The Sinner's Saint

THE WEEK 1/2

THE SCHOOL WEEK AFTER

MONDAY
It's Monday and I've already decided I love my job and also hate it simultaneously.

I'm up at 5, gym by 5:30, back, showered, ready and arriving at the estate at 6:50. The gates open before I even ring the bell because Charles prolly already saw me coming on the cameras and I appreciate that about him deeply.

I enter through the side door and swap my sneakers for the slides I keep by the door because the tile floors in this place are always cold enough to be a personal attack.

The house is doing its slow morning thing. Lights flickering on as I move through the hallways, that particular silence of a big house that hasn't started yet. I hang my bag and get into it.

That was earlier.
Now, Bags are checked, lunches are packed and breakfast is almost ready. I'm making eggs when I hear the first signs of life upstairs which is Sasha dropping something, probably himself, then the muffled sound of him explaining to no one that it wasn't his fault.

Sasha comes downstairs in some of his uniform for once in his life which I acknowledge with a nod and he receives it with the energy of a man being given a standing ovation.

Siena eats in silence, scrolling, unbothered. Her cleats are already by the door because she packed them herself the night before. She's sixteen going on sixty and I respect it.

I get the older two fed and get them out. On the way to school, Sasha talks the entire time, Siena has her AirPods in but I catch her smiling at things he says so she is listening. I drop them at the gates, watch them disappear inside and drive back.

Now. Aleyna.
She wakes up and immediately the day shifts because she is in one of those moods. not a bad mood exactly. just a mood, the kind where everything is slightly wrong for reasons she cannot put together and will not negotiate on.

Her cereal is "too round." and not the correct flavour, Her bow is "too tight and also too loose." The sun is "too loud."

She says this with complete seriousness while I stand across the island from her at 8am processing the sentence.

"Baby, it's the same cereal and sun as always."

"It's too round and bright today." I look at the cereal then at her. I have concluded that she is simply built different and there's nothing any of us can do about it. I make her toast instead.

The shoes are next. She has approximately seven pairs of white sneakers because whoever does the shopping in this house buys in bulk, she stands in front of them with her arms crossed like she is inspecting candidates for a position.

"These ones," I said, kneeling with the obvious pair.

"No."

"Aleyna."

"No thank you."

The "no thank you" gets me. Five years old and already adding courtesy to her refusals. I stare at her and she stares back, completely unbothered and serious. She already has the negotiation energy of a woman who has fired people before, guess it runs in the family.

I pull out the sticker sheet I keep in my bag for exactly this reason and watch her eyes track to it immediately. She put the shoes on immediately with no further discussion.

Guess I will never stop keeping those sheets.

We spend the morning at her enrichment class which is essentially structured cute chaos with fancy snacks and a woman named Miss Donna who has the energy of someone powered entirely by oat milk and optimism.