The Summer Nanny

by Holly Chamberlin

  Chapter 5

  Hayley stopped at a crossroad as a driver was supposed to do, not that many drivers on these back roads obeyed such commands—like the man who cycled on past her on his makeshift three-wheeler. Raymond Windermere was the eccentric owner of a tumbling-down old farmhouse in the back of beyond. Sticking out of the wicker basket strapped behind his seat was a haphazard pile of books. It was said that Raymond Windermere was insanely rich, but the only thing he seemed to spend money on in Yorktide was books.

  Hayley could understand such passion. She yearned for money with which to buy every book she had ever wanted to read and a copy of all the favorites she had already read. Thank God for the library. It had been her haven since she had first been able to read. In fact, Hayley remembered keenly the very moment her interest in history was born. Her mother had dropped her off at the public library in Yorktide while she kept an appointment with the doctor. As childminders, librarians were perfect for the parent with little or no money to spare. The eight-year-old Hayley had wandered from the tiny children’s section into the not-much-larger section of adult books. On one of the blond wood tables there sat a thick book with an interesting title—Peter the Great: His Life and Legacy. Hayley took a seat at the table and opened the tome. Within minutes she was captivated by the written contents as well as by the glossy images. If some of the vocabulary was new to her, and most of the names of people from foreign lands impossible to pronounce, the story was compelling enough to keep her turning pages.

  Suddenly her intense concentration had been disturbed by the appearance of an adult at her side. The woman smiled and pointed to the open page. “What’s a little girl like you doing reading a big book like that?” she asked. “You should be reading one of those nice books written especially for children.”

  For a moment, Hayley hadn’t known how to respond. Was she doing something wrong? And then it came to her very clearly that she wasn’t doing anything wrong. “Did you know,” Hayley asked the woman, “there was a person called Peter the Great who ruled Russia for forty-two years? He was almost seven foot tall.” The woman seemed disconcerted by Hayley’s reply and rapidly walked away.

  The incident was burned into Hayley’s brain. It was when she had first learned that there were activities that certain people were not supposed to engage in. People like children, girls, old people, poor people, African American people, immigrant people. The list of who should not be doing X or Y just because they were who they were went on. It was when Hayley had first learned that the world was full of arbitrary rules and regulations, and while you might not be able to change all or even some of them, if you were smart you could learn how to circumvent and even to ignore them.

  Since that afternoon at the library Hayley had read every bit of European and American history she could get her hands on while keeping up with schoolwork, holding down sometimes two jobs at once, and being a good daughter to her mother if not, in her father’s opinion, to him. For Eddie Franklin’s fatherly approval Hayley would have to abandon everyone (even her mother) and everything (even her reading) that didn’t directly pertain to his creature comforts, and Hayley was not in the least bit interested in being her father’s devoted personal servant any more than she was compelled to be by circumstances.

  Hayley steered her car around a significant hole in the road, all too common after a long Maine winter. This intense intellectual interest was the thing that most differentiated Hayley from her parents and brother, none of whom seem to have any passions at all, certainly not intellectual passions. She often wondered where she came from. Who in her family had intelligence like hers? Was it someone on her father’s or her mother’s side? A great-great grandmother or a great-great-great grandfather? There had to have been someone in her lineage with a passion for learning. Or had she been switched at birth? Had the child really born to Nora and Eddie Franklin been handed over to civilized and cultured parents, while the child born to that civilized and cultured couple had been handed over to the Franklins? But no. One look at the shape of her hands, exactly like her mother’s, and one look at the color of her hair, exactly like Brandon’s, and one look at the color of her eyes, exactly like her father’s, was enough to convince Hayley that for better or worse—and it was for worse—she was indeed of Mackenzie–Franklin blood.

  Hayley turned onto Hawthorne Lane. The Latimers lived at number 22. No sooner had Hayley parked her car in the drive than Amy was beckoning to her from the porch.

  “Come up to my room,” she said. “I want to show you what I got at the Victoria’s Secret sale.”

  Hayley followed Amy to her room on the second floor. One thing Hayley knew for sure. If the room were hers she would keep it far neater than Amy was in the habit of keeping it. With a mew of distaste, Hayley picked up a bit of orange peel with her fingertips and dropped it into the already full trash can.

  Amy showed her two form-fitting T-shirts, one pale pink and the other white. “Aren’t they pretty?” she asked.

  “They’re nice,” Hayley said mechanically. Could there be two more impractical colors?

  “What’s wrong?” Amy asked, eyeing her suspiciously and tossing the T-shirts across the room.

  “I lost my job,” Hayley said bluntly. “Judy is closing the business at the end of June.”

  “Ouch. Sorry.”

  Gingerly Hayley sat on the edge of Amy’s bed, half afraid of what might be lurking under the covers. “It’s the story of my life,” she said. “One step forward, two steps back. It gets boring after a while, you know?”

  “Don’t be depressed,” Amy said heartily. “I have a way we both can make a ton of money this summer.”

  “What? And don’t say we’ll buy lottery tickets. You know I’m against gambling.”

  “Nothing like that,” Amy assured her, plopping down next to Hayley. “This girl I know from my psych class told me she’s been working as a summer nanny on Nantucket for the past two years. She says it’s a great way to earn money without having to be cooped up in an office staring at a computer or standing on your feet waiting tables all day.”

  Hayley frowned. It was bad enough cleaning the houses of the well-to-do but to be compelled to cater to the whims of their spoiled brats? “No thanks,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Amy asked. “You’re great with kids. Look, my friend told me how to go about finding a job as a nanny. It’s super easy.”

  “The idea is absurd,” Hayley said. “Rich people seeking a caretaker for their children would never hire someone like me, with my casually criminal family and lack of education.”

  “Don’t be silly. I don’t even have babysitting references like you do,” Amy pointed out, “but that’s not stopping me. Look, my friend got to go with one of her families to Aruba for two weeks. She said it was fantastic. We could get a free vacation!”

  “Nothing is ever really free, Amy,” Hayley pointed out. “Your friend paid for that holiday in hard labor, you can be sure. She wasn’t the one lazing on a beach chair sipping piña coladas or whatever it is people drink in Aruba.”

  Amy sighed. “Why do you always have to be so negative?”

  “Practical,” Hayley corrected. “And if it comes across to some people as negative, I can’t help that.”

  Amy looked genuinely crestfallen, and Hayley felt a surge of guilt for having quashed her friend’s enthusiasm. “All right,” she said. “I promise to think about it. But don’t hold your breath.”

  “Why would I do that?” Amy asked.

  Hayley rolled her eyes heavenward. “Never mind.”

  Chapter 6

  Leda was taking a brief respite from her work, but only a brief one, because one of her longtime clients was anxious for the delivery of the embroidered place mats and matching napkins she had ordered. Carolyn’s college nemesis was coming for luncheon at the end of the week and she was eager to impress. Leda thought the idea of impressing someone you hadn’t seen for over forty years was slightly ridiculous, but she ha
d held her tongue.

  Now, resting on the love seat in her studio, Leda found herself gazing at her formal wedding portrait. She kept it on a shelf over her worktable. Leda and Charlie had married only months after meeting in the lobby of a small movie theatre in South Berwick. They had taken to each other right away. The eighteen-year-old Leda had been desperately seeking a refuge after the awful thing that had happened to her the previous summer, and marriage to Charlie had provided that refuge, if only for a short while.

  Leda’s cell rang. It was Phil Morse from Wainscoting and Windowseats.

  “I just sold the last of your eyeglass cases and tissue holders,” Phil told her. “You wouldn’t by chance have any more at hand?”

  “No,” Leda told him, “but I can easily make up at least five of each in the next few days. Just as soon as I finish a custom order for Carolyn Cheswick.”

  “Great. And I’ll probably sell those quickly, too.”

  Leda smiled. “Impulse purchases.”

  “And they’re perfect as little gifts to the self for the customer who’s in need of retail therapy,” Phil pointed out. “Do you want me to pick them up when you’re done?”

  “I’ll drop them off,” Leda told him.

  “Thanks, Leda,” Phil said.

  After the call ended, Leda finished her cup of tea and went to her desk to record Phil’s order and to schedule the work into her weekly planner. When you ran your own one-person business, organization was key. Leda was pleased that her accessory items continued to sell briskly. It cost her very little to make eyeglass cases, tissue holders, and even coin purses. She used scraps of material left over from larger projects, and she always kept a good stock of buttons and zippers and snaps on hand. Accessory items brought a tidy profit for very little work and expenditure.

  Leda rose from her desk and went over to her worktable to resume work on Carolyn’s order. Amy had told her that Hayley had lost her job with the cleaning company. Hayley would land on her feet, of that Leda felt sure, but she so wished that something magical would happen for her, if not in the shape of a knight in shining armor—because that scenario hardly ever worked out—then in the shape of a solid opportunity for advancement. It saddened Leda to see a bright young woman so burdened with her family’s woes.

  Thankfully, family woes were something with which Amy had never had to contend. True, the death of her beloved grandparents had hit her hard, but both had been in ill health for some time so their passing wasn’t entirely unexpected. Even at the age of seven Amy had been sensitive enough to realize that Grandma and Grandpa hadn’t been enjoying much quality of life and that in some ways their deaths were a blessing to them.

  “It’s me.”

  The unexpected whisper almost made Leda jump out of her skin.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” Leda said to Vera, her hand to her heart. “The door didn’t slam.”

  “Shhh!” Vera hissed. “I think I’m being followed.” Vera tiptoed toward one of the windows that looked over the side yard. “I think I saw someone watching my house this morning,” she said. “And when I went to the post office there was a strange man staring at me from across the street.”

  Leda shook her head and wondered if her eminently sane friend was finally losing her mind. “Who could possibly be watching you?” she asked.

  Gingerly, Vera pushed aside the sheer curtain less than half an inch and peered out. “The police,” she said. “Or one of Kitty’s old criminal cronies.”

  Leda got up from the worktable and took her friend’s arm. “Come away from there,” she said. “What you need is a nice cup of tea to calm your nerves.”

  Vera looked at her with wide eyes. “Haven’t you got any whiskey?” she asked.

  Chapter 7

  Hayley was only a few blocks from home. Rather, from the apartment in which the Franklins were currently residing. No place had felt like home for years. Homes were places in which you could let down your guard and feel secure. No one could feel secure with Eddie Franklin on site.

  And the truth was that the current situation in which she and her mother found themselves was the fault of one long-ago, very bad romantic mistake on the part of Nora Mackenzie, a naïve and innocent young woman who had been taken in by a handsome face and a quicksilver tongue.

  As for Hayley, she was not looking for or expecting love. And caring led to grave mistakes. The last thing she wanted was to get trapped in a ridiculously bad marriage like her mother had. When you let your emotions get involved, even the smartest person got stupid and fast. Hayley had no intention of getting stupid, which is the main reason she had never had a boyfriend. She wasn’t a virgin, but what sex she had engaged in had been on her own terms and had most definitely not involved the heart.

  When Hayley reached 16 Rockford Way she parked in the small lot behind the building, next to her neighbors’ beat-up vehicles. Wearily she walked around to the front of the building, pushed open the door, and stepped into the small, dark foyer. She could hear the old woman in the tiny first-floor apartment warbling along to a radio set to a country music station. Heavy footsteps overhead told her that one of the two young guys who rented an apartment on the second floor was home. Hayley went over to the narrow wooden table against the wall on which the mail carrier deposited the tenants’ letters, bills, and coupon flyers. She sorted through the mess and extricated anything addressed to the Franklins. Two bills, a catalogue addressed to Edward Franklin or Current Resident, and a letter-sized envelope addressed to Nora Franklin.

  Hayley frowned. She recognized the handwriting on the envelope, large and awkward. It belonged to her brother. It was odd that he would write a letter rather than call, and for a moment Hayley wondered if Brandon was seriously ill or in terrible trouble with the law. She might not feel affection for her brother, but she didn’t wish him harm. If he was sick or in trouble then it might be better for her to read his letter before passing it on to her mother. Hayley could foresee a scene of panic if her mother received bad news about her son without first being prepared.

  With a glance at the steep stairs covered with a dirty carpet, Hayley opened the envelope. Inside she found a single sheet of lined paper torn from a small notebook. Mom, it said. It’s me Brandon. How are you? I am fine. But I need money bad. Send me what you got. Like five hundred dollars would be good. Brandon.

  Hayley frowned and shoved the letter back into the envelope. She should have known. Her bum of a brother, currently living in Augusta, needed money. More likely he wanted money, probably for booze or some stupid purchase he would only wind up breaking or losing.

  No doubt about it, she had done the right thing by opening the letter. If her mother had seen it she would immediately have sent off whatever money she had in her purse whether the family could spare it or not. Her hands trembling with anger, Hayley tore the envelope and letter in half and in half again. Then she left the building, went around back to where the garbage cans shared by the building’s tenants were located, and buried the pieces of paper in an open plastic bag poking out of one of the cans. Her hands felt filthy, and not only because of the brown banana peel, damp paper towels, and other refuse she had accidentally touched while making her brother’s selfish request go away.

  Hayley went back into the building and began the climb to the third floor. Her mind was made up. Things had to change. She would take Amy’s advice and apply for a position as a summer nanny. With any luck, she would get a position that paid really well and she would hold on to the money. And one day, one wonderful day, Hayley and her mother would walk away from Yorktide and all the sad memories it held for them. And they would never look back.

  Chapter 8

  “Guess what?” Amy said, taking a carton of milk from the fridge. “I’m applying for a job as a nanny this summer.”

  Her mother frowned. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she asked.

  “Why wouldn’t it be? I could make a lot of money if I’m lucky.”

  “I saw Noa
h Woolrich in town earlier,” her mother said brightly.

  “That’s nice,” Amy said, joining her mother at the table and adding some milk to her cup of tea. She knew why her mother had changed the subject. Leda Latimer harbored a desire for her daughter to fall in love with Noah Woolrich. He was super nice and smart and good-looking, but for some reason Amy herself didn’t understand she wasn’t able to return his feelings.

  “He looks good,” her mother went on. “He looks so robust and healthy.”

  Amy sighed. “Mom. Please. So, is Vera in the clear with the police? I mean, they don’t think she was Kitty’s accomplice, do they?”

  “No, she’s not a suspect. But she did think she was being watched by either the police or one of Kitty’s criminal buddies.”

  Amy shook her head. “It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.”

  “I’ve got to run this box over to Phil’s shop,” her mother said, reaching for her bag. “I’ll be back soon and we can talk more about that nanny position.”

  Amy laughed. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  When her mother had gone, Amy wandered into the living room with her cup of tea. On the credenza there was a portrait of her grandparents taken on their wedding day way back in 1974. Her grandfather had been like a father to Amy. He had definitely been the man of the house, the one who fixed the food disposal when a chicken bone got caught in it; the one who mowed the lawn; the one who kept an eye on the boiler in the basement. Amy couldn’t remember one time they had had to call in a professional fix-it guy. And her grandmother had been like a second mother. When Amy’s mom was at work at the real estate agency, Grandma had been the one to remind Amy to put her dirty clothes into the laundry hamper; the one to make Amy’s lunches to take to school; even the one to review Amy’s homework. It had been an idyllic upbringing in a lot of ways, and Amy was grateful for what she had enjoyed, never more so than when she listened to Hayley talk about her own troubled home life.