came as soon as I learned what happened,” she said.
Kevin’s gaze moved to the official identification clipped to the other woman’s coat.
Dr. Miriam Cross.
Court-appointed child welfare evaluator.
Evelyn held up the folder.
“I have serious concerns about the woman you allowed into Lauren’s bed.”
May you like
She looked directly at Annie.
“And I think Kevin should know why St. Catherine’s Academy dismissed you after a child in your care disappeared.”
