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“I appreciate your apology,” she said, offering me a smile. “And thanks for understanding. The first day at a new nannying job isn’t easy, especially when the kids are as cooped up as yours.”
What? What did she say?
“What do you mean cooped up?” I asked, unsure what her point was.
“Well,” she said slowly before taking another bite and chewing it while she considered her words. “I mean, you’ve got three young kids, and they spend all their time inside your suite when they aren’t at school. They don’t have any extracurriculars, and they don’t have any time outside, really. They said they’ve never even been skiing, and they live at a ski resort.”
“What is your point?” I asked briskly. I could feel my anger bubbling up again as the clear criticism of my parenting came through.
“My point,” she said, her face showing a bit of nervousness at my tone, but her voice resolute, “is that your kids need a chance to be kids. They don’t have that right now. It’s probably why they struggle to behave. They’re at ages where they want to test their limits, and they don’t have any productive or age-appropriate ways of doing that at the moment.”
“And what exactly would you consider an ‘age-appropriate or productive’ way of my children being allowed to misbehave?” I demanded.
“I didn’t say to misbehave,” she said, clearly backtracking but trying to keep her momentum. Whatever she was trying to get across, she clearly felt it was worth being on my bad side again. “What I said was that they need an outlet. They need something active, something that lets them stretch their legs and their brains. Leann is so smart, and Ben has so much energy.”
“You think I don’t know my own kids?” I asked, my tone turning dangerous. “I know exactly how smart they are. Exactly how energetic they are. I hired you to take care of those things and to nurture them.”
“But the structure you’re currently using doesn’t work,” she said. “If it did, you wouldn’t have hired so many nannies. The kids are driving them away because they have nowhere else for that pent-up energy and need for attention to come out.”
“So, what are you proposing?” I said angrily, all pretense of being civil going out the window. I’d felt bad about snapping at her before, but it seemed like maybe she needed a dose of reality and humility. “That I change the way things have always been done with my own children because a competition skier decided that I wasn’t doing a good enough job with my kids?”
“I didn’t say that,” she shot back. “I was only saying–”
“That I’m not doing a good enough job,” I finished for her. “That I need someone like you to teach me some kind of Hallmark movie lesson about my kids. I don’t. What I need is a nanny who’s going to follow my instructions and take care of my kids and make sure they do what they’re supposed to and when. If that’s not you, you can pack and leave. I was hoping not to have to look for another new nanny again this soon, but I suppose it’s up to you if that’s what I need to do.”
Without another word, I put my plate in the sink to be taken care of in the morning, then went to the master bedroom and closed the door behind me.
I stood against the wood door for a few minutes, listening. I heard Haley give a sniff, then put her own plate with mine, followed by footsteps heading toward her room.
Fuck.
I’d lost my temper twice today, and it was even more shameful the second time because I’d heard how upset it had made her. I hadn’t wanted to make the poor girl cry. I’d been doing the best I could since my wife died, and sometimes it was hard to think about anyone else having a valid opinion on my own kids.
But now I was stuck in the position of keeping to the status quo. Because the last thing I could or would want to do was to admit when I was wrong.
And I’d been very, very wrong.
Chapter Seven
Haley
“Baby, I know you can do it,” Max said reassuringly.
“How?” I asked. “I don’t even know if I can do it.”
I stood poised at the ski lift, chair after chair passing us by. I’d been standing like this for a half hour, my heart pounding and my brain sending my muscles the urge to run–if I could.
For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why the crunch of the snow and the wetness in the air made my throat close up with nervousness. I was sweating profusely, and I hadn’t done a single ounce of physical activity yet.
Getting my feet into the boots had been hard enough. The pain that came with equipping a formed shoe to my once shattered leg was agonizing, only made worse by my sky-high heart rate. I wanted to scream, to cry, to never put on a pair of skis again.This was my worst nightmare, and it had once been all I lived for.
I could still remember those minutes beneath the snow, the oxygen getting thinner as I desperately tried to clear a space for me to breathe. They always tell you not to panic, that you will waste your air faster, but I challenge anyone not to panic when you have a fuck ton of snow crushing your body.
I remember the sound of the helicopter landing nearby and hearing Anna call out my name. I also remember thinking she was gonna be too late because it had already stopped being cold beneath the downfall, a sign that I was close to death.
The rules were simple:
Under twenty minutes, you’re likely to survive.
