Mrs. Perfect

“Dad will be back,” I say at last. “He’ll be here by summer.”

Tori looks happy. Brooke looks hopeful.

Jemma’s just suspicious. “How do you know?”

I think about it, and I listen to that little voice inside me, the one I haven’t listened to enough these past few years.

“I just know.” I look at them and smile, and it’s a real smile. “Daddy loves us too much to not come back.”

An hour later, I finally have the girls tucked in their beds in their new bedrooms. They’re asleep, and I close all the blinds, lock the front and back doors, and turn off the lights except for the light in the hall that connects our bedrooms.

In the tiny bathroom that adjoins the “master” bedroom (an inane description of our minuscule bedroom if I ever heard one), I wash my face and brush my teeth and put on my antiaging lotion, but a thinner layer than I used to since the bottle’s almost empty.

This has been my bedtime routine for years. It’s as much a part of me as chatting with Nathan as he settles into bed to read.

I smile crookedly as I think about Nathan trying to read and me standing in the doorway trying to talk to him at the same time.

He would always put down his book, too. He’d always set aside what he wanted to do to listen.

My smile fades.

I miss him. I miss him so much.

After turning off the bathroom light, I climb into bed, turn off the table lamp, and lie in the dark in my new room and listen to the sounds of an unfamiliar street. A car horn blares outside, and a truck rumbles past. Lights shine through the cheap miniblinds at the windows.

I don’t know this room. I don’t know this house.

I feel like the girls right now. I miss our old house. I want our house. I want that life back.

The losses hit me so hard, I have to fight back to keep from falling apart. It’s going to be okay. Tomorrow it’ll be okay. Tomorrow it’ll be fine. The girls will go to school. Annika will pick them up—

And then I go cold all over. I knew I was forgetting something.

I don’t have Annika anymore. Annika’s gone. I have no child care.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I wake up to find an e-mail from Nathan. He wants to know how the move went and how our first night in the new house went. He hopes the girls’ furniture fits okay in their new rooms, and he wants me to have a locksmith come in and check all the locks and install dead bolts on the front and back doors.

I read his e-mail twice through before answering. The house is fine. Ray checked out the locks when he was here and the windows, too. Maybe you can come see the house this weekend since you missed last weekend?

I spend my lunch researching prospective sitters and screening them before selecting three to interview, and then Marta lets me leave early Monday afternoon to pick up Tori from preschool. I bring Tori back to the office for a half hour, where she colors at my feet before we race back to school to pick up Brooke and Jemma.

I’ve scheduled interviews with the three sitters that evening, and I hustle the girls to their rooms after a hasty dinner of buttered noodles and carrot sticks. It’s a pathetic meal, but they’re kids, they’re full, and for now they’re happy.

The first sitter is a college student, and she seems sweet but arrives late, complaining of bridge traffic. “It’s such a long drive in traffic,” she adds. “Is there always traffic?”

I mentally cross her off the list.

The second sitter is a professional nanny looking for a full-time position. She also charges a minimum of $20 an hour and needs at least thirty-five hours a week.

Basically she wants more an hour than I earn.

I cross her off the list.

The third woman is a tall, large-boned, gray-haired Russian woman somewhere between forty-five and sixty. She’s sat for a lot of the families in the area. She doesn’t mind doing laundry, grocery shopping, or making dinner. She’s happy with an afternoon-only job, as she still takes care of a baby for another family in the mornings. She charges $14 an hour, but she has her own car and insurance.

She also has a mustache and a unibrow, but she’s available tomorrow afternoon to pick up Tori.

“What if we give it a try for two weeks and see what you think?” I say, realizing that maybe I need the two weeks to think.

She’s sitting on the slipcovered couch that I brought over from the bonus room of the Yarrow Point house, and she folds her hands in her lap. “You pay me every Friday.”

God, I’m desperate. “Yes.”

“Cash. No checks.”

I’m so desperate. “Yes.”

“Your girls. Can I meet them now?”

Oh, Lord. The girls aren’t going to be happy about this. “Yes.”

I go to Jemma’s bedroom, where Jemma’s lying on her bed and the two younger ones are on the trundle, watching a DVD movie. “Hey, girls,” I say, switching on the light. “Do you want to come meet Mrs. S?”

Jemma’s nose wrinkles as she sits up. “Mrs. S?”

“She seems very nice, and she’s taken care of a lot of children in Bellevue.”

“Did you hire her?” she persists.

I swallow my sigh. “Just come meet her. Please?”

The girls trail after me into the living room, walking single file with Jemma in front and Tori bringing up the rear. It’s not a long way, but I feel dread weighing on me with every step. Mrs. S isn’t what the girls are used to. They’re used to young and fun, blond and bubbly. Mrs. S is none of the above.

Hopefully the girls won’t notice.

Mrs. S remains planted on the couch as the girls walk in, her brow furrowing as she studies each of them in turn. “Hello,” she greets them soberly. “I am Mrs. S. I am your new child minder.”

“Child minder?” Brooke asks, glancing at me.

“Baby-sitter,” I whisper, but Mrs. S overhears me.

“But I am not a baby-sitter. There are no babies here,” Mrs. S answers, rising and extending her hand to Jemma. “And your name is . . . ?”

“Jemma Taylor.”

“It is good to meet you, Jemma. You may call me Mrs. S.”

“S?” she asks.

“Slutsky.”

“Slutsky?” Jemma chokes on muffled laughter.

I give Jemma a don’t-you-dare look and press Brooke forward for her introduction.

By the time Mrs. S leaves, the girls are th

oroughly unhappy with me.

“Why her?” Jemma demands the moment the door closes.

“She’s available the hours we need, she’s experienced, and she’s . . . cheap.”

Jemma glares at me from across the living room. “You know she’s going to make us eat beets and borscht, don’t you?”

“No, she won’t.”

“Yes, she will. Devanne had a Russian housekeeper, and when her baby-sitter wasn’t there, the housekeeper made Devanne eat all kinds of weird things like cabbage and sausage and borscht.”

I check my smile. “You don’t even know what borscht is.”

“I do, too. It’s potato and cabbage soup with beets and beet juice and sour cream.”

Tori’s near tears. “I don’t want to ear borse. I don’t like borse—”

“It’s borscht, Tori,” Jemma flashes before turning on me. “Mom, you can’t hire her. You can’t. You’ve already ruined our lives enough.”

“I haven’t ruined your lives—”

“You sold the house. You made us give up our things. Kids are already talking about us. They’re saying we’re poor and our dad left and isn’t coming back—”

“That’s not true,” I protest.

“Now we have a hairy old Russian nanny?” Jemma, who never cries, has tears in her eyes now, and she balls her hands into helpless fists. “People will laugh at us even more, Mom. They’ll make fun of her name and her hairy lip and her funny dress.”

“But people won’t see her. She’s just going to watch you for a couple hours after school until I come home from work.”

“People will see her. My friends will see her. Brooke’s friends will see her. She’ll pick us up from playdates, or if our friends come here, they’ll see her here. They’ll smell the borscht and they’ll say our house smells funny.” Jemma takes a huge breath. “Mom, please. Think about us.”

I look at her and then Brooke and finally Tori. They’re children. They don’t understand. There are worse things than having your dad take a job out of state. There are worse things than moving into a smaller house. There are worse things than having a mom who works. There are worse things than having a caregiver who speaks English with a thick Russian accent. There are.