by Sal Conte
When he’d first read about Dream Escapes online, he was certain it was a scam, but he needed something in his life, something new, adventurous, romantic. Rather than wander outside the marriage, Peter found himself seated in the luxurious lounge of Dream Escapes Adventures. The sign on the wall read: Dream yourself the perfect reality.
If this place is a scam, it’s a very expensive one, he thought, looking around. He wondered if the ornate ceramic egg on the mantle was an authentic Fabergè egg. He recognized one of the paintings as a Van Gogh—Irises. He was certain it wasn’t real. The original was owned by the J. Paul Getty Museum, but this was a very impressive reproduction.
Mr. Jordan Smith had promised, in his stodgy British accent, that their patented Dream Escape equipment could place Peter at the center of any adventure he could imagine.
“Most men choose affairs, of course,” Smith had said in a smug tone. He was wearing an Ermenegildo Zegna suit. Peter recognized the suit from the window of the men’s boutique on Rodeo Drive.
One day, on a whim, he decided to take Emma on an expensive shopping spree.
He’d gone into the boutique and inquired about the suit in the window, but when he discovered it cost forty-three thousand dollars he’d lost his taste for fine clothes on the spot. Peter was a regular guy. The Suit Broker was good enough for him.
“Do you want to have an affair?” Mr. Smith had asked.
Yes, Peter thought. I want an affair, but I want something more. I want an exciting life.
Peter wanted an escape from his world, and into another. He’d made a small fortune when the startup he did legal for went public. But the result was he found himself working for a publicly held company, and the job quickly became corporate, and boring.
Peter had hung in with the corporate job until Robbie was three, then with Emma’s blessing, he cashed in his stock and options for a few million dollars, and began looking for a new calling, a new adventure, a reason to get up in the morning again.
They moved from chilly Northern California to Westchester, a suburb of Los Angeles where it never rained, and the sun always shined. They got a terrific deal on a terrific medium-sized ranch style home on a tree-lined street. There were fruit trees in the yard, and lots of room around back for Robbie to run around. There was even room for a pool, if they wanted one.
Peter thought he’d found his calling with the Death Row Project, a pro bono legal defense organization that outsourced death row cases where clients had been falsely accused.
But getting a case had taken nearly a year. By then, Dinah was on the way, and Emma had soured of him being under foot all the time. She also soured of sex, romance, and touching. She seemed to sour of their marriage.
They had plenty of money, the root of most marital troubles. Their problems ran deeper. Rather than blame Emma, and consider ending the marriage, Peter knew he needed to find something to once again make his life worthwhile. At least until the baby was born, and Emma emerged from her hormone induced funk.
He’d found that thing the two days a week, two hours each day, being the manager of Rick’s, a café in nineteen forties Casablanca, Morocco, during World War Two—just like in the movie. The two hours he spent there seemed like days. The fantasy was quite real, and came complete with colorful characters, Nazis, spies, the French Underground, and of course, Kim.
Smith had been pleased that Peter had chosen a real adventure, and one with an air of danger to it.
“I’m glad to see you’re putting the equipment through its paces,” he’d said, and for the first time, Peter felt he wasn’t looking down his nose at him. “You’re so unlike most of the men who come here wanting strip joints where they’ll have affairs with pole dancers. How démodé. Yours is an adventure one can sink their teeth into. Bravo.”
Peter more than sank his teeth into his adventure. He fell in love.
He was thinking of Kim that morning because whenever he had doubt, she seemed to be the one person—even though she wasn’t real—who could give him the confidence he needed to go on.
But Kim was gone for good, left behind in a dream world he’d moved on from. He needed to buck-up, and grow a pair. Horace Booker needed him. This is what he wanted; this is what he got. He wouldn’t let Horace and the Booker family down.
*
She was worried about him.
She could tell by the look of him he was troubled. No one else could see it, but she could.
She knew how much he had relied upon her, how much confidence he drew from her. She was his rock, and he was hers. They needed to have their love rekindled, and soon. It was more for his good than hers. Others were depending on him. He couldn’t let them down, and she wouldn’t let him down.
Fortunately, she’d found the nudge she’d been looking for. The thing that would unite them forever. It was time to set the wheels in motion.
Chapter Three
Emma never thought of herself as the type of person who’d ever have a nanny watching her children.
The word nanny had always seemed stuffy, stuck up, privileged. Emma was none of those things, and yet here she was, interviewing a nanny.
They were seated on a bench in the small park near their home. It was a lovely Southern California afternoon. Dinah was asleep in her stroller, and Robbie was digging in dirt nearby. Emma couldn’t fathom why boys had such a fascination with dirt. Robbie was all boy. She loved her son, but was glad she had a daughter who would one day want to do dainty things.
“You have great references,” she said to the woman sitting on the bench next to her. “You’ve been with the Albertsons since their children were small.”
“Nineteen years. That’s the problem with little ones. They grow up,” Claudia said, and laughed.
Emma liked her laugh. It was big, and loud, and genuine.
“The Albertson’s youngest is leaving for college in two weeks. Job over,” Claudia said with a note of sadness.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no. I should have moved on long ago. The family kept me around longer than they should have. It’s time. That’s the nature of the job.”
Claudia had been with just two families her thirty years of being a nanny. Eleven years with the Schwartz’s, and nineteen with the Albertson’s. Emma felt that said something good about her. She was reliable. Solid, is what Emma’s mother would have called her. The kind of person you could count on.
On the downside, she was well into her fifties. She could have even been sixty. Her age wasn’t on the resume, and Emma knew not to ask. She thought about hinting at it, but decided that was discriminatory.
Claudia was also several pounds overweight, and walked with an ambulatory gait. She wondered if Claudia was spry enough to keep up with the little ones.
But Emma didn’t want to be a snob like the people she associated with nannies. She stopped wondering. The truth was, everything about Claudia screamed perfect.
It was then, as they were chatting, that Dinah chose to wake up. She woke up cranky. Before Emma could move, Dinah was in Claudia’s arms, and the crankiness was subsiding.
“I had a few like this one. We’ll nip that crankiness in the bud. You’ll see. Pretty soon this one will be waking up bright as the sunrise.”
“How?”
Claudia winked as she bounced the baby on her knee.
“If I give away all my secrets, you won’t need to hire me, now will ya?” She laughed again, and Emma found herself liking her even more.
Still, there was something keeping her from pulling the trigger.
Claudia had been the fifth nanny she’d interviewed, the second one she’d liked, yet she always found fault. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she was afraid.
Several weeks ago, Emma had broached the subject of going back to work. She loved her children, loved being with them, but the longer she stayed home, the more she felt she was losing a part of herself. She was no longer Emma. She had become Mommy.
Mommy, can I ha
ve a glass of milk, please?
Hey, Trooper, let Mommy do that.
When she’d met Peter, she was a bright young programmer. They’d been working for the same silicon-valley startup. She was the shining star of the company with a career that had tremendous potential.
At the time, she didn’t care about the upside. She’d met Peter, fell in love with his charm and ambition. Theirs was the quintessential whirlwind romance. In a year, they’d dated, gotten married, and started a family. Six years ago, that was what was important to her.
But for the past few years, she’d been regretting giving up that part of herself. She became angry for allowing herself to become a housewife. She hated the word. A part of her blamed Peter. She took it out on him, too. But deep inside, she knew it wasn’t Peter who’d taken away her promising career. She’d done it to herself.
Now that she had Peter’s blessing to go back into the work world, she wondered if she still had it. Programming is a profession that changes quickly. What she’d been doing six years ago was like cavemen scratching out symbols on a wall. Could she really jump back in?
The perfect excuse for never going back into the workforce, for never having to admit she no longer had it, was never finding the right nanny.
*
The negotiation wasn’t going very well.
Robbie was insisting on the PB&J pancake breakfast Daddy had promised as his afternoon snack, and Dinah was being cranky again.
“Remember, your deal with Daddy. You get a big pancake breakfast on Saturday for being such a good boy this morning.”
“No deal,” Robbie said, reverting to the terrible twos. “No deal, no deal, no deal, no deal!”
The baby was crying.
It was days like these Emma wished she’d never had children. “Okay,” she said, giving in. “I’ll make the pancakes. I need to put Dinah down for her nap first, okay?”
“Peanut butter and jelly pancakes?”
Emma nodded, feeling a twinge of shame. A five year-old had beaten her.
“Yay! All Aboard,” Robbie cried out. He marched away, singing The Dinosaur Train.
How do you make PB&J pancakes?
Emma would figure that out later. Right now, the baby was quieting, and she needed to get her down for her nap.
The doorbell rang.
Emma rushed to answer it before the baby or Robbie started up again. She thought, Wouldn’t it be nice if that was Claudia ringing the bell… Wishful thinking, girl. Stop it. Things like that only happen in movies.
There was a woman at the door, a few years younger than Emma, with gorgeous blue eyes and close cropped blonde hair. Very attractive.
“Yes?” Emma said. She knew there was shortness to her tone, but she didn’t care. She had her hands full—literally.
“Hi, Mrs. Hathaway, I came about the nanny job,” the young woman said. She had a nice voice, cheery, confident.
“Oh, no!” Emma said, feeling her cheeks burning with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry. I totally forgot I’d made another appointment.”
The baby was starting up again.
“Come in, come in,” she called, moving away from the door and toward the kitchen to get the bottle she’d left on the counter. “Were you waiting in the park long?”
The young woman followed.
“I wasn’t waiting in the park.”
Emma stopped walking. She’d just made a horrible mistake, and she needed to undo it right away. She let a stranger in the house.
She always met the nanny prospects at the park. That was her deal with the agency. Send them to the park. This way she could interview them on neutral ground. If she wasn’t going to hire them, they didn’t need to know where she lived.
Just then, Robbie walked up.
“Hi, Trooper,” the young woman said before Emma could ask how she found her way there.
“That’s what my Daddy calls me,” Robbie said.
“He does? Do you mind if I call you that, too?”
Robbie shook his head. “What’s your name?”
“My name is… Shay,” the young woman said stooping down to kid’s eye level.
Rather than alarming her, Shay’s ease with Robbie relaxed Emma. Shay wasn’t a stranger, a fox who’d gotten into the henhouse, she was a nanny looking for work who’d found her way to their front door. No biggy. She’d tell her they’d already settled on a nanny, and that would be that.
*
There’s an art to writing a motion to vacate. Aside from accurately quoting law, and putting forth a sound argument, it needs to appeal the reader’s sense of justice. Without getting flowery or emotional, Peter’s motion needed to make Judge Toliver feel he’d made a mistake sending Horace Booker to prison, a mistake that needed to be corrected.
Peter and Molly sat shoulder-to-shoulder at his desk in the cramped office poring over the motion like treasure hunters poring over a map.
“It’s brilliant,” Molly said softly. She sat back, and sighed.
“You think?”
“If Judge Toliver doesn’t agree to let you argue your motion in front of him, he’s got no soul.” She smiled.
Molly had been Peter’s legal assistant-slash-girl Friday since he’d started the new law firm. He didn’t pay her much, but she didn’t mind. Molly was about the work of putting innocent men and women back on the street.
“I don’t know. Maybe we should go through it one more time,” Peter said, turning back to the front page.
“Peter,” she said, stopping him. “This is good. This is not my first rodeo, you know.”
Molly had been working in the field of Innocence Projects for quite some time. It was her calling. She hailed from the deep south, Alabama.
There was a time when her home state was known for convicting innocent black men of dubious crimes, sentencing them to death for something as simple as looking at a white woman the wrong way. As a young girl she knew she had to do something about it. She’d given up the chance at relationships or marriage for a cause.
Molly was squat, a little overweight, but not fat. Big boned. She wasn’t much about appearances. Clothing for her wasn’t fashion, it was functional. It was how she was wired. Molly was about the work—period. She’d worked on dozens of filings, and was on teams that had won two men and one woman their lives back. Peter knew how good she was. Her greatest asset was her loyalty. He was lucky to have her.
“Tell you what, we’ll sleep on it,” he said. “We’ll go through it one more time in the morning, and if we still feel the way we do right now, we’ll send it on.”
“We will,” Molly said, and patted his hand.
“You’ll see. Now why don’t you get out of here? You actually have a family and a life. I’ll go online and look for another case to quote.”
Peter smiled. It was so easy for him to get caught up in his work. At times, he needed a reminder that his family was the most important thing to him.
*
“Dinosaur Traiiiin!”
Shay and Robbie were singing Dinosaur Train.
Robbie had been so enchanted by Shay that he settled for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as his snack. The sandwich was Shay’s idea. Point for Shay.
Emma and Shay were in the living room having tea and cookies. The baby was asleep, and Robbie was singing. All was right with the world.
“Dinosaur Traiiiin!”
Emma hadn’t forgotten her appointment with Shay. There was no appointment. Shay had heard about the job from one of the neighborhood nannies, and had taken the initiative. Nanny gossip, She’d called it.
“I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, it’s okay. Actually, you’re a life saver. I have no idea how to make peanut butter and jelly pancakes.” They shared a laugh over that one.
“Sounds messy,” Shay replied.
“You’re really great, Shay,” Emma said, getting to the point, “but I’ve already made my nanny choice.”
“Claudia Burns,” Shay said with a knowin
g smile. She noticed the surprised look on Emma’s face. “Nanny gossip travels fast.” Another laugh.
“You know her?”
“Only by reputation, I hear she’s wonderful.”
“I think so.”
“…when she’s not drinking.”
“Drinking?”
“Yes, darling. I hear that’s why the Albertsons kept her around so long. She wasn’t a drinker when they hired her. I think they felt it was their fault.” Shay paused momentarily. “I’m not here to cast dispersions. I hear it’s mostly after hours. They trusted her with three children. She’s wonderful. Really.”
Yet Emma was already having doubts. She did look a little red around the eyes. Afternoon cocktail, perhaps?
The coup de gras came when Dinah woke up cranky. Shay asked to hold her, and began singing. She had the voice of a professional—sweet, clear as a bell, pitch perfect. Dinah quieted instantly.
“You have a lovely voice.”
“Thank you, darling. I’ve always loved to sing
Not professionally, mind you. Put me in front of a crowd and I sound like Daffy Duck.” They laughed again. “What’s this?” Shay said, holding up a small, shiny stone.
“I don’t know.”
“The baby had it. It feels like it’s been in her mouth.”
“Let me see that.” Emma examined the stone, turning it over in her hand. It had a luminescence about it. “Robbie, do you know anything about this?”
“What’s that, Mommy? Ooh, a rock. Can I have it?” He didn’t know.
“Did Claudia hold the baby?” Shay asked. It seemed an odd question.
“Why, yes.”
“She must have been crying when Claudia picked her up. It’s a nanny trick. Give them something shiny to occupy their minds, and they stop crying. She obviously forgot to take it back.”
If I give away all my secrets, you won’t need to hire me, now will ya?
“Older nannies are full of tricks. Me, I like to cuddle,” Shay said, and nuzzled the baby’s belly. Dinah giggled.
They moved back down the hall. Shay handed Emma the baby, and apologized for barging in on them.