Thirteen
Carter
“Come get me, Miss Nattie!” Clara said.
“I’m gonna get you!” Natasha said.
“Over here! Over here!” Joshua said.
“I’m gonna get all of you!”
I watched from the porch as Natasha ran around with the kids outside. It was a bright Sunday afternoon and the drink in my hand was cooling my body. The kids were sweating up a storm and Natasha’s shirt was beginning to soak with sweat. But she didn’t care. None of them cared. They had been running around for over an hour, kicking around a ball and transitioning into a fast-paced game of freeze tag.
It had been like this every weekend for six months.
Nathaniel’s soccer games were on Saturdays and family days were on Sundays. It started with Clara wondering why Natasha never came to family days, and I told her it was because Natasha wasn’t technically a part of our family.
But the boys voiced what I had been feeling for months.
“Yes she is. We love her.”
“She cooks and cleans and takes us to school.”
“She’s here all the time.”
“And you like having her around.”
“She comes to my games.”
“She makes Clara all those tutus.”
“And she lets us eat candy when you’re not looking.”
Natasha was just as much a part of this family as any of us were. So an open-ended invitation was given for her to spend Sundays with us if she wanted.
And she had been at our house every Sunday since.
Keeping things platonic had been hard after our encounter on the couch. I saw her in a completely different light after knowing what she had witnessed in Africa. The heart she had for educating and protecting children and how she had shouldered that burden on her own for so long. I felt as if I was looking at a kindred spirit. Someone who understood the pain I was going through with the loss of my wife.
Just like her pain from Africa would never fully dissipate, the pain of losing my wife would never fully go away.
She understood that. But more than that, I felt I could talk to her about it. My wife’s birthday had come and gone, and she had helped me through the worst of it. I came home late from work, determined to work the memory of her away. But when I walked into the house, there was a small cake sitting on the table. A cake with one of my wife and I’s wedding photos embossed onto the top.
We sat there and drank my wife’s favorite kind of wine, ate the cake, and Natasha listened as I told her story after story about her. How we met. When I first told her I loved her. Our wedding day. Our wedding night. Our honeymoon. Having the boys. The silly fights we had our first year of marriage.
All of it.
Natasha sat and listened to all of it.
And little by little, she opened up to me as well. She would tell me about the kids she taught over in Africa and how they had given her presents before she had left. How she constantly sent emails to try and check up on them even though they weren’t her responsibility any longer. Hell, there were a few times where she had called me in the middle of the night. Crying after a nightmare and wanting me to talk with her.
She was opening up to me, and the more she did the more I cherished her.
I thought keeping things platonic was what was best for the kids. But I didn’t want platonic any longer. I didn’t want things to be so distant between us. I wanted to follow my heart for once instead of my rational mind. I wanted the freedom to wrap my arms around her and kiss her after coming home from work.
I wanted that with Natasha.
I wanted her to be more than ‘just the nanny’.
“Dad! Watch!” Joshua said.
“I’m watching, kiddo.”
My son climbed onto Natasha’s shoulders and the two of them started dancing. Joshua was waving his arms around and Natasha was dancing her feet as fast as with could. Clara was clapping and cheering them on and Nathaniel was shouting that he wanted to go next. A chuckle fell from my lips as I sipped my drink, watching the sheer joy on my children’s faces.
She was perfect for us.
All of us.
How would I bridge that gap, though? I couldn’t simply ask her to be my girlfriend. I had to make this a smooth transition for everyone. Just because the kids liked her didn’t mean they would take to us being romantic around one another in front of them. They were still young enough to be confused by something like that, and I didn’t want them to feel that way.
Like I was trying to replace their mother.
The best way to usher this part of our relationship in was to ask her to move in. She was here enough anyway. Her apartment was practically a waste of money. She slept there, and that was about it. She was with us the rest of the time. Asking her to be a live-in nanny would help move our relationship forward. It would help her to understand and see that she really did belong here.
But I had to make sure she understood I wasn’t trying to take her independence away. She would get a key to the house, so she could come and go as she pleased. She would work the same hours and would still have weekends off. Paid vacation, her salary… nothing would fall to the wayside with her moving in.
It was imperative to me that she not feel jailed in my home.
And if things went well with the conversation, then eventually I was willing to hire another nanny. Someone else to come in and help take care of the kids so we could be together as a real family. That would take time, of course. I couldn't throw all of that on her at once. But if she took my offer to move-in and things continued to go well, then that was my next step.
To tell her I wanted to be with her and offer anything I could provide so we could be a family together. Take vacations together. Enjoy one another’s company late at night after the kids had gone to bed.
Or on the weekends when my mother took them.
I wanted to take her out to a formal dinner to discuss this. That was what people did when discussing potential job moves. I didn’t have an office to call her into, but I could take her out on a ‘strictly business’ dinner. I could get her out of the house and into a more intimate scenario where we could talk moving her up the chain, so to speak.
I could gauge her reaction from there to figure out if I should announce my intentions or not.
A blast of cold water ripped me from my trance. My crystal glass went tumbling to the concrete, shattering into a million pieces. I heard one of my kids gasp as I looked up, and I saw Natasha holding the hose out in front of her. They were soaked from head to toe and watching with puckered lips.
Waiting to see what I would do.
“Uh oh,” Clara said.
“Uh oh’s right,” I said.
“Is he in his good suit?” Joshua asked.
“I am,” I said.
“We’re so dead,” Nathaniel said.
“You’re not the one holding the hose,” I said.
I panned my gaze to Natasha as a grin slid across my cheeks. She turned the hose on again and blasted me as I got up from my chair. I ran towards her and picked her up, then threw her over my shoulder. I whipped her around in circles as she sprayed the kids and I listened to the giggles falling from their lips.
This was what I wanted for my life. My kids, Natasha, and our Sunday family days.
And I would give anything Natasha wanted in order to make it happen.