The Aunt Who Took the Daycare Job

“This all of it?” he asked, looking at my two laundry baskets, my duffel bag, the box of books, and the folded cot.

“The cot’s theirs,” I said. “I’ll leave it.”

He loaded everything I owned into the bed of that truck in less than ten minutes, and there was still room for a couch if I’d had one.

He tied a tarp over the top with a bungee cord at each corner, checking every hook twice.

Brandon was at the plant. Kayla came out in her robe and hugged me in the driveway, and she was crying, and she said she was sorry about four times.

The twins stood at the front window with their hands on the glass, waving like I was going to the store.

Hunter stood at the storm door and didn’t wave. He just watched. I went back up the walk and knelt down on the cold concrete and pressed my hand on my side of the glass, and he pressed his hand on his side, and then Kayla picked him up and carried him in.

That was the worst part of the whole thing. I can tell you that now without any trouble.

It was worse than the cold and worse than the forty dollars. It was a four-year-old boy at a storm door, not waving.

Don didn’t say anything on the drive across town. When we got to his house, he carried my two laundry baskets up the outside stairs to the garage apartment, and then he came back down and stood by the truck with his hands in his coat pockets.

“Patty had me turn the heat up yesterday,” he said. “It’s set at seventy. That’s yours to turn. Don’t let anybody tell you different.”

Then he went in the house, and I went up the stairs, and I stood in the middle of that little room in my coat, and I took my coat off, and I did not need it.

I sat on the edge of the bed and cried for the second time that week, for a different reason.

The room was small and clean. There was a bed with a white chenille spread, a little table with two chairs, a two-burner stove, and a window that looked out over the backyard and the bird feeder. It was the first room I had ever had all to myself.

Sunday afternoon, Patty came up the stairs with a plate of bars and a folder. She sat at my little table and slid the folder across to me. It was my new room’s enrollment sheet.

“I want you to hear this from me before Monday,” she said. “Kayla called Friday morning. She enrolled all four. Hunter in the preschool group, the twins in the toddler group, Wes in the infant group. Your room has the only infant opening in town right now.”

I looked at the four names on the sheet. Hunter Varner. Ava Varner. Ella Varner. Wes Varner.

“Patty,” I said. “I don’t want any favors for them. And I don’t want any favors for me.”

“Nobody’s getting favors,” she said. “They pay my rate, the same as every family. Three hundred and twenty for an infant. Two hundred and seventy each for the twins. Two-forty for Hunter. That’s eleven hundred a week. Kayla knows the number. She didn’t flinch.”

“Does Brandon know?”