Page 22 of One Sweet Lie
“Is this Harlow Hawthorne?”
“Maybe…”
“Miss Hawthorne, I’m with the Hearst Placement Agency,” she said. “Are you still seeking full time employment?”
“Yes.”
“Great! Well, the client you interviewed with is interested in considering you for the position.”
“Really?” I asked. “Does that mean I’m getting a second interview?”
“Something like that,” she said, tapping away on a keyboard. “Can you come in this week?”
“To fill out some forms?”
“To work, Miss Hawthorne,” she said. “The job is yours, but I need to give Mr. Dawson an answer within two hours. Can you do it or not?”
So, his name is Mr. Dawson.“Yes. Yes, I can do that.”
“Great. Call me back when you have access to a laptop, notebook, and a ton of coffee, so I can go over everything you’ll need before you start. Clear?”
She ended the call before I could answer, and suddenly my tears were irrelevant.
Sweet little lies win again.
SEVEN
HARLOW
“I’m so excited that you’ve decided to follow me through my typical day as a live-in nanny!” The woman on the orientation video smiled a little too hard for the camera. “Come on!”
She adjusted her Prada neck scarf before strolling out of a bedroom and into an immaculate white kitchen.
“I start my morning by making fresh green juice for me, and hand-squeezed orange juice for the kids!” She set crystal drinkware on a marble counter. “I have about forty minutes before I’ll need to wake them up for breakfast and chauffeur them to school, so I make sure their backpacks are filled with whatever they need.”
The screen suddenly shifted to her standing in the laundry room.
“I keep all their school uniforms on a cleaning schedule and make sure to keep track of everything. Especially since Mommy and Daddy work way too hard to deal with silly things like dirty socks.”
I hit pause and wrote my first note.
“Do rich parents with nannies help out with their kids at all?”
I guzzled Skittles before hitting play again.
“After dropping the beautiful kids off at school—” The nanny twirled around a beautiful blue bedroom. “I begin preparing the home for their return, which is a true pleasure because Mommy and Daddy trust me to keep them entertained until bedtime.”
So, when do ‘Mommy and Daddy’ SEE the kids?
Behind the sound of annoying cartoon music, she cleaned their rooms, set up floats by a pool, and baked cookies before setting them next to a board called The Homework & Cookies Station.
“Oh yummm!” She picked up one and took a bite. “Can you guess what this sweet cookie tastes like?”
“Indentured servitude,” I offered.
“It’s the sweet taste of being an amazing nanny!” She clapped her hands, and I reconsidered my life’s choices in taking this job. Then, I checked the video’s time stamp.
There’s more than an hour left? You’ve got to be kidding me…