by Lauren Rico
“Little Carrot Top, over there.”
My eyes follow her finger to the child grabbing fistfuls of sand and cramming them into a bright yellow pail. I can’t help but notice how much bigger he’s gotten since the day I held him in the hospital.
“He’s cute,” I mention casually. “How old?”
“Toddler going on teenager,” she replies vaguely. “Is that one yours?”
She’s pointing to a boy in denim overalls. I saw her talking to that one’s mother earlier, so she knows damn well the kid’s not mine. Obviously, it’s a test. Smart girl. But I’m smarter.
“No. I’m waiting for my ex to drop off our daughter,” I say and glance at my watch. “She’s late, as usual.”
She nods but doesn’t offer comment.
“Nata! Nata!” the brat yelps from the sandbox as he holds up a plastic shovel for her to see. She smiles at him and waves.
“Nata?” I wonder with some curiosity.
“His version of Natalie.”
I fake a chuckle.
“Nice to meet you, Natalie. I’m Kyle,” I offer.
She gives me a curt smile and a nod of acknowledgement, but nothing more. Damn, she’s a tough nut to crack. I don’t think my Plan A, hitting on her, is going to fly. Time to move to Plan B.
“Hey,” I say, as if just thinking of something, “I’ve been looking for someone to have play dates with my Kyla. She’s about the same age as your little guy, maybe we could arrange to get them together sometime?”
Natalie turns to face me fully now, and I can feel her taking an inventory of every square inch of my features.
“Why don’t you give me your phone number and I’ll clear it with his parents?” she suggests.
It’s a reasonable request, and one that I wouldn’t think twice about if it were coming from anyone other than this bitchy baby bodyguard. It’s plain enough to see that she’s suspicious, and I’m certain she just wants to get my fingerprints or DNA for some CSI shit. Not gonna happen, baby.
“I was thinking of something more casual, just some sandbox time. Are you here every Tuesday?”
She smiles and stands up, preparing the stroller for action.
“Sometimes. We’ll keep an eye out for you and … I’m sorry, what did you say your son’s name was?”
Nice try, bitch.
“Daughter,” I smile up at her. “Her name is Kyla, after me, Kyle.”
“Sweet,” she says without a hint of sincerity. “We’ll see you around, Kyle.”
Within a matter of seconds, she has the kid out of the sandbox, strapped into the stroller and sucking on a bottle.
“Yes, you will,” I mutter as I watch them roll down the path and out towards 59th street.
Part Three: Julia
Manifesto
I used to be painfully shy, hiding in the shadows. I used to be silent, watching as the rest of the world went by. I used to be scared, scurrying from place to place, like a tiny mouse, praying not to be seen. I used to be lonely and lost and confused. But I am none of those things anymore, and I haven’t been for some time.
It’s nothing short of miraculous, the instantaneous transformation that occurs when you bring a child into this world. Suddenly, hiding is not an option. Nor is silence. You no longer have the luxury of fear or insecurity. Because your job – your sole job on the face of this earth – is to love and nurture that helpless little soul who sleeps so innocently under the blanket of your protection.
Not so very long ago, a charming and handsome man came into my life. He swept me off my feet, showering me with love like I’d never known …like I’d always longed for. There was passion and fire, laughter and tears …and it all seemed so real. But it wasn’t. What was real was the pain that came from his intentional cruelty, practiced manipulation and carefully orchestrated abandonment. What was real were the smoking, crumbling, ruins of my life after he’d decimated it.
But he left something behind in that wreckage …my son. And, with the birth of that child came the rebirth of his mother, a strong, confident woman who stands in the light and raises her voice. A woman who loves and is loved as wholly and completely as any person on this earth could be. A woman who is not afraid to go up against the evil of this world and toe-to-toe with the force that created it.
Get thee behind me Satan, or you’re going to be sorry. Because I am not afraid anymore. Because I will descend into the depths of hell itself to protect that which is mine. Because I love and I am loved and there is no greater weapon than that.
Julia 19
The day I met Natalie Hughes, I was interviewing six nanny candidates. She wasn’t one of them. David was four months old then, and I was desperate for some help. So, in they marched to our apartment in the city and our home on Long Island. It was an incredibly varied pool of applicants, ranging from a very mature eighteen-year-old, fresh out of high school and looking to start her life, to a very youthful seventy-three-year-old, fresh out of the convent and looking to reinvent hers. And, while all of the final six candidates were ready, willing and able, there was just something missing. Something I couldn’t put my finger on until that afternoon in the coffee shop.
On a particularly lovely afternoon, I packed up my boy, put him in the stroller and wheeled him out through Lincoln Center, around the Revson Fountain a few times and to a coffee shop a couple of blocks away. I’d often noticed the striking young barista – at nearly six feet tall, she was hard to miss. But it wasn’t just that. She had a calm easiness about her.
On that particular afternoon, I ordered my coffee at the counter and then rolled the stroller to the other end to wait for it. The girl gave me a bright smile and a nod, offering David a quick wave. I was exchanging texts with Matthew a few minutes later when she yelled so loudly that I jumped.
“STOP!”
Her unexpected demand was so forceful that we did just that; all of us. Every single person in the shop stood perfectly still as all eyes swung to the barista. I looked at her, perplexed, but it took just a split second to see what she saw … There was this man. His back was to me. He had been speaking with his companion, walking backwards with a piping hot cup of coffee in one hand, uncovered, as his other hand felt for a sugar packet behind him. To my horror, the entire scene unraveled in my imagination. One more step backward and he’d have tripped over the stroller, causing a shower of scalding hot coffee to rain down on my child.
Even as she was preparing several coffees at once, listening to the incoming orders, and acknowledging the customers, Natalie Hughes spotted the potential danger in progress. With one single word, she commanded two-dozen people to stop dead in their tracks. Any other action – saying a polite ‘excuse me, Sir’ or ‘watch out’ or trying to get the guy’s attention would likely have gone unnoticed by him – at least for that single, irrevocable step – and the results would have been catastrophic. But the one word, uttered with such force, commanded us all and suspended time for the one brief second she needed to keep my son out of harm’s way.
I realized in that instant what it was I couldn’t put my finger on with any of the other candidates. I wanted the person who would, in the midst of all the chaos around her, never lose sight of David and the potential dangers all around him. I wanted the woman with the sharp instincts and lightning quick reflexes, coupled with the confidence to trust and use them both.
Ten minutes later, she was on her break and sitting across from me at one of the tables. I discovered she was the only girl in a large family. Along with her father, all five of her brothers were police officers. Her father had raised her to be street smart and hyper-aware of her surroundings. She was taking a year off after undergrad to study for her LSATs. All she wanted was a job that would pay her enough to live, while affording her the flexibility and the time to study.
She didn’t have references from any of the best families on the upper eastside, nor did she have a degree in early childhood education. She wasn’t fluent in three languages and she hadn’
t attended Wellesley. But I knew then and there that she was exactly the right person. She was the one who would keep my son safe.
“So, what was it about him that gave you a bad feeling?” I ask now as I wrap my long red hair into rollers the size of coke cans. David is down for a nap in the nursery and Natalie is sitting cross-legged on my bed, folding one of his dinosaur t-shirts.
She shrugs. “I don’t really know. Instinct, I suppose.”
“You said he had a daughter …”
“That’s what he said,” she corrects. “That he was waiting for his ex to drop her off.”
“But, you never saw the ex-wife or the kid?”
She shakes her head and pulls a sweatshirt out of the laundry basket. This one has Spiderman on it.
“Julia, I don’t know why, but the guy … he just gave me the creeps. It was the way he was looking at David. He was being subtle, but he was definitely trying to pump me for information. At first he was all charming and a little flirty. Then, when he realized I wasn’t interested, he tried to sell me on the play date thing.”
“Okay,” I say thoughtfully, moving on to my make-up. “Have you ever seen this guy before? At the park? Or anywhere else?”
“Well, not exactly,” she says, pausing her folding for a moment.
I freeze my blush brush long enough to look at her in the mirror behind me.
“I know we haven’t met before and I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen him anywhere around, but there’s just … there’s something very familiar about him.”
Oh, I don’t like the sound of that. “What did he look like? Exactly …”
“He was tall …”
Yup, Jeremy’s tall. Check that box.
“Lean …”
Check that one, too.
“Brownish green eyes …
Shit. Check.
“Sort of dirty blonde hair and clean-cut. Very Wall Street, but in a hipster kinda way. Oh, and he had a pierced ear.”
I breathe an internal sigh of relief. Jeremy Corrigan could pass for hipster, but not Wall Street. And he isn’t blonde … or clean-cut, for that matter. And he would never wear an earring. Way too effeminate for his testosterone-fueled ego.
“Well, maybe you should take a break from that park for a while,” I suggest. “And if you see him anywhere else, please let us know right away.”
Natalie nods her understanding, and I turn back around, rummage in my bag for the eyeliner that will miraculously transform my eyes from invisible to arresting.
“Julia?”
“Hmmm?”
“That guy you and Matthew warned me about when you first hired me … Jeremy? You were worried it might be him, weren’t you?”
I look up at her again in the mirror to find her watching me intently.
“Yes, I thought maybe, but he doesn’t fit the description,” I say after a long moment, turning around to face her.
“I saw the look on your face. You were really scared there for a second.”
I give her the briefest of nods.
“Do you think he might want to hurt David?”
I should tread very carefully here. There’s a fine line between caution and hysteria … I should know, I’ve crossed it enough times.
“Nat, Jeremy Corrigan is Brett’s brother. He and I were together for a while. As it turned out, he wasn’t a good guy. He …he hurt me. And when he did, Matthew fought back in a way that damaged Jeremy’s career. Thankfully, he’s been gone, working in Detroit for more than a year, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. But …” I pause and close my eyes for just a moment, forcing myself to say aloud the words that I hide from every day. “But he’s not the kind of guy to forgive and forget.”
“Still! You don’t think he’d hurt a child …”
“The single worst thing you can do with a guy like that is to underestimate him; to assume that he plays by the same rules that the rest of us do. He doesn’t. So, yes, I was scared there for a second, thinking he might have come back. But, from what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like him.” I give her my brightest, most reassuring smile. “I love that you’re so alert. There’s no one that I trust with my son more than you.”
This makes her smile and blush just a little.
“What about Brett?”
“What about him?”
“You said this Jeremy guy is his brother. But you seem to trust him … and Maggie.”
I nod, thoughtfully.
“Yes, you’re right, I do. There was a time when that was not the case. But Brett was there for me when I needed him …”
This is, of course, the understatement of the year. Had Brett not intervened, my son might not have ever been born. Not if Jeremy had had his way, anyway. But Natalie doesn’t need to know those kinds of gruesome details. Nobody does.
“Yeah, so, he proved himself to be someone I could count on. And he and Maggie have become like a surrogate aunt and uncle to David.”
“Will they be at this event you’re attending tonight?”
I roll my eyes. “I wish. If this party is anything like the other fundraisers I’ve been to, we’ll be eating rubber chicken and trying to convince people to part with their hard-earned cash. I’m sure it’s not the kind of parties you go to,” I grin.
She snorts and tosses a ball of tiny socks into the laundry basket. “Yeah, well, believe me, I’ve been very happy to trade in the loud, sweaty mob scene for a standing Friday night pizza date with David. He’s always happy to see me, never makes ridiculous demands and never complains about staying in and watching TV. He’d be the perfect man if I could get him to wipe his own backside!”
As I shake my head and laugh with her, a sudden wave of gratitude washes over me.
“You know, Nat,” I say, my tone turning serious. “We don’t have any family, Matthew and I. So, when we come across people like you, and Brett, and Maggie …we just kind of assimilate them into our lives. They become our family
“Assimilate! Ohhhhh, I like the idea of that!” she beams at me with her big, toothy grin. “Like you’ve sucked me up into your pod, or something! I just love SciFi, you know.”
I didn’t. But I’m glad I do now.
Natalie Hughes is a welcome addition to the Ayers pod.
Julia 20
When he wraps his arms around me, the whole world melts away. The people dancing around us just seem to fade into the background. All at once, the sounds of loud chatter and clinking glasses are drowned out by the crickets and the wind as it whispers through the leaves. I look up, at him and at the sky beyond him. It isn’t until right now that I truly understand the meaning of the phrase ‘blanket of stars.’ There are millions of tiny, glittering points of light winking at us from every direction. If I could just find a way to affix a sound to each of them, they would create a beautiful, celestial symphony.
I sigh contentedly as I snuggle in closer to my husband, putting my head against his chest. The beat of his heart nearly matches the beat of the music swirling around us. Matthew holds me tightly, guiding me gently from side to side and in a circular motion around the dance floor created just for this occasion on the back lawn of a spectacular mansion. We are in Nassau County, in an area known as ‘The Gold Coast,’ where some of Long Island’s most affluent citizens call home.
Michael and Danielle Milano are huge arts patrons and are hosting this gala as a fundraiser for The Walton String Quartet. From where we are dancing, I can see the young couple as they make their rounds to every table. With his height and dark good looks and her blonde hair and stunning features, they’re hard to miss...as are the two perfect little boys who chase around after them. What are their names? Mark … no, Mason. Mason and Steven … the little guy runs like David …
“I know what you’re thinking, Mama Bear.” Matthew says, resting his chin atop my head. “You’d like to have our little monster running around out here too.”
“Well … maybe a little …” I confess.
“Are you having
a good time, or are you counting the minutes till we can leave?”
I stop dancing and look up at him with a disbelieving smile.
“Are you nuts? Dancing with you under the stars on a beautiful night? I can’t think of any place I’d rather be right now!”
He leans down and gives me a sweet and gentle kiss.
“How about the Gold Coast Inn?” he asks when he pulls away.
“Ah, well, yeah, that might give this a run for the money. They say that place is amazing, with a fireplace in each room …”
“ … and a hot tub for two,” he adds.
“Well, I guess I’m not the only one who’s seen the ad on TV,” I tease. “Why?”
“Because we have a reservation there tonight.”
“What?”
He cannot be serious. The most modest room at the Gold Coast Inn starts at five hundred a night. And, if I know Matthew Ayers, he didn’t give the modest room a second look.
“I was right the first time! You are nuts!” I exclaim, shaking my head.
He just smiles and shrugs.
“And what about David?”
“No worries there, I booked Natalie for an overnight with him weeks ago. She’ll stay in our room tonight and make sure he gets to his play date in the morning so you and I can enjoy a late check out … in the hot tub, I hope.”
He’s giving me his most suggestive grin.
“And what am I supposed to wear?” I challenge.
He leans close and whispers in my ear. “Well, you won’t be needing any clothes tonight, I’ll make sure of that. As for tomorrow, Nat packed an overnight bag. It’s already in the car.”
That little Mata Hari! She didn’t drop so much as a hint!
He stands back and surveys me with a very self-satisfied smile on his face. I’m about to comment when I feel a hand on my shoulder.