by Thea Dawson
“It’s fine,” he managed. “I completely understand, and I certainly don’t want to hold you back.” He forced a light laugh. “I don’t suppose you have any amazing friends who’d be interested in a part-time job?”
“I’ll ask around, I promise, but ...” she shrugged. “Most of them are either super busy or they just want to chill out for the last semester. But I’ll ask, ’cause you’re the best boss ever, and Peyton’s just amazing.”
To Richard’s horror, she sniffed and tears came into her eyes. Emotional women, even Angel, sent his discomfort levels through the roof. He looked hastily around and found a box of tissues, which he handed to her stiffly.
She took one and wiped her eyes, smiling through her tears. “So anyway, I can stay on until Christmas break, and then I just, you know, won’t come back.” She blinked back a few more tears.
“You know you’re always welcome,” Richard assured her. “I can’t begin to thank you for everything you’ve done for Peyton. If you ever need me to write a letter of recommendation or anything, please just ask.”
She nodded, flashing him a teary smile and standing up. “I’d better get going. My next class is on the other side of campus. Do you want me to talk to Peyton or will you?”
Richard thought about it for a moment, his heart sinking. “Why don’t you tell her? I’ll try to come home early tonight.” To pick up the pieces, he resisted saying.
He got up and walked Angel to the door.
Just outside his office Angel paused and looked up at him. “She’s really lucky to have you, you know.”
“Thanks,” he replied, his voice gruff. He was deeply touched by her words but articulating his own feelings was impossible.
Angel suddenly threw her arms around him in a tight hug. He was taken aback by the sudden display of affection and was slightly alarmed at the sight of Janice, the department secretary, who’d come out of the break room and raised her eyebrows at the sight of the pretty young co-ed in the professor’s arms. She averted her eyes, though, said nothing, and walked quickly past.
Angel broke the hug. “I love you guys, Dr. H.”
“We love you, too, Angel,” he assured her, patting her back clumsily. “If there’s ever anything I can do, just let me know.”
Angel flashed him her brilliant smile through her tears. “See you tonight.” She turned and walked down the hall. Her path to the main hall would take her right past Janice’s desk. Richard wondered for a moment what she’d think of Angel’s tears, but he put it out of his mind. He had more important things to worry about now than what the gossipy secretary would think.
He went back to his office and stared glumly at his computer screen, praying that Peyton wouldn’t take the news too hard. Angel had been a constant, reassuring presence in Peyton’s life over a very bumpy year and a half. Peyton was resilient, there was no doubt about that, but there’d been enough upheaval in her world, and he hated to add more uncertainty to it.
There was another knock on the frame of his still-open door.
“Came by to see if you wanted to get lunch.” His colleague from computer engineering, Sam Campbell, stood there in a parka, pulling on his gloves in anticipation of the cold. “You look worried. What’s up?”
“My nanny just quit. Starting next semester, I’ve got no one to look after my daughter.”
2
Celia sat in the front seat of her minivan, watching the rain slide down the windshield as she waited in line at school drop off. Silverweed Falls was situated in the Oregon wine country, surrounded by gently rolling hills set off by the Pacific Coast Range. A river, fed by the falls a few miles west that gave the town its name, ran through the middle of the quaint town center.
In the summer, it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.
In the winter, Celia thought, it sucked.
The clouds loomed low overhead; it had been weeks since she’d seen the sun. Most days it rained; sometimes a chilly drizzle that lasted all day, other times coming down in icy buckets that drenched everything in a matter of minutes. Occasionally, snow dusted the trees and mountains enough to look pretty for a day or two. But it played havoc with the roads and the drivers who weren’t used to it, and there was rarely enough for snowmen or snowball fights or anything else that might have made the inconvenience worthwhile.
Sandwiched in between a Lexus and an Audi, Celia inched her old minivan closer to the sidewalk where the vice principal, Mrs. Lindstrom, waited to greet students. Lily sat in the passenger seat staring unsmilingly out the window. After the holiday celebration at school, she’d reverted to being a glum and withdrawn pre-teen. Celia knew better than to try to make small talk, so they sat in silence, broken only by Rosie’s whispered conversation with Piggie, her favorite stuffed animal, in the back seat or an occasional exclamation from Rowan. Instead, Celia pondered the rain and her place in the social strata of Silverweed Falls.
It was Friday, the last day before the holiday break. Still a little stung over her encounter with Richard at the holiday party, Celia mused over her status as a scholarship mom. She’d grown up in a comfortably middle-class home, gone to college, and yet here she was, getting government-subsidized food thanks to the WIC program and reliant on the charity of strangers to send her daughter to school.
The population in Silverweed wasn’t large, and it dropped precipitously at the end of May each year when the university students left for the summer. Still, it was big enough for there to be three distinct groups of people in it, Celia thought—and she didn’t belong to any of them.
There was the Comfortable Class, made up of higher-level university administrators, tenured professors, successful business owners, and the occasional executive from Portland who had decided that a home amongst the vineyards was worth the long commute. These were the kind of people who sent their children to Silverweed Academy.
Then there were the Academics: the students, graduate students, adjuncts and associate professors. This group saw themselves as temporarily impoverished and lived in the hope that their degrees would eventually provide a comfortable living for them. Celia had belonged to this group once. She’d come to Silverweed Falls to study art at Falls State, gotten her bachelor’s degree, and had never left.
The reason she hadn’t left had been Brad. Brad had belonged to the third group in Silverweed Falls: the Locals—the small business owners, the farmers, the service and construction workers who had grown up in the area and whose families had been there for generations. Brad had been a car salesman, a smooth-talking, silver-tongued stereotype. He’d not only sold Celia her first car during her senior year in college; he’d sold her on himself. Marriage to Brad might have made her part of the Locals, but Brad’s parents had died young, and he had no other family in the area, no built-in support system that Celia might have been able to rely on after it all went to hell.
She glanced over at Lily, who was leaning her head against the car window, still staring blankly in front of her. Celia couldn’t truly regret the relationship that had given her three beautiful children, but marriage to Brad had not been easy. It had taken her a few years to realize that the plans for their future that he’d filled her head with were mostly fantasies, that Brad was a dreamer.
And a drinker. Gradually, his good-time partying had become something darker. His talent for sales had slipped in the face of hangovers and later, black outs. When the warning signs had become too obvious to ignore and her attempts to seek help had failed, Celia had begun looking into getting a divorce, but Brad had beaten her to the punch by leaving her a widow instead. For a man with three children and a wife who didn’t work, he’d been badly underinsured. He had left Celia with enough money to cover her mortgage payments for the next couple of years, and not much else.
Celia finally pulled her van up to the drop-off point and Lily opened the car door quickly.
“Love you, sweetheart!” Celia called to her as she scrambled out of the minivan.
Lily look
ed embarrassed and turned away quickly. She hopped out with a dismissive wave and the barest minimum of eye contact and ran to the sidewalk where a group of girls were standing in front of the school’s main doors.
Celia blew her a kiss anyway and suppressed a sigh. Lily was ten, which might have been reason enough for her to begin pulling away from her mother, but Brad’s death had turned her in on herself. She was more closed up and angry than before. Celia was half-relieved, half-jealous, to see Lily’s face light up into a broad smile when she saw Peyton. She watched the two girls walk arm-in-arm into the school building without a backwards glance at her.
She put the car in gear and pulled away, heading for the Co-op.
Thirty minutes later, she was stocking the cooler shelves at the Co-op with organic lactose-free yogurt. The Silverweed Co-op Grocery catered to a mix of the Comfortable Class, who stocked up on organic vegetables and all-natural hand creams, and the Academic Class, who used their membership discounts to take advantage of the already low-priced bulk food bins. The job didn’t pay much, but it gave Celia a deep discount on food, and the atmosphere was casual enough that Lindsay, the manager, allowed her to bring Rowan and Rosie so she didn’t have to pay for childcare.
Rowan was grumpy today, and she had strapped him to the baby carrier she wore on her back. Rosie was in the small play area set aside for customers’ children, busy with a coloring book. Thank God they were both relatively easy children, she thought as she filled the cooler with raspberry and lime-flavored single-serves, but she wondered what she was going to do when Rowan was walking in earnest and getting into everything.
Once all three kids were in school, life would be easier—but it would be four years before Rowan was old enough for kindergarten. With careful management, Brad’s life insurance policy and the Co-op job would get them through. In the meantime, she was back at Falls State taking graphic design courses in hopes of turning her artistic talents into something more lucrative. She was a good artist and a good Co-op employee, but neither made for a comfortable living.
“Celia?”
Celia forced herself into a standing position with a faint grunt. Rowan was really getting too big for her to carry. He’d be one soon and could already stand and take a few steps. “Hi, Eva.”
Her friend Eva was walking toward her, a basket of produce on one arm. Eva, a successful real estate agent, and her husband Sam, a professor of computer engineering, were Comfortable Class, but Eva had sold Brad and Celia their house ten years ago back when Eva and Sam were still Academic Class, and somehow they’d become--and stayed--friends. Eva was a good-natured busybody who knew everyone and loved to help people connect. It was she who had suggested that Lily apply for a place at the Academy after she’d become increasingly unhappy at public school.
They greeted each other with a quick hug.
“Did you have fun at the holiday celebration?” Eva asked.
The image of the tall, arrogant man she’d met in Ms. Pennyworth’s classroom flashed across Celia’s mind. The memory made her cheeks burn, but there was no point getting into it with Eva. “Yes, I think everyone had fun. Lily was so excited about the projects they were working on, and there were enough cookies to keep these monkeys happy.” She indicated Rowan and Rosie.
Eva reached out for Rowan’s chubby hand and made kissy noises at him. He responded by blowing a wet raspberry at her, and she laughed. “What a darling! Oh, I miss the Academy. High school is a whole different world. Enjoy these guys before they get too big.”
Easy for Eva to say. Ben was an only child, Eva happily married, and she and her husband both made nice livings. But she was right, too—Celia didn’t really want her kids to grow up too fast.
“Listen, Celia, I’m glad I ran into you,” Eva went on. “I was going to call you later today anyway. A friend of Sam’s is looking for a nanny, and I thought you’d be perfect for the job.”
“Really?” Celia tried to look interested. Between design classes and the Co-op, she was stretched thin as it was; she needed full-time job that paid well, not another low-wage, part-time one, but Eva looked excited.
Eva nodded. “Single dad, divorced, his nanny just quit, and he’s going to be really stuck after the holidays. It’s just for a couple of hours after school, I don’t think it’s even every day, and I think he paid the last girl pretty well. So you wouldn’t have to quit this job, and I can’t imagine he’d have a problem with you bringing your own kids along.”
“Hmm,” said Celia. “Yeah, I guess that might not be too bad.” The later afternoons were when she got most of her graphic design homework done, but she could always do that at night after the kids were in bed. Looking after four children wouldn’t be that much harder than looking after three, and she couldn’t afford not to consider it, at least.
“He’s lovely man, too,” Eva went on. She dropped her voice confidentially, now in full-on gossip mode. “Bit gruff sometimes, but he’s absolutely devoted to his little girl. His wife was ...” Eva shook her head and cast her eyes toward the ceiling, “... It was a rather messy divorce. She ran off with another man. Went and moved to Portland, and basically doesn’t have any interest in Peyton. So sad.”
“Peyton?” Little alarm bells started going off in Celia’s head.
“Mm hmm,” Eva nodded absently, looking at the cooler. “Can you really call it yogurt if it’s dairy-free?” She pulled her attention back to Celia. “You might actually have met him. His name’s Richard. Peyton was moved up a grade, so I think she’s in Lily’s year now. Which would be perfect for the two of them, it would be like a playdate every day!”
Celia’s heart sank to somewhere around the vicinity of her sneakers. “Tall guy, dark hair, nicely dressed?” Almost as handsome as he is grumpy, she wanted to add, but didn’t.
Eva smiled eagerly. “Yes, that’s him! You’ve met Richard?”
“We met briefly last night.” Celia wondered if Eva would notice her lack of enthusiasm, but Eva was now excited enough for both of them.
“So you already know each other! Wonderful! Listen, I’ll text you his number, and I’ll have Sam tell him that you’ll call him—”
“Are you sure?” The idea of having to call Richard, let alone work for him, was positively alarming. She began casting around for excuses. “I mean maybe you could just give him my number—”
“Nah, I think you should call him. He’s the type of guy who’ll be impressed if you’re assertive.” Eva nodded knowingly. “Plus if you wait for him to call you, he might find someone else in the meantime. He’s very efficient. Call him tonight. He should be home by six or so, and I know he’d love to get this sorted out as soon as possible. Don’t let him get to you, his bark’s worse than his bite.” She dropped her voice again conspiratorially. “And maybe you’ll be a good influence on him. You’re always so cheery, and he’s been an awful grouch since the divorce.”
Eva hoisted her basket of greens and gave Celia a quick hug. “I’m so glad I ran into you!” She turned and walked briskly away.
Celia watched Eva’s retreating back, grateful for a friend who was looking after her but absolutely dreading the thought of calling Richard. Oh great. A grouchy guy who barked, and she was supposed to cheer him up. What had she just agreed to?
Her Co-op shift lasted three hours, then it was home for lunch with Rosie and Rowan, followed by a nap for both of them and some brief, precious time to herself. She’d finished and submitted her last design assignment for the semester late the night before, so she did some quick tidying up around the house before grabbing her sketch book and tiptoeing into the kids’ bedroom.
Sketching her kids was one of her favorite things to do. She preferred to draw them while they were in motion—the resulting sketches were rougher, but she had a knack for capturing the energy and personality in their movements—but when they were asleep, she could focus on the details of their beautiful faces, the slight frown between Rosie’s eyebrows, the way Rowan’s lower lip stuck out sl
ightly, giving him a determined look. She’d been sketching them a lot lately with the idea of matting her best pictures as Christmas presents for her parents. She couldn’t afford much else, and she knew that her parents would appreciate something personal.
All too soon, she was back in the line of cars at school to pick up Lily. This time there was a Range Rover in front of her and a BMW behind.
“Can we get ice cream?” Rosie asked from the back seat.
“No, sweetie,” Celia answered.
“Why not?” Rosie whined.
“Because—” Celia caught herself from saying, It’s too expensive. She didn’t want her money troubles to stress out the kids. “It’s too cold.”
Which was true. Having washed away the snow from a couple of days earlier, the rain had now stopped, but the sky remained overcast and gloomy, and a bitter wind ruffled the branches of the cedar trees that lined the school driveway. Even if money had been no object, ice cream still wouldn’t have had much appeal on a day like this. She glanced in the review mirror. Rosie was pouting, but she stayed quiet.
Celia arched her back, trying to stretch her stiff muscles, and nudged her car ahead in line. She’d had Rowan on her back for almost her entire shift at the Co-op day while she stocked shelves and manned the checkout counter and she was more than ready to go home. Not that there would be much rest for her—there was still dinner to be made, and at some point, she supposed, she’d have to call Richard, but at least there was no homework for a few weeks, and she’d be able to go to bed on time tonight.
Lily was standing with a group of other girls, including Peyton. She was laughing animatedly with them until she looked up and saw Celia’s car and the smile vanished from her face. She stared for a moment—no smile, no wave—then slowly leaned down to pick up her backpack and trudged forward.
