And then I do what I do best.
I pull out a book, and I start figuring out how to show someone else how to fall in love with words.
Chapter 3
F**king Miracle
WALKER
Iwatch from behind the glass of the office, arms folded, unable to believe my eyes.
My shy, slow-to-trust kid is doubled over laughing, glasses sliding down his nose. Jonah doesn't laugh like that. Not anymore.
Not since the divorce, not since the move, not since he started struggling in school and realized other kids noticed. I hardly remember the last time I heard him laugh the way he is right now.
No, wait, I do. He was four years old and I was throwing him over my shoulder in the backyard of our Nashville house. Back before everything came crashing down around us. Back when I still thought I could hold that life, that marriage, that version of our family together through sheer force of will.
That was a long time ago.
And here he is, laughing like that again. Because of Sadie.
She's got him taking turns writing and drawing on a piece of paper, pointing to the book every once in a while until Jonah sounds out a word for her. Like it's a game.
Six high-priced private tutors back in Nashville.Six. Not one of them could get him to read without a meltdown.
She's done it in twenty minutes.
It's a fucking miracle. I wish it was bestowed by literally anyone else on earth.
“Told you she was great,” says a voice from behind me.
The director of the reading program comes up to the window to stand next to me. Janice or Jane? Shit, I need to start remembering names if I’m going to be living back in Marble Falls the rest of my life.
“The kids love her,” she continues. “She’s a doll.”
I grunt. Keep watching through the glass.
That gorgeous, infuriating girl I haven’t been able to forget, no matter how much I want to, is the same woman currently coaxing my closed-off, anxious kid into reading. Like it's the easiest thing in the world. Like she was born knowing how to reach people who've pulled themselves out of reach.
People like Jonah.
People like me, apparently, since I've been standing at this window for ten minutes when I should have already walked out of here.
I came here for a potential-nanny interview with what I thought would be a nice English teacher. Ideally, someone subdued and mousy who would blend into the wallpaper. Someone I could tune out.
Lo and behold, I am presented withher.
As if this process hasn’t been enough of a fucking challenge.
The nanny search has been a nightmare from the start. There have been the ones whose eyes immediately go widewhen they realize who I am and then fumble or simper their way through the interview. The ones who laugh too hard at everything I say and touch my arm withthatlook in their eyes. The ones who mention, casually, that they have a demo they've been working on.
The ones who look at me and see Walker Rhodes, Grammy winner and Stagecoach headliner and unwilling tabloid fodder, and have no idea there's a tired man behind it who just wants someone trustworthy to pick his kid up from school.
Thirty candidates in two weeks.
One sold a photo of my guest bathroom to a gossip site the second she walked out the door. God only knows why that picture would be interesting to anybody. One cried when she started telling me how my music changed her life. One asked me to sign her tits.
Being Walker Rhodes means every person who walks through my door wants something. My son is not a stepping stone to me.
