Julia 19
The day I met Natalie Hughes, I was interviewing six nanny candidates. She wasn’t one of them. David was four months old then, and I was desperate for some help. So, in they marched to our apartment in the city and our home on Long Island. It was an incredibly varied pool of applicants, ranging from a very mature eighteen-year-old, fresh out of high school and looking to start her life, to a very youthful seventy-three-year-old, fresh out of the convent and looking to reinvent hers. And, while all of the final six candidates were ready, willing and able, there was just something missing. Something I couldn’t put my finger on until that afternoon in the coffee shop.
On a particularly lovely afternoon, I packed up my boy, put him in the stroller and wheeled him out through Lincoln Center, around the Revson Fountain a few times and to a coffee shop a couple of blocks away. I’d often noticed the striking young barista – at nearly six feet tall, she was hard to miss. But it wasn’t just that. She had a calm easiness about her.
On that particular afternoon, I ordered my coffee at the counter and then rolled the stroller to the other end to wait for it. The girl gave me a bright smile and a nod, offering David a quick wave. I was exchanging texts with Matthew a few minutes later when she yelled so loudly that I jumped.
“STOP!”
Her unexpected demand was so forceful that we did just that; all of us. Every single person in the shop stood perfectly still as all eyes swung to the barista. I looked at her, perplexed, but it took just a split second to see what she saw … There was this man. His back was to me. He had been speaking with his companion, walking backwards with a piping hot cup of coffee in one hand, uncovered, as his other hand felt for a sugar packet behind him. To my horror, the entire scene unraveled in my imagination. One more step backward and he’d have tripped over the stroller, causing a shower of scalding hot coffee to rain down on my child.
Even as she was preparing several coffees at once, listening to the incoming orders, and acknowledging the customers, Natalie Hughes spotted the potential danger in progress. With one single word, she commanded two-dozen people to stop dead in their tracks. Any other action – saying a polite ‘excuse me, Sir’ or ‘watch out’ or trying to get the guy’s attention would likely have gone unnoticed by him – at least for that single, irrevocable step – and the results would have been catastrophic. But the one word, uttered with such force, commanded us all and suspended time for the one brief second she needed to keep my son out of harm’s way.
I realized in that instant what it was I couldn’t put my finger on with any of the other candidates. I wanted the person who would, in the midst of all the chaos around her, never lose sight of David and the potential dangers all around him. I wanted the woman with the sharp instincts and lightning quick reflexes, coupled with the confidence to trust and use them both.
Ten minutes later, she was on her break and sitting across from me at one of the tables. I discovered she was the only girl in a large family. Along with her father, all five of her brothers were police officers. Her father had raised her to be street smart and hyper-aware of her surroundings. She was taking a year off after undergrad to study for her LSATs. All she wanted was a job that would pay her enough to live, while affording her the flexibility and the time to study.
She didn’t have references from any of the best families on the upper eastside, nor did she have a degree in early childhood education. She wasn’t fluent in three languages and she hadn’t attended Wellesley. But I knew then and there that she was exactly the right person. She was the one who would keep my son safe.
“So, what was it about him that gave you a bad feeling?” I ask now as I wrap my long red hair into rollers the size of coke cans. David is down for a nap in the nursery and Natalie is sitting cross-legged on my bed, folding one of his dinosaur t-shirts.
She shrugs. “I don’t really know. Instinct, I suppose.”
“You said he had a daughter …”
“That’s what he said,” she corrects. “That he was waiting for his ex to drop her off.”
“But, you never saw the ex-wife or the kid?”
She shakes her head and pulls a sweatshirt out of the laundry basket. This one has Spiderman on it.
“Julia, I don’t know why, but the guy … he just gave me the creeps. It was the way he was looking at David. He was being subtle, but he was definitely trying to pump me for information. At first he was all charming and a little flirty. Then, when he realized I wasn’t interested, he tried to sell me on the play date thing.”
“Okay,” I say thoughtfully, moving on to my make-up. “Have you ever seen this guy before? At the park? Or anywhere else?”
“Well, not exactly,” she says, pausing her folding for a moment.
I freeze my blush brush long enough to look at her in the mirror behind me.
“I know we haven’t met before and I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen him anywhere around, but there’s just … there’s something very familiar about him.”
Oh, I don’t like the sound of that. “What did he look like? Exactly …”
“He was tall …”
Yup, Jeremy’s tall. Check that box.
“Lean …”
Check that one, too.
“Brownish green eyes …
Shit. Check.
“Sort of dirty blonde hair and clean-cut. Very Wall Street, but in a hipster kinda way. Oh, and he had a pierced ear.”
I breathe an internal sigh of relief. Jeremy Corrigan could pass for hipster, but not Wall Street. And he isn’t blonde … or clean-cut, for that matter. And he would never wear an earring. Way too effeminate for his testosterone-fueled ego.
“Well, maybe you should take a break from that park for a while,” I suggest. “And if you see him anywhere else, please let us know right away.”
Natalie nods her understanding, and I turn back around, rummage in my bag for the eyeliner that will miraculously transform my eyes from invisible to arresting.
“Julia?”
“Hmmm?”
“That guy you and Matthew warned me about when you first hired me … Jeremy? You were worried it might be him, weren’t you?”
I look up at her again in the mirror to find her watching me intently.
“Yes, I thought maybe, but he doesn’t fit the description,” I say after a long moment, turning around to face her.
“I saw the look on your face. You were really scared there for a second.”
I give her the briefest of nods.
“Do you think he might want to hurt David?”
I should tread very carefully here. There’s a fine line between caution and hysteria … I should know, I’ve crossed it enough times.
“Nat, Jeremy Corrigan is Brett’s brother. He and I were together for a while. As it turned out, he wasn’t a good guy. He …he hurt me. And when he did, Matthew fought back in a way that damaged Jeremy’s career. Thankfully, he’s been gone, working in Detroit for more than a year, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. But …” I pause and close my eyes for just a moment, forcing myself to say aloud the words that I hide from every day. “But he’s not the kind of guy to forgive and forget.”
“Still! You don’t think he’d hurt a child …”
“The single worst thing you can do with a guy like that is to underestimate him; to assume that he plays by the same rules that the rest of us do. He doesn’t. So, yes, I was scared there for a second, thinking he might have come back. But, from what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like him.” I give her my brightest, most reassuring smile. “I love that you’re so alert. There’s no one that I trust with my son more than you.”
This makes her smile and blush just a little.
“What about Brett?”
“What about him?”
“You said this Jeremy guy is his brother. But you seem to trust him … and Maggie.”
I nod, thoughtfully.
“Yes, you’re right, I do. There was a time when that was not the case. But Brett was there for me when I needed him …”
This is, of course, the understatement of the year. Had Brett not intervened, my son might not have ever been born. Not if Jeremy had had his way, anyway. But Natalie doesn’t need to know those kinds of gruesome details. Nobody does.
“Yeah, so, he proved himself to be someone I could count on. And he and Maggie have become like a surrogate aunt and uncle to David.”
“Will they be at this event you’re attending tonight?”
I roll my eyes. “I wish. If this party is anything like the other fundraisers I’ve been to, we’ll be eating rubber chicken and trying to convince people to part with their hard-earned cash. I’m sure it’s not the kind of parties you go to,” I grin.
She snorts and tosses a ball of tiny socks into the laundry basket. “Yeah, well, believe me, I’ve been very happy to trade in the loud, sweaty mob scene for a standing Friday night pizza date with David. He’s always happy to see me, never makes ridiculous demands and never complains about staying in and watching TV. He’d be the perfect man if I could get him to wipe his own backside!”
As I shake my head and laugh with her, a sudden wave of gratitude washes over me.
“You know, Nat,” I say, my tone turning serious. “We don’t have any family, Matthew and I. So, when we come across people like you, and Brett, and Maggie …we just kind of assimilate them into our lives. They become our family
“Assimilate! Ohhhhh, I like the idea of that!” she beams at me with her big, toothy grin. “Like you’ve sucked me up into your pod, or something! I just love SciFi, you know.”
I didn’t. But I’m glad I do now.
Natalie Hughes is a welcome addition to the Ayers pod.