“Miss Lang?” The woman sitting next to me smiled, patting my hand reassuringly. “I just wanted to wish you luck again. I’m sure you’ll do just fine, y’know. These things, these job interviews—” She waved her hand dismissively. “They’re never as scary as you assume they’re gonna be. And you being such a lovely, charming girl and all? I’m sure everything’s going to work out just fine.” She hadn’t stopped talking the entire six-hour flight. I’d had the full rundown, gotten most of her life story in between the marginally unpleasant in-flight meal that came around somewhere over Colorado and the lone glass of gin and tonic I threw back somewhere closer to Indiana: her name was Margie Fenech, fifty-eight years old, and she had three grown sons, all of whom were now married, but boy if they weren’t any one of them would have just loved to date me. She’d been patting my hand and touching my arm like we were old friends for hours now, and to be honest I hadn’t minded. Not one bit. The contact, if anything, had been reassuring.
There were breaks in between her constant chattering, where she’d asked me questions about myself and I felt obliged to respond in kind. She’d easily managed to wheedle out of me my purpose for visiting New York in the middle of the week. She knew all about my parents’ struggling restaurant back in the South Bay. I’d told her of the illusive Ronan Fletcher, about whom I knew a few sporadic facts: he was ex-military, the recipient of the Purple Heart, so obviously a bit of a badass. His wife had died last year, leaving him with two young children to care for. And his personal net worth was pretty up there, somewhere close to the billion-dollar mark. Margie also knew that I hated flying, and she knew that I had no stomach for turbulence; in her own way I supposed she was trying to distract me from the abrupt angle to the ground the plane had adopted now that it was coming in for its final approach to land.
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure it’ll be okay. Has to be, right?” I said, flashing a brief, watery smile in her direction.
“Oh sure, sweetheart. If you take care of those little kiddies for six whole months, think about all the money you can save to help out your parents. You said it yourself. You won’t have any expenses. And you won’t know anyone in the city, so you won’t be out wasting your money every night of the week like some youngsters are prone to do.”
I objected to being called a “youngster” on a very deep level. I was twenty-eight years old, past the point in my life where I was out partying and frittering away my money every weekend. I’d been an elementary school teacher for the past five years, paying my bills, saving fifteen percent of my income religiously every paycheck, squirrelling away my funds in order to buy a house. I thought those were all very grownup things to have been doing for such a long time. I’d still have been doing them if the public school I’d been working for hadn’t had to close down due to insufficient government funding, too. I lost my job along with the rest of the school faculty four months ago, around about the same time Mom and Dad pulled me aside and told me, embarrassedly, that the restaurant was going under. They hadn’t asked for help, but I’d seen that they’d needed it. Needed it badly. So there went my savings. All of it. Now I had no more money saved to give them, and no job to make any more, which was how I found myself on this plane next to Margie, on my way to interview for a glorified babysitting job on the other side of the country.
I didn’t know how it had come to this. I should have been able to find another teaching job, but it was the middle of the school year and all positions had been filled. Support teaching was fine, but it was also sporadic and unreliable and I needed a steady income to make sure I could keep Mom and Dad afloat. When the agency I signed up with called and told me about Ronan Fletcher and his two young children, I hadn’t had much of a choice but agree to accept the all-expenses paid trip across the States to meet with this strange, wealthy individual and find out what he’s looking for.
“How old are the children again?” Margie asked. My arm got a squeeze this time.
“I’m not sure. I think the file said five and seven.”
Margie pulled an impressed face. “So young. And you say you don’t have any children of your own yet?” I got the impression that she thought I was ill equipped to deal with the challenge of dealing with a five and a seven-year-old.
“No, I don’t actually want children,” I said. “I love taking care of the kids at school, but I don’t plan on having my own.”
“Oh, goodness, sweetie, why on earth not? Being a mother…it’s the most miraculous thing. My life just wouldn’t be the same without those boys of mine.”
Over time, I’d learned that telling people I couldn’t have children always made them uncomfortable. It was always better to lie. To make something up. My lifestyle’s too hectic for dependents. I’m just not a maternal person. Anything was easier than explaining that I was married once, for a grand total of eighteen months, before I found out it was unlikely I was ever going to be able to conceive. My son of a bitch ex hadn’t taken the news well. He had taken the cash sitting in our joint savings account—thank god it wasn’t everything—and he had taken off with my best friend. Last I’d heard, they’d just had their first kid together, a little girl, and they were living up in San Francisco.