Nanny Diaries

Chapter 40 - The Only Exception

My fingers are white as I fumble with the flap of the envelope. My breath hitches in my airway, my mind swirling with questions about what the piece of paper contains. 

What if he wants to know where I went?

What if he doesn’t?

 

What if he still loves me?

 

Or what if he doesn’t?

 

My hands find my face and I bury my head into my palms, hunching over on the side of the bed and closing my eyes against the current of doubt and fear. 

I have to know. 

But what if it’s better not knowing? My thumb hesitates under the strip of white that prevents me from seeing the words coming from a man I cared for so much. Who I gave the key to my heart and let unlock it, the secrets spilling from it like a pitcher of water, until I was free. 

Though unknowing the entire time that he kept the biggest one of all from me. 

What would you have done if you had known?

Trust myself to throw me a curveball at a time like this. 

I flounder around in my mind, trying to satisfy my conscience with an answer so it’ll leave me alone. 

I can’t leave you alone. You know you can’t answer your question. You’re justifying running away from him because he didn’t tell you that he knew that your baby was also his. And so what? Is it so you can sleep at night since you rejected him in the worst of ways when he proposed to you? Lauren, you can’t. If you’re going to, don’t lie to yourself. Are you really mad that he kept that one secret?

My back flops against the blanket that my mom knitted. The familiar feel of it dipping down to cradle my body is so sweet I close my eyes for a moment. The scent of her perfume lingers on the fibers interwoven delicately to create a memory that I’ll cherish forever. My fingers graze the crisscrossed threads, just for a second, and I can almost imagine she’s still here, stroking my back and lulling me to sleep with her melodic voice. 

She always told me I got her vocal cords. My dad can’t hold a tune to save his life. Growing up, my mom won the Flower Mound Annual Showcase year after year. When I was finally old enough to enter, she’d been gone only a few months and it would be like adding salt to the wound, so I passed it up every year instead. 

Her voice resounds in my head, prodding me mentally so much that I can feel it. 

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. There’s a land that I dreamed of, once in a lullaby. Oh, somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue. And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. 

I fling the envelope to the side, overcome with the memories.