When Winter Blooms

I almost turned back in the elevator.

I'm not even joking, I was standing there on the forty-second floor, watching the numbers climb, and I genuinely considered pressing the lobby button and telling the agency I got food poisoning or something.

But I needed this job badly, So I fixed my blazer, told myself to act like a person who had it together, and waited for the doors to open.

They opened directly into the apartment.

I stepped out and immediately felt like I'd walked into a photo shoot that hadn't started yet.

Everything was white and grey and expensive-looking.

A kitchen that had probably never been used. Furniture that looked like it had been placed with a ruler.

Not a single crayon anywhere. Not a small shoe left in the middle of the floor the way every child I'd ever worked with left their shoes in the middle of the floor.

I was starting to wonder if the four-year-old was fictional when I heard footsteps.

He came from a hallway to the right. Tall, putting on a dark suit.

He was looking at his phone. He didn't look up immediately, and I stood there holding my folder and wondered if I was supposed to say something or just wait.

He looked up.

"Miss Reyes."

"Yes, that's me. Hi." I almost put my hand out and then didn't because he'd already turned and walked toward the sitting area.

I followed him.

We sat across from each other at a coffee table so clean it made me feel personally judged. He set his phone face-down and looked at me properly for the first time.

"The agency sent your references," he said.

"Right, yes. I have copies if you...."

"I read them."

"Okay." I put the folder on my lap.

"Good."

"Mm." He looked at me wondering if I was the right person for the job.

"Previous experience, three years with the Harmon family?"

"Three and a half. I left when the youngest started school full-time."

"Before that you were training as a child counselor."

"I had to stop." I didn't explain further. He didn't ask.

"I appreciated that."

"Do you drive?"

"Yes."

"Any objection to an NDA?"

"No."

He nodded. Then he was quiet for a moment, and I had the sense that the interview portion was over and something else was beginning. He shifted slightly, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and looked at the coffee table between us instead of at me.

"Lily is four," he said.

"She's adjusting. This year has been difficult for her." He stopped.

"Her mother passed away fourteen months ago."

"I know, the brief mentioned it." I paused.

"I'm sorry."

"Yes." He said.

"The role is live-in." He glanced at me.

"I understand if that's not.."

"It's fine, I don't have anything keeping me in a specific place right now."

He looked at me carefully, but he didn't say anything about it.

"You'd have your own room, meals are separate, I don't expect you to cook for me. You're here for Lily, not for the household."

"Understood." I hesitated.

"Although I do cook, I mean, if it ever made sense, logistically. It's not a big deal."

His expression didn't change exactly.

"I'll keep that in mind," he said, which was clearly his polite way of saying he would not keep that in mind.

Fine. I stopped talking.

"I want to be straightforward with you, Miss Reyes." He looked at the window now. It was something I would come to recognize, when he had something to say that cost him, he looked somewhere that wasn't a person's face.

"I've had three nannies since her mother died, Lily is not a difficult child. She's a good kid." A pause, quiet and heavy.

"She just, she gets attached. And when it ends, it's hard for her. The last one left with very little notice and that was...." He stopped.

Started again. "That was hard."

I watched him for a moment. He still wasn't looking at me.

"Mr. Cole," I said.

"She's four years old and she lost her mom. I would expect her to get attached. That's not a problem. That's just her."

He looked back at me then. I couldn't tell if I'd said the right thing or the wrong thing. His face didn't give a lot away.

"I'd need a minimum twelve-month commitment," he said.

"That's fine."

"And I'd need you to understand that whatever boundaries exist in this house, Lily doesn't experience them. She is the priority."

"Of course she is."

He studied me for another moment. Then he seemed to make some kind of internal decision, because he picked up his phone and started to say something, and that's when we heard it.

Small feet, fast ones.

She came around the corner in a pink jumper and one sock.

Her left foot was completely bare and she didn't seem to have noticed or care. She had dark hair that was escaping whatever someone had tried to do with it, and when she saw me she stopped so suddenly she nearly tipped forward.

We looked at each other.

Then she walked across the entire room, climbed up onto the cushion next to me without asking, and stuck her nose against my arm.

"You smell like cookies," she said.

"Vanilla lotion," I told her.

She pulled back and looked at me very seriously. "I like vanilla."

"Good taste."

"I'm Lily."

"I'm Maya."

"Are you going to be my new nanny?"

I glanced at her father. He was watching her the way you watch something you love so much.

Every bit of the boardroom had dropped off his face, just looked like a man watching his daughter.

"We're still figuring that out," I said.

Lily looked at her father, then back at me.

Then she took my hand, picked it up and held it, her small fingers wrapping around mine like she'd done it a hundred times before.

"Stay," she said.

Just like that. Like it was simple.

I felt something move in my chest, Something I wasn't prepared for.

I looked at Ethan Cole. He was still watching Lily, but then his eyes moved to me, and for just a second I saw it. Something that wasn't calculation, wasn't assessment.

Something that was just tired, and hopeful, and trying not to be either.

"The position is yours," he said quietly.

"If you want it."

Lily squeezed my hand.

"Okay," I said.

"I'll stay."

Lily smiled at me with her whole face, and I smiled back.

When I looked up, Ethan Cole had turned toward the window again.

But I caught it, right before he turned.

The way his shoulders dropped, just slightly. Like he'd been holding his breath since before I got here, and he'd finally let it go.

I filed that away and said nothing.

Something told me this apartment was full of things people held onto and never said out loud. I supposed I was about to find out how many.

He gave me a laminated card.

Which told me everything I needed to know about the kind of man I was now working for.

It was the morning after I moved in. I'd spent my first night in a bedroom that was nicer than any place I'd ever lived, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sound of a city I still wasn't used to.

I'd woken up early, gotten dressed, and come to the kitchen to figure out the coffee situation.

I was mid-search through the third cabinet when I heard him behind me.

"Good morning."

I spun around. He was already in a suit. It was 6:47 in the morning and the man was in a full suit, jacket and everything, holding a laminated card in one hand and a travel mug in the other.

"Good morning," I said.

"Do you, where do you keep the coffee?"

He opened the cabinet directly to my left.

"Thank you." I reached past him. He stepped back immediately, like he'd calculated the exact amount of space required between us and wasn't willing to negotiate it.

He set the laminated card on the counter between us and slid it toward me.

I picked it up.

There were twelve points numbered.

The font was small but very clear, I read the whole thing while the coffee machine did its thing, and I will say, some of them were normal.

No outside guests without prior notice. Keep Lily's schedule consistent. Notify him immediately if she's unwell.

But then there was: No personal questions about the household or its members.

And: My study is off-limits at all times.

And, my personal favourite: All communication regarding non-Lily matters should be directed to my assistant, Ms. Park, during business hours.

I read that one twice.

"Ms. Park," I said.

"My assistant, her number is at the bottom."

"Right." I looked up at him.

"So if I have a question about the house, or schedules, or anything like that?"

"Ms. Park."

"And if it's outside business hours?"

"Email."

I looked at him.

He was completely serious.

"Okay," I said.

He nodded, picked up his travel mug, and made to leave. Then he stopped.

"Rule six," he said, without turning around.

I looked down at the card.

Rule six: Lily is not to be taken outside the building without prior notification.

"Even to the park?"

"Notification first, then the park."

"Notification to Ms. Park?" I asked, and I kept my voice completely neutral when I said it, I really did.

He turned then. Looked at me.

I thought maybe I'd pushed it, but then something happened at the corner of his mouth, barely anything, the smallest possible movement and then it was gone so fast I almost thought I'd imagined it.

"To me," he said.

"For Lily."

"Got it."

He left. I heard the elevator a moment later.

I stood in the kitchen with the laminated card and my coffee and I thought: twelve rules, laminated, slid across a counter at six forty-seven in the morning.

This man had not had a normal year. Or possibly several years.

I folded the card carefully, because it was laminated and folding it felt mildly aggressive, and put it in the pocket of my cardigan.

Then I found a sunflower magnet in my moving box that I'd been carrying around since my mother gave it to me when I was nineteen, and I stuck it on the fridge just to have something of mine in this kitchen that looked like it belonged in an architecture magazine.

Then I went to wake up Lily.

She was already awake.

She was sitting up in bed surrounded by approximately forty stuffed animals, very seriously explaining something to a bear that was nearly her size.

"Good morning," I said from the doorway.

She looked up. "Maya! I was telling Gerald about you."

"Gerald," I said.

"Which one is Gerald?"

She held up the enormous bear.

"Hi Gerald," I said.

"Nice to meet you."

Lily seemed very pleased with this response. She climbed out of bed in the same pink jumper from yesterday, which told me she'd slept in it, and dragged Gerald by one arm toward the bathroom.

"I told him you smell like cookies and that you're going to be here every day now."

"That's right."

"He's happy about it." She glanced back at me with enormous, totally straight-faced sincerity.

"He wasn't happy about the last one."

"No?"

"She didn't like Gerald."

I made a mental note to love Gerald unconditionally for as long as I worked here.

We did the whole morning: teeth, face, hair, which took a while because Lily had opinions about her hair that were strong and specific and occasionally contradictory.

I made her oatmeal with honey because she told me that's what she liked, and she sat at the kitchen island and ate it with the careful concentration of someone doing something important.

She was halfway through when she looked up and said: "Is my daddy coming back for dinner?"

"I'm not sure, baby. Do you know what time he usually gets home?"

She thought about it.

"Late." Then, quieter: "He's always late."

She went back to her oatmeal and I went back to the coffee I was nursing and I didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say.

She wasn't upset exactly.

She said it the way kids say things that have just become fact, already absorbed. Which somehow made it worse.

He got home at half past nine.

Lily had been asleep for two hours. I was on the couch with a book when I heard the elevator, and then his footsteps, and then the pause.

"She's asleep," I said, without looking up.

"She had oatmeal for breakfast, pasta for dinner, and she only cried for about four minutes at bath time because I wouldn't let her bring Gerald in the water."

Silence.

"Gerald is the bear," I added.

"I know who Gerald is." He set his bag down. Loosened his tie.

"She ask about me?"

I looked up then. He was standing by the kitchen island, jacket still on, looking somewhere between tired and something harder to name.

"She asked if you'd be home for dinner," I said.

He nodded. Didn't say anything.

"She wasn't upset," I said, which wasn't entirely true, but I chose the kindest version.

"She just asked."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said: "I'll try to be back by seven tomorrow."

"I'll let her know."

He picked up his bag, Stopped.

And then, like he'd been debating it the whole elevator ride up, he said: "The sunflower magnet."

I waited.

"On the fridge, Is that yours?"

"Yes. Is that a problem?"

He looked at me for a moment.

"No," he said. "It's fine."

He went to his room. I listened to his door close, then his footsteps moved across the ceiling, his room was above the living room.

I picked up my book, Put it down again.

I pulled the laminated card out of my cardigan pocket, smoothed it flat, and went to the fridge. I stuck it up with the sunflower magnet right in the center, where neither of us could miss it.

Not to be petty.

I just wanted it where I could see it.

All twelve rules, eye level, every morning. Not because I planned to follow all of them. But because I wanted to remember who I was dealing with.

A man so afraid of something getting in, he laminated a list to keep it out.

I thought about the way he'd said: she just asked.

I thought about the pause before he said he'd try to be home by seven.

Yeah. I'd have the rules where I could see them.

I had a feeling I was going to need the reminder.

I've always been a light sleeper.

My mum used to say it was because I spent so many years listening for my brother at night, listening for the particular sound of him getting up for water, or having a bad dream, or just being five years old and scared of something he couldn't name.

You train yourself after a while.

Your ears learn to stay half-open even when the rest of you is gone.

So when I heard Lily at 12:43 am, I was already sitting up before I was fully awake.

It wasn't a big sound.

it wasn't a scream, the way you'd expect.

It was small. A small, thin sound, the kind that comes from a child who's been crying long enough to run out of volume.

Like she'd been at it for a while before I heard her.

I was down the hall in seconds.

Her nightlight was on, a little cloud-shaped thing that threw soft blue light across the ceiling and she was sitting up in bed with Gerald crushed against her chest, face wet, breathing in that hiccuping, ragged way that meant she'd been crying hard and was winding down now.

She looked at me when I came in and her face just crumpled. Fresh tears, because someone had finally shown up.

"Hey," I said, crossing to her.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her into my lap without asking.

"Hey, I'm here. I've got you."

She grabbed my shirt with both fists and pressed her face into my shoulder and just cried. I held her and rubbed her back in slow circles and didn't say anything for a while, just let her get it out. You can't rush that part.

Anyone who's ever sat with a crying child knows you just have to be the still thing they cry against until the storm passes.

After a while the shaking slowed down.

"Bad dream?" I asked, against her hair.

She nodded. Didn't say what it was about and I didn't push.

"It's gone now," I told her.

"Dreams can't follow you out. Did you know that?"

She pulled back enough to look at me, skeptical like she wanted to believe me but she wasn't born yesterday.

"How do you know?"

"Because I've had a lot of bad dreams," I said. "And none of them ever followed me."

She thought about that. "What do you dream about?"

"Sometimes my mum," I said.

"She's not here anymore either. So sometimes I dream about her and wake up sad."

Lily was quiet for a moment.

Then she said, very softly, "Like me and my mummy."

"Yeah," I said. "Just like that."

She looked at me for a long time, the way kids look at you when they're deciding whether to trust you with something.

Then she leaned her head back against my shoulder, and I felt her breathe out. A whole body exhale.

"Will you stay until I fall asleep?" she asked.

"Of course I will."

I started to sing, low and quiet, nothing in particular, just something soft my mother used to hum when I was small and the nights felt too big.

Lily's grip on my shirt loosened slowly. Gerald was wedged between us, his stuffed ear pressed against my ribs.

I sang until her breathing went deep and even and her hands went slack.

I stayed a little longer anyway. Just to be sure.

That's when I noticed him.

I don't know how long he'd been there. The door was ajar, I'd pushed it open when I came in but hadn't closed it behind me, and in the gap, in the thin strip of hallway light, I could see him.

He wasn't in a suit.

I'd only ever seen him in a suit. But he was in a grey t-shirt and he looked different.

Younger, maybe, or just less armored.

His hair wasn't combed and he was holding the doorframe with one hand like he needed something to hold onto.

He was watching Lily sleep.

I didn't say anything. I don't know why, maybe because I could see from where I was sitting that he'd been crying.

Not obviously.

Just the particular redness around a man's eyes when he's been trying very hard not to and mostly succeeded. And something about calling attention to that felt cruel.

So I just looked at him, and he looked at his daughter, and neither of us said a word.

Then he looked at me.

It was brief, just a second, maybe two.

His eyes met mine across the dim room and I don't know what either of us was supposed to do with that.

I gave him the smallest nod I could manage. Something that said: she's okay, I've got her.

He looked at Lily one more time.

Then he stepped back from the doorway.

I carefully laid Lily back against her pillow, tucked the blanket up around her and Gerald, and crept to the door.

He was sitting on the floor.

Back against the hallway wall, knees bent, head tipped back. He looked up at me when I came out and I looked down at him, and for a moment I thought he might say something, explain himself, or tell me to go back to bed, or be cold about it the way he was cold about everything.

He didn't say anything.

I didn't either.

I pulled the door mostly closed behind me, leaving just enough of a gap for the nightlight to spill through, and I went back to my room, I lay down. Stared at the ceiling.

I could hear him out there, not moving. Just sitting.

I don't know how long he stayed. I fell asleep before he left, and when I got up at six the next morning the hallway was empty and he was already in his suit at the kitchen counter with his coffee and his phone and all his armor back on, perfectly assembled, like nothing had ever happened.

"Good morning," he said, without looking up.

"Morning," I said.

I made my coffee. He left for work.

Lily woke up twenty minutes later in a completely fine mood, already over it the way kids are, resilient in ways that make adults look embarrassing.

And that was that.

We didn't talk about the night before. I didn't mention it and neither did he and I understood instinctively that this was how things worked here, things happened, and then they went into the pile of things no one mentioned, and the day kept going.

But I thought about it all morning.

The man in the grey t-shirt, standing in a strip of light, holding a doorframe.

Not able to go in, not able to go away.

I didn't know what to do with that yet. So I tucked it away with everything else and taught Lily how to make shadow animals on the wall, and she laughed so hard she gave herself the hiccups, and I told myself that was enough for one day.

It was.

But the other thing stayed anyway. Somewhere at the back of my chest, quiet and inconvenient.

It had a way of doing that.