Jason
Willa and I were seated at Milk Bar, one of our favorite ice cream joints. The window looked out over the sidewalk, the Saturday night crowd packing the sidewalks.
But ice cream was the last thing on my mind. All I could think about was her.
“Dad,” said Willa, tugging at my sleeve. “What’s wrong? Your ice cream’s getting all melty.”
I snapped out of my thoughts, turning my attention back to the treat in front of me—some cereal milk ice cream topped with Golden Grahams. Not exactly on my normal diet routine, but Willa had a way of talking me into cutting loose every now and then.
And she was right. I’d barely touched the ice cream.
“Just have a lot on my mind, Sprout,” I said. “Dad’s got a lot to think about.”
“Are you thinking about the ball last night? I bet it was really fun.”
She was right about that being on my mind. But not in the way she thought, no doubt.
I hated lying to Willa. We’d made a promise to never keep secrets from each other, but I’d never been good about that. In fact, I’d been terrible. She didn’t know about my work, she didn’t know the truth of what happened to her mother, and she didn’t—and wouldn’t—know about last night with April.
Sometimes I wondered what kind of father I was, whether or not I deserved an amazing daughter like her. All I could do was remind myself it was for her own good, that I kept the truth of my work from her for her own good. Maybe someday when she was older, more capable of processing it all, I could let her in on what kind of man her father really was, what really happened to her mother.
But not now. Not when she was so young, so innocent.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was a lot of fun.”
Her eyes lit up. “And April looked so pretty in her gown. Did you guys have a good time?”
“We had a great time. Wasn’t really her crowd, but she had fun.”
“Oh,” she said. “Some of those rich people can be really mean. Well, the kids, at least.”
I smiled. “Yeah, you’re right about that. And sometimes mean kids grow up to be mean adults.”
She laughed. “They stay kids?”
“Something like that. You’ll learn about it when you’re older.”
She took a bite of her ice cream topped with Captain Crunch. She chewed and swallowed, clearly thinking about something.
“Dad, I have a question.”
Uh-oh. Problem with having a daughter as smart as her—even though she was a kid, you couldn’t hide much.
“What’s up, Sprout?”
“Um…is April going to be around for a while?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you going to fire her or anything?”
I hadn’t been thinking about that. But that was before she and I’d had our thing the night before. I had no idea how April was going to handle it. Hell, I didn’t know how I was going to handle it.
“Why would I fire her?” Did she suspect something?
“I don’t know. I mean, we’ve had nannies before, and they didn’t stick around.”
“That’s true. But how did you get along with those other nannies?”