I would have never guessed.
“Thanks. I have a hard time trusting people with this stuff. But I think if I go to someone who already knows about me, I might have an easier time opening up.”
No matter my lack of belief in it before, I think this will help me. It’s what I need to do.
“He does Zoom calls,” my dad adds. “You can speak to him from the privacy of your own home. And he also doesn’t pry or push like I plan to about this nanny of yours who’s living with you.”
I clear my throat. “How did you?—”
“Your mom and sister talk over each other when they speak on the phone.”
“Just on the phone?”
“Quit dodging the question.”
“I suppose you know her name too?”
“What was it… Sutton? Sybil? Sydney?”
“Summer, Dad. Her name is Summer.”
“Right.”
“I met her at my last concert. She lives…liveda few blocks from the house. Her best friend’s son is in Quinn’s preschool class, and she needed a job.”
“And your sister hired her first,” he comments.
“How much of this do you already know?”
His tongue clicks while he pretends to think about it. “That’s it. Are there any important details I left out?”
Those are the highlights, not the details. If it’s specifics he wants…
“She built a box fort in the backyard for Quinn before your sprinklers destroyed it.”
“Mom didn’t want to burden you with her secret garden,” he defends.
“I know.”
“What else?”
“She knows my favorite donut. Brings me flowers and pretends they’re for Quinn. She made me join the school play and morphed it into a talent show celebrating allthe kids’ differences. She made up the nanny position in front of Caroline and pushed me to ask for help. She’s infuriating and stubborn and beautiful and—” An endless string of adjectives flies out of my mouth. There will never be one word to describe Summer, and there shouldn’t be. Layered and nuanced is what drew me to her in the first place. I’ll never make her feel like her life was destined to be one thing. Never put her in a box. Not a nanny or a school volunteer or a cat mom or evenmine. But the reality is that I’m falling for a woman I’m relying on emotionally. I’m afraid if I continue to, a prison is what I’ll put her in instead. I won’t be any better than Brian.
“I’m scared I need her more than she needs me,” I confess to him.
“Well… I obviously haven’t met her yet.”
I love that he uses the wordyetas if it’s inevitable. I want Summer to be inevitable.
“But from how you’ve described her, she sounds like the type of girl who wouldn’t be there if she didn’t want to be. Also, the kind of girl I always imagined foryou. Ev, only when we’re whole can we be there for somebody else.”
He’s right. It’s why I struggled taking care of Quinn on my own. If today taught me anything, I’ve been pretending to be okay when it’s obvious I’m not. There are things I need to work through. I let his words settle into a safe space in my heart.
“Thanks for the number, Dad.”
“Thanks for calling, Ev. Night or day,” he reminds me.
“I know.”
