He nodded. “Let’s just say that making them was a Hail Mary to get them to calm down after the decorating glue incident, don’t ask. I ended up covered in powdered sugar but kids loved it.” He yawned behind his hand, “Sorry, long day. You want to watch a movie?” he picked up the remote.
“Sure.” I could sit here with you in silence if you asked. Or I could hold you as I did at Thanksgiving and you could fall asleep on my shoulder. “I recorded It’s A Wonderful Life,” I said instead, as he scrolled through the list.
“Okay then.” He didn’t argue, flicked it on and curled back in the corner, nursing his eggnog as the movie began and we settled in to watch. I had my own thoughts on the film that I saw every Christmas season without fail. Some people called it sentimental, but I loved the concept of a person who was shown his influence on the world around him, and how if he had friends then he had everything. Add snow, and it was my go-to Christmas movie, and never failed to put me in the Christmas spirit.
Paul was watching and I could’ve just told him then. I could’ve just said that I loved him, and would he please stay so he was officially mine? Instead, I said nothing.
We sat in silence for a while, until I’d finished dinner, and eaten the cookies, plus drunk the beer and the eggnog. I had a nice warm Christmassy buzz going on. But Paul was fidgeting, one moment with his knees under him, the next cross-legged, the next wandering out to the kitchen and coming back empty-handed. On his latest amble out of the room and back in, he reached for the control and paused the film.
“Can we talk?”
“Sure.”
He stopped for a moment, then sighed. “It’s about the notice I handed you.” My chest tightened—this could be it—him telling me he’d changed his mind? Maybe that he wanted to stay, and make this family of ours permanent.
“Uh huh?” Try not to react. Whatever he says, stay calm.
“How do you feel about it?”
“I’m excited for you,” I lied. “You have the money you need now to see all the places you have on your list.”
“Okay.” It was obvious that he was weighing his words carefully. Then he searched my face as if he were looking for something, before he sighed. “Nothing else?”
“I’ll be sad to see you go, the kids will as well.”
“Do you remember Thanksgiving?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s that day in November with turkey, football, and parades,” I teased and remained as lighthearted as I could.
“That wasn’t what I meant—" He stopped talking, and for a moment the words to ask him what he meant were right there. “Okay, I guess what I want to say is that I don’t want to tell the children, not until after Christmas.”
My heart cracked open completely. Shit. That wasn’t what I was expecting at all. So much for a change of heart where he decided he couldn’t live without us. Without me.
“Of course,” I reassured him, forcing the smile back on my face, but some stupidly pathetic devil wrenched from inside me at the destruction of my hope made me mean. “We don’t want to ruin their Christmas, so we’ll wait until the New Year, and then they’ll be busy with kindergarten stuff. I have some nannies I’m checking out, so maybe we can do a crossover of sorts, you might be able to get away early.”
He winced.
What the hell am I doing? Why am I lying?
Paul had every right to hand in his notice, he didn’t owe me anything, and he’d told me he was only staying two years. As to the nannies, I didn’t even have a complete list of agencies, let alone specific nannies. Hell, I was already forming a contingency plan in which I worked from home because I couldn’t imagine anyone else filling Paul’s shoes.
“Oh,” he murmured. “That’s cool. Good.”
Then he turned back to the movie as if the conversation was done, and I wasn’t done.
“We’ll tell them together,” I announced.
“You don’t have to be part of it—”
“We’ll explain that you were always leaving, and remind them about all the places you want to see in the world.”
God, I sounded like a fucking idiot.
“I don’t want to tell them that.” He stood, and I’d had enough of him walking back and forth like a cat on hot bricks.
“They know the places you want to go, you talk about it all the time.”
Were we arguing? Was this what an argument with Paul would be like, because it sure sounded as if we were at least talking at cross purposes.
He stopped in front of the tree, raking his hands through his hair as the movie played behind him. “I don’t want to tell them that I was always going to be leaving.”
I stood and brushed cookie crumbs from my shirt, then, hands on hips, I was ready for a heated debate given that he was attempting to say something and all he was doing was confusing me.
“You were always leaving,” I said, “you told me in the interview.”
He looked stricken. “We never warned them, I never… I should have… what will they think?”
I felt a surge of understanding and a need to make things better. I’d always known he was leaving, and he was right, we’d never spoken to the children about any of it. “It’s okay, I’ll handle it because it’s on me that I allowed them to fall in love with you.”
Emotion flared in his eyes, but I couldn’t make out what it was, because he didn’t smile, or cry, or say a single word to help me understand. I left him standing there, going into the kitchen, anything to get away from the pain in his expression. How could I not love someone so desperately upset about hurting Aden, AJ, and Anna? I poured a generous tumbler of eggnog, then found the brandy and dumped at least a couple of extra measures into it. One thing Paul hadn’t said was that he wanted to stay, or that he regretted his life choices, or that he felt he had a reason to stay. So tonight I wasn’t going to follow Maria’s advice to be honest, and instead I had to soften the edges, because tomorrow was Christmas Eve. I had to pretend that it was okay for Paul to leave, that the children would be fine and that I would be fine.
All I need to do is tell him how I feel about him.
Yeah, like that would go down well. I could imagine it now.
By the way Paul, I fell in love with you a long time ago when a spark of hope flared in my lonely, fucking heart.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said, leaning against the counter and glancing from me to the bottle of brandy and back.
“What for?” I took another gulp, the brandy burning with the cream soothing the way, and shrugged. “It’s all good. The kids will understand.”
“What if I had a reason not to go to those places?”
“Don’t you have enough money? I thought you said you’d saved enough?”
“I could stay here,” he said, and pressed a gentle hand to my elbow.
Was it in reassurance, or apology, or did he just want to touch me? He was too close, I was dizzy with the alcohol, the tiredness, the utter despair that I was too chickenshit to tell him how I felt and the pain at the thought of my children being sad because I didn’t warn them about their beloved nanny leaving.
“Why would you stay?” I blurted, and took another swig, anything not to look at his face. “You’re a nanny, there’s nothing holding you here.”