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If this isn’t home, where else is?
* * *
Two weeks after the incident in the stadium—a day I am fondly calling, in my head at least, The Point of No Return—my phone starts to vibrate with alarming frequency. Not from calls, but rapid notifications.
My thumb is swift to swipe them away as I move through the practiced motions of getting Violet ready for the day, making lunch, getting some cleaning in—because I still don’t believe in leaving my messes to housekeeping, even if Reese is paying handsomely for Gladys’s services.
When it really starts getting out of hand, I put my phone on silent. Quinn probably tagged me in some meme account post and now I’m getting blown up with all the other people replying and commenting. I’ve seen enough goofy Minions memes to last a lifetime, thank you very much.
However, when I happen to bump the screen while wiping down the kitchen counters and it lights up, I see that I have three missed calls, all from other nannies at the agency.
That’s odd. Why would they be calling me?
I make sure Violet is thoroughly occupied with her favorite freeze-dried fruit snacks and start making my way through the deluge of notifications on my phone. Some are from the work Slack group; others are from Twitter and Facebook. There are also texts, which seem to have been sent when my responses to every other form of communication were nonexistent.
As I pick through, a sinking feeling drops deep in the pit of my stomach.
The horrific truth doesn’t take long to appear. Jess Harrison, who I thought I’d left behind months ago in bitterness, confusion, and denial, has posted a lengthy dressing-down of my time working for her and her husband—specifically, detailing every supposedly sordid activity that I did with him while bankrolling under their employment.
This woman is disgusting and vile, she writes. She has no respect for the partnerships of the people that she works for. On more than one occasion, she engaged my husband in sexual activities in our home, often with our children near enough that they could have been caught in the act at any time. She intentionally seduced my husband with the intent to become his mistress. Below are specifics as I feel it should be known the lengths that she went to, should anyone think that this was merely a one-off thing. Clearly, she shouldn’t be working in any profession with such intimate access, let alone as a nanny helping to raise our children. I will never hire from this agency again.
It goes on and on from there. The same review is plastered everywhere I can find it: Google, Yelp, Facebook, Reddit, the nannying agency’s website. I wouldn’t be surprised to find she took out a billboard rental that just has a picture of my face with a big red WHORE stamped over my forehead.
I’m sick to my stomach. I have to plant a hand on the marble top to stop from sinking to my knees. Did she just make up all of this out of thin air? Did Eric lie to her and tell her all those things?
I think I’m going to die.
Then, like an idiot, I make the mistake of reading the comments. If anything, they’re worse.
MAMABEAR247: Wow what a slut, who does something like that?!
ROCHELLE_JEMISON: That’s why I can’t hire a nanny or anything like that. Imagine trusting someone to watch your kids and they do something like that?
xxMOMofTHR33xx: She’s a whore, nothing else. I bet she’s been ran through and has diseases. Please tell me you got checked out for STDs???
mommyblogger89: How many dicks do you think she’s taken on the job?
My stomach churns. I have to close all of it and power down my phone entirely. Phone blessedly off, face of it pressed to the cold countertop, I squat down in the middle of the kitchen and try to breathe.
I dodged a bullet when it was just Judy that Jess complained to. I was able to explain myself to her and get that blessed second chance.
But this? What am I supposed to do with this? How am I going to recover?
I’m going to be fired.
There’s no way around that. This isn’t just a phone call to my boss; this is a social media smear campaign where there are hundreds if not thousands of eyes now on me. As we speak, there are nannying forums all across the internet no doubt lighting up with venom and vitriol. People picking me apart. Whore. Slut. Skank. Homewrecker. People who don’t even know me, and who don’t know what a spiteful, hateful woman Jess is, are wishing me dead.
My stomach clenches again. I’m going to vomit.
I run to the bathroom, leaving my phone and whatever sanity I have behind. As I double over the cold porcelain toilet, I try to get a hold of myself.
Even if the agency fires me, I have a working contract with Reese. The agency doesn’t control that; they’re only in charge of if I’m allowed to get work through them.
This can still be my home.
“It’ll be okay, Olivia. It’ll be okay.”
I say it out loud, with as much strength as I can muster. And for a moment, for the length of one echo…
