A Christmas to Remember(3)

Her closest friends had all moved in a different direction from her. They had six-figure jobs and lively social lives, taking them places she’d only ever seen on television, and they dated wealthy men. A few of them had married already and were now starting their own, perfect families. She couldn’t relate to her friends anymore, and she felt different from them. She struggled to find someone who understood her world. It was a strange place to be because what she loved—caring for children—had alienated her from the people she used to know.

Carrie had read enough self-help books to know that she wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t sure exactly how to change that. What she did know was that if she ever wanted to have her own life, and the possibility of her own family, she’d have to eventually find a job that had regular working hours, where she could work with people over the age of five and come home at a decent hour. She’d gotten college course catalogs from some of the colleges back home, and she’d leafed through a few of them, but when she did, she always put them down and picked up one of her self-help books to try and define the muddle of feelings she was having.

Looking through the possible majors, she just couldn’t find one that fit. Nothing fit like her early childhood degree had fit. Perhaps she could get a second endorsement and teach elementary school, she often thought. But even that wasn’t the same as scooping up a child, spinning him around and kissing his cheeks. She wouldn’t be able to do that in an elementary school. And watching children during working hours wouldn’t allow her to maintain the income she was used to. She couldn’t find something that she wanted to do in life except a job that denied her all the other things she wanted. It made her feel like something was wrong with her, as if she wasn’t as together as her friends.

There wasn’t anyone she could talk to about her insecurities. Her parents, while supportive, just told her to choose something else and do it. Neither of them had jobs they loved, and they said that she may have to settle on a job like they had. But she didn’t want to settle. She’d lost touch with a lot of her college friends after they’d moved on. She moved around so much as she changed nanny jobs that she hadn’t really made any new friends. It all left her feeling lost, so she turned to experts to help her: all the authors of her self-help books. She’d learned about things like how to focus when under pressure, how to fall asleep quickly, and how not to organize a closet, but no matter how much she read, she found something else about herself that needed fixing.

This was to be her last job, and then, if she didn’t find something else she really wanted to do, she would just have to settle. But right now, it was time to face her new family and get over her nerves. Like getting into a cold pool: just jump in. She opened the door and stepped into the frigid air. The wind blew at her in frosty gusts, slithering down her coat collar despite her new striped scarf. She lumped a few things into her handbag, pulled it close to her body for extra warmth, and trudged across the yard, her head down to keep the snow out of her face.

When she got to the driveway, her nose was like ice, and she knew it must be as red as Rudolph’s, but if she tried to powder it, certainly the makeup would turn to mud on her wet, snow-pelted face, so she clomped her way through the rest of the snow until she reached the front door. Sitting at the top of three very wide, brick steps was a black door as shiny as the house’s shutters, with a brass door knocker in the center. On either side was a row of single window panes that stretched from the top of the door all the way down to the porch. The light was on inside, and she had to take a deep breath to steady her nerves.

She had every reason to feel confident—she’d been a successful nanny for many years, her name had spread by word of mouth all over the place, and she’d been thrilled to find that it had even spread across state lines. Her last nanny job had been in North Carolina, so when she’d gotten the call from Mr. Fletcher in Virginia, she could hardly believe it. Look confident, even if you don’t feel confident. Square your shoulders, smile, and nod. Her book, Confidence Matters, had told her what to do, but it didn’t help to hide the red splotches she knew she’d have going down her neck when she had to take her coat and scarf off. She got them every time she was nervous, and, after seeing this house, they’d probably crawled up her face as well.

Before she could even ring the bell, she could make out a shadow behind the curtain and she heard footsteps getting closer. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute. This should be familiar enough by now that she should feel at ease. That’s what her book had said in chapter two. But Carrie didn’t feel at ease. Her mouth had gone dry and her hands were trembling in her striped gloves. Even her knees felt a little wobbly. At least she could blame it all on the cold. Why did she always get so nervous? Perhaps there was something else wrong… She tried to pinpoint the flaw in her personality that would put her in the state she was in just as the door opened. Carrie caught herself blinking over and over to steady herself as she stood in front of Adam Fletcher.