After the funeral, the ranch house had been full.
Casseroles.
Flowers.
Coffee.
Neighbors.
Relatives.
People saying:
“Anything you need.”
“Anything.”
“You call.”
“We mean it.”
Three weeks later, the house was quiet again.
Not because people were cruel.
Because everyone had lives.
And grief, he discovered, had a social expiration date.
Other people moved forward before the person inside it knew forward existed.
The single father did not resent them.
Mostly.
But he stopped asking.
That became the beginning of the problem.
The first nanny lasted eleven days.
She was twenty-four, experienced, cheerful, and came with excellent references.
The baby screamed every time she picked her up.
The nanny tried everything.
Walks.
Music.
White noise.
Rocking.
Stroller rides.
The baby would eventually exhaust herself and sleep.
Then wake and begin again.
On the eleventh day, the nanny sat at the kitchen island with tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
The single father looked at her.
“For what?”
“I don’t think I’m helping.”
“You are.”
“She cries six hours a day.”
“She cries with me too.”
“Not like this.”
He did not argue because she was right.
The baby knew him.
The nanny was a stranger.
The second nanny lasted three weeks.
Older.
Patient.
Former preschool teacher.
The baby tolerated her slightly better.
Then the woman’s husband accepted a job in Nevada.
Gone.
The third lasted four days.
The fourth lasted almost a month, then said the commute was too far.
The fifth admitted she felt uncomfortable being alone on such a large rural property.
The sixth was excellent.
The single father thought she might stay.
Then her own daughter became pregnant and needed help in Phoenix.
No anger.
No betrayal.
Just life.
The seventh nanny lasted six hours.
At five thirty that evening, she placed the screaming baby into his arms and said:
“I can’t do this.”
Then she cried harder than the child.
The single father apologized to her.
She apologized to him.
Nobody was wrong.
She left.
That night, after he finally got the baby to sleep, he sat alone at the kitchen table.
His wife’s coffee cup remained in the cabinet above the sink.
He had moved almost nothing that belonged to her.
Her boots were still beside the mudroom bench.
Her winter coat remained in the closet.
Three hair ties still circled the bathroom faucet because she had always forgotten to put them away.
Her nursing textbooks sat on a shelf in the den.
People occasionally suggested boxing things up.