Beautiful Mistakes

"It would if her mother wouldn’t scare them all off," he said, lightly.

Julie smiled as Anna came back over to her babbling nonsensically. "I imagine it would be very hard to trust someone else with your child."

As Julie responded to Anna, she felt the man watching her, and it made her squirm a bit.

"You're good with her," he remarked, still watching her.

Julie just smiled. "She’s sweet. I love kids."

Suddenly he was looking at her as if he’d just realized she was someone important. "I don't believe I introduced myself; my name’s Matt Turner," he said, offering his hand.

"Julie Kingsley," she replied, offering a pleasant smile and shaking his hand.

"Do you have much experience with children, Julie?"

"Uh, kind of. I babysat a lot in high school and I have a little brother back home, so I helped out a lot with him," she said, not sure why he would ask such a strange question.

“That’s cool,” he said a bit lamely.

Julie smiled a bit awkwardly. “Yep, super cool.”

"Listen, this will probably sound very strange, but you wouldn't be interested in interviewing for a nanny position, would you?”

"You mean for her?" Julie asked, eyes widening.

He nodded. "You seem nice and even though you don’t even know us, you’re responsible enough to lecture me in the interest of her safety. I’m sure you won't think much more of my parenting skills for picking a nanny up off the street, but I'm in pretty desperate need, and she seems to like you. As long as you wouldn’t object to a background check, it couldn’t hurt to have an interview, right?"

To say she was shocked would be an understatement. Pretty much anything would beat her job though, and she wouldn't have to wash her work clothes separately from everything else anymore. Besides, she assumed she would make more as a nanny than at Pizza Hut.

"Um, well, I've never been a nanny before. I mean, I've babysat on nights and weekends, but… I don’t really have full-time references—or even recent ones.”

"Inexperience can be a good thing," he said. "We can mold you to be the kind of nanny we’re looking for rather than finding someone older and set in their ways." He spoke as if he was gaining confidence in the idea. "Listen, I only have," he flicked a glance at his watch, "about 15 more minutes, and I still have to drop her off, so I should be going, but if you're interested you could give me your number, maybe we could have lunch or you could come over to our apartment for a little interview. I'll need to make sure you have a clean record, some character references if you don’t have a lot of babysitting references. Just, you know, the general information."

"Well, I'm perfectly normal, so that shouldn't be a problem," she told him.

He smiled. "You seem perfectly normal. I wouldn't typically offer to give my daughter over to someone I met on a bench, but I have a good feeling about you."

"That's great," she said, trying to wrap her head around it. Then she remembered he had to leave, so she said, "Oh!" and ran over to her notebook, grabbing a pen out of her bag and quickly jotting down her name and phone number on the blank piece of paper.

"Here you go," she said, holding it out for him.

"Would you be available to come over Friday per chance? I know it's short notice," he began.

"I absolutely would. I’m actually off this Friday, no classes or anything, so that’s perfect."

"You're in school? I probably should have asked that," he added a bit ruefully.

She nodded. "College. I'm a sophomore."

"Okay, well bring your schedule, too," he said, offering one last smile.

“Will do.”

Anna tugged on his pants again. "I really have to go, but I'll be in touch," he told her, scooping up his daughter and picking up his briefcase.

"Okay," she said, offering a little wave and turning back toward her things.

He made it a few feet before he turned around and said, “Oh, one more thing.”