Daddy's Sweetheart Parts 1-5: The Complete Collection

by Rachel Burns

  Daddy did come back, but much later. I wasn’t sure what he all did, but I was out the door and in the limo very quickly. I fell asleep on Nanny’s shoulder; still I think we drove a long time.

  It was morning when we arrived. It was a little house, truly small, but Nanny looked very pleased.

  I grabbed her hand as we walked into the house. The driver was carrying in our bags. I wondered if there were things with for me too. I had been surprised when Nanny had showed up with clothes. It had been months since I had worn anything. It didn’t feel right. But now I was dressed and walking into my home.

  I really didn’t care about what I would be wearing in the future. I was just so sad.

  Nanny showed me the living room. It was in the back of the house. It had huge windows that looked out onto a beach. I looked at the pale sand and nodded at Nanny. The kitchen was part of the room too. It was furnished, and everything looked very beach like, lots of shells and things.

  I clung onto Sarah and didn’t let go of Nanny’s hand as she showed me the bathroom and her bedroom and then mine. The house was tiny, but it was so much bigger than what I was used to. I hadn’t left my room in so long.

  She patted my hand and said that she would unpack for me as soon as she was back. I didn’t know where she wanted to go, but I nodded and sat down on the bed.

  There was a door to the beach in my room. I sat, so I could look out of the glass door. I saw nothing but sand with bits of long grass sticking out of it and water. The water went all the way to the horizon.

  I held Sarah close and stared.

  Nanny came back after a while, I don’t know how long. She unpacked the groceries and then some of my clothes. They were my old clothes, little girl clothes.

  I hadn’t been very good at being a little girl. Nanny talked the entire time telling me this and that.

  I didn’t really listen to her, but I did hear the word ocean. I was staring at an ocean.

  I didn’t know which one it was, but I had never seen one before.

  That wasn’t quite true. Daddy and I had flown over one, but that was a very long time ago.

  Time; I needed to know the date. I needed to know when Adam’s birthday was. “What day is today?”

  Nanny stopped moving. She stood perfectly still. “It’s Thursday.”

  “And the date?” I continued to look straight ahead and not at Nanny.

  “It’s the 8th of August.” She answered my question like she didn’t really want to.

  I did a bit of math in my head. Adam should have been born at the end of September. Was he even okay?

  Would they tell me if he had died?

  I couldn’t remember hearing him cry. I sunk my shoulders and looked down at Sarah.

  She wouldn’t even remember me anymore. It had been too long, so very long.

  Chapter 16 – A Visitor

  James Anderson smiled as he hung up the phone. He had a few spies placed at Brian’s house. He was bribing a couple maids at Amelia’s house. The call he had just received had been to inform that Amelia had once again made him a grandfather. This time he had a grandson.

  He had gotten several odd reports about Amelia. Brian was keeping her locked up. Things were not going well in paradise. The maids told him several interesting things. Brian liked to hit her, apparently.

  Somehow he needed to get his hands on Amelia, then on her children. He would also have to get rid of Brian somehow.

  “She doesn’t talk at all, she hardly eats, and she refuses to let go of the doll. She isn’t right anymore. I don’t know what to do with her.” Nanny was doing something she had promised herself that she wouldn’t do, she was asking him for help.

  “That really isn’t my problem anymore.” Brian told Nanny.

  “Yes, I understand that, but she needs help, or she will die. She is wasting away right in front of my eyes.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Goodbye, Nanny Prim.” Brian hung up and stared at the phone for a moment before he laid it on his desk.

  He remembered what she had looked like as she had left. He found himself unable to resist a last glance.

  Amelia had looked right, in her own clothes again and without that huge stomach that he had so hated. She had taken her Nanny’s hand. Amelia had never looked more like a little girl in need of guidance, as she did in that moment. She looked so vulnerable, with her arm wrapped around her.

  He went up to the nursery. Sarah was walking along her little table. “Dada, dada.” She reached for him with one hand, opening and closing it.

  Sarah is so smart, he thought. She knew not to let go of the table, or she would fall. She was really exceptionally bright for her ten months. They all expected her to walk any day now.

  He sat down in one of her little chairs, and she moved to his knees. She was still saying Dada. He ran his hand over the dark fluff of hair that she had on her head.

  “Dada, ball.” She gestured with her hand to a ball in the corner and then looked at him with her big blue eyes.

  “Do you want the ball, darling?” He looked back at her with wide eyes.

  “Dada, ball.” She looked at the ball and then back at him.

  He took her little hand off of his knee and placed it on the table so she wouldn’t fall. He got her the ball. She reached for it with both hands and fell on her bottom. She shoved the ball into her mouth and chewed on it.

  “Are your teeth hurting you, darling?” He picked her up and set her on his lap. He talked to her and read her a book.

  When it was time for him to leave, she cried and reached up to him with both of her arms.

  Adam heard her and woke up. He cried too. His nanny jumped into action. She picked him up and went to the changing table with him.

  Sarah stopped crying and crawled over to Adam’s nanny. She pulled herself up on the nanny’s leg. “Dada, baby.” She looked at him and then up at the table. She reached up with one hand and opened and closed it again. “Dada, baby.”

  Brian went to her and picked her up, so she could see the baby. He was so tiny. He had stopped crying. Adam seemed to be looking around. He focused on Sarah. He had a really smart look about him just like Sarah had back then.

  “Adam sleeps so much, sir. I’m starting to really worry. It has been three weeks already.” Adam’s Nanny had taken care of babies before but had never had one that slept this much.

  “You have to keep in mind that he was born early. He is just making up for that time. How is he growing?” He would pretend interest until he was sure. Adam would be leaving then.

  “By leaps and bounds. He eats very well and rarely spits up.”

  “Good then everything is fine.”

  “When is his mother going to visit him?” When he didn’t answer she went on to say, “I could take him to her if she is still bedridden.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary.” He gave Sarah a kiss and set her down. He left then.

  Nanny Dobson rolled her eyes at the other nanny’s stupidity. Mrs. … hadn’t been here in so long that no one remembered what she looked like.

  She comforted Sarah who cried every time her father left.

  ***

  Nanny woke me every morning and helped me wash. Which entailed her washing me while I stood still, letting it happen. She dried me and got me dressed in whatever she wanted. She led me to our table.

  It was in the kitchen and only had two chairs. The table was small and pushed up against the wall. The scale of my world was tiny now. I liked that.

  From my spot I could look out of the window in the living room. The view was the same but also a little different.

  “Do you want to go outside? You could see the ocean even better out there.”

  I shook my head no. Daddy might change his mind about me and have Adam tested. Then he would know, and if he came to get me, I needed to be here and ready. Daddy changed his mind so often.

  “Amelia, you aren’t eating.” Nanny talked on, but I wasn’t listening. I laid my folded hands i
n my lap and waited for my Daddy. I looked out the window and just waited.

  Nanny put food in front of me three times a day.

  Chapter 17 – Walls Tumbling Down

  Why was he doing this to himself, Brian thought as the taxi pulled up in front of the little house that Nanny was renting for the two of them. He was paying for all this he thought and now he had to come here and see it too.

  He rang the doorbell. Nanny answered it. “Thank God, you came. She’s in here.” She walked swiftly to an open door, and then she left again. He even heard the house door closing.

  He saw Amelia sitting on the bed. She had her back to him, but she was wearing one of her pretty dresses, and she had a pretty ribbon in her long dark hair. He walked around and looked at her face. She was looking out of the open door to the beach.

  He had forgotten how beautiful she was. His heartstrings were being pulled tight. He knelt down in front of her. She moved her head, so she could still look out. He had seen enough. She just wasn’t his Amelia anymore.

  “Good bye, Amelia.” He laid a hand on the bed and pushed himself up.

  Amelia felt the movement and looked up at him. “Daddy!” she said excitedly. She was focused on him now. She smiled at him and reached for his face.

  Brian moved away from her hand. He still didn’t want her to touch him. She had been doing that for months. It disgusted him that she would want to touch him with a hand that she had used to touch another man.

  “I forgot you’re not real. I’ve got to stop doing that.” She put her pointer finger in her mouth and bit off a bit of skin from the side of her fingernail.

  Brian watched her do that horrified. “Amelia, why did you do that?” He was taken aback.

  She looked past him again.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked.

  “The sky.”

  “Why are you looking at the sky?”

  “That’s where Adam is.”

  “Why would Adam be in the sky?” Brian asked.

  “Because he didn’t cry.”

  Brian thought about that for a while. “I don’t understand.”

  “Sarah cried, a lot. She was very mad. Adam just didn’t. He was so hungry, but I was such a bad mother.”

  “Why were you a bad mother?” Brian was pushing away from her again, certain that he didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

  “It was one of the things I promised myself. I had said if I were ever a mother, my children would never have to know what it feels like to go hungry. But they both did. Adam died because he was just so hungry. It was my fault. I just didn’t know – how.”

  “Adam’s dead?” He was shocked that she believed that.

  “I have to go now. I can’t stay here.” Amelia was looking over his shoulder again.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “I have to go back to Nanny. She’s so worried.”

  “What is she worried about?”

  “She thinks I don’t eat enough. Things like that.”

  “What if you just ate nicely for her?”

  “But I have to go to Adam. He needs me. He doesn’t have anyone.” She glanced at him for a second, and then her eyes returned to the horizon.

  She looked like she was waiting for a plane. Her eyes were focused high in the sky. “What are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t know, maybe angels.” She turned red and shrugged. Her eyes stayed on the horizon, but a few tears rolled out of her eyes.

  Brian closed his eyes and looked away from her. “What if I told you Adam was alive, would you eat then?”

  “Sarah cried so much it scared me. Adam didn’t, he couldn’t.” She pulled the doll that had been lying in her arms closer to her heart. “My little Sarah.”

  “When did Sarah go hungry?” He wasn’t so sure he wanted to hear that answer.

  “When I couldn’t find a place to stay.”

  “Why didn’t you go home to your Daddy?”

  “I wanted to, but I didn’t know my address or my phone number. I still don’t. I called out to him on the street, but he didn’t hear me.”

  “Where was that?”

  “In front of his office building. Plus my father kicked me out when he caught me.”

  “You went to your father’s?”

  “I still had some money hidden there. But he saw me and kicked me out again. You better leave now. If Nanny comes and hears me talking to you, she’ll think I’m crazy.”

  He smiled. “What would she do to you then?”

  “I don’t know. She asks me all the time what she should do with me. She doesn’t know either, but with Nanny you never know what she will do.”

  Amelia looked over his shoulder, and then she was gone. He missed her. He missed her a lot. If only – No! He got up and moved away from her. “Goodbye, Amelia.”

  “Goodbye,” she answered automatically.

  Her voice stopped him. He stared at her for a while. The arms holding the doll were really very thin. She just looked out of the door. She didn’t seem to know that he was still there.

  Brian left. He had asked the taxi to wait for him. He went out, and Nanny pounced on him. “Sir, what should we do?”

  “Nothing, she will be fine given time. She said so herself.”

  “She talked to you?” Nanny looked truly surprised.

  “Of course she did, Nanny. You called me out here for nothing. If you ever do something like this again, then I won’t send anymore money.” He got into the cab and it pulled away.

  The taxi cab driver looked at him curiously.

  “My ex-wife’s mother.”

  The driver nodded, understanding.

  Brian was able to hold himself together for the flight home, but once he was in his own car, that got harder and harder to do. It was just so easy to envision Amelia next to him.

  He pulled over and laid his head on the wheel. He cried.

  What had he done to her?

  She was already crazy, and once again, she was trying to kill herself. It was his fault. He had tricked her and forced her.

  A few minutes later he was able to pull himself together and drive the rest of the way home.

  Brian checked himself in the mirror of his car. He looked okay. He could go in.

  Brian went right into his office. His butler followed him in asking if he wanted anything. He shook his head no. The butler left him and closed the door.

  He looked around his office, but his thoughts were still with her. She had lied to him and pretended. She hurt him where she could, but he had gotten her worse in the end.

  He looked at the mail piled up on his desk. He shifted through it. Adam’s results were finally here. All hope would be gone when he opened this envelope.

  Slowly, he pulled out the papers. The first proved that Tony Junior wasn’t the father. The next proved that Cindy’s father wasn’t Adam’s father, and the last one proved that –

  Adam was his.

  Brian’s jaw dropped. It couldn’t be. How was that possible?

  He reread the paper. It was just like Sarah’s had been. It said that he was the father to 99.99999%.

  But that meant – he saw himself cursing at Amelia while she begged him to let her take a lie detector test. Guilt was crashing down on him.

  What had he done?

  He rang up to the nursery. “I want Adam brought down to me right now.”

  He flipped opened his cell and scrolled through his telephone numbers. He found the one he wanted.

  There was a knock on his door. He jumped up and answered it.

  He took his son in his arms. “Hello, Adam.” He stroked his face. “Good news his mother is feeling a lot better. She will probably be able to come home soon.”

  Adam’s nanny nodded at him and left.

  He smiled at his son, his own son.

  Brian sat down with him in his chair behind his desk. He was still so small and weak, but he was gaining weight every day.

  Brian opened the bottom drawer
of his desk and raised his feet up to it. He carefully laid his son on his knees.

  He talked to him and wiped his mouth when he drooled. Brian was truly happy. He looked at Adam’s tiny hands and fingers.

  Adam wrapped his hand around Brian’s finger. This was a precious moment.

  Brian picked up his cell again. He dialed the number he had looked up before his son had come in.

  “Hello, here is Brian. Listen, I need another favor.”

  “Anything after what you did for my Heather.”

  ***

  Nanny knocked on my door. “Amelia, Nanny needs you to come here. Come to Nanny.”

  Was it time to pretend to eat again?

  I got up and went to Nanny’s hand.

  She bent down to my face, which was awkward because we were the same height. If anything, I was even a little taller than she was. Still, it was something that she liked to do. “Nanny needs you to be very good. Your Daddy has sent some men here to ask you some questions. You have to do what they say. Can you be good for Nanny?”

  I felt the sides of my mouth weight down. I tried to be brave, but now that it was time I was just plain scared. Daddy had sent the men here to do what he couldn’t do himself. I had to give myself a pep talk. It would all be over soon. I forced myself to walk out the door with her. This was faster than starving myself.

  I pictured myself arriving in heaven. The angels would lay my baby in my arms. He was all alone up there. He needed me to come as quickly as I could.

  The men had set out a lot of stuff in the living room. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I recognized this stuff from after Sarah’s birth.

  Had Brian had the baby tested after he died? Did he know that Adam was his?

  I felt something like hope.

  They told Nanny to sit me down on one of the kitchen chairs. The men eyed me oddly. I was about to take a lie detector test to see if I was an adulteress while dressed up in my little girl things. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

  They hooked me up and did whatever they had to do. Nanny was nervously watching them as she hovered over me. They had to ask her to step to the side a couple of times.