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Dad ate lunch here a few times a week, which was a good way for him to socialize since he mostly worked alone on the small family farm. Of course he’d tell Agatha I was coming back.
“You’ll have to meet my daughter,” I said. “I’m planning to bring her here Sunday while everyone’s in church.”
“I’ll see you both then,” Agatha said with a crinkle-eyed smile.
She took my drink order, and while I waited for Liv, a text came through my phone.
Dad: Any luck?
I cringed and replied.
Fletcher: I hope so.
“Hi there,” came a friendly voice.
I looked up, feeling relieved to see Liv’s warm smile. “Glad you could make it,” I replied. “I don’t know if you still like vanilla Dr. Pepper, but I got you one just in case.”
Her smile widened. “I do. Thank you so much.”
I nodded, sliding the drink and an unopened straw her way.
“So what did you want to talk about?” she asked before sipping the drink. The way she looked up at me gave me flashbacks to dancing with her at my senior prom, country music playing and couples spinning around us. But things were different now.
“Look, I’m not one to beat around the bush,” I said. “You’re out of a job, and I’m desperate for some help.”
She wrinkled her eyebrows together. “The clinic’s hiring?”
“No, but I am,” I said.
Now that line between her eyebrows was deep like it always got when Rhett tried to tell her to stay back and let the boys play. “For what?”
“I need a nanny,” I said finally. “For Maya.” I got out my phone and showed her the lock screen of my eight-year-old daughter.
Liv held the phone, smiling at the picture. “She’s beautiful, Fletch.”
“She is,” I agreed. Maya was just as lovely as her mother, with long, wavy caramel hair, dark green eyes that bordered on hazel, and a smile that could wrap you around her finger in two seconds flat. “But she’s also... a lot.”
Liv chuckled. “We were all a lot at that age. Remember when you and Rhett blew up Dad’s old truck that Fourth of July?” She made the sign of the cross. “May Clarice rest in peace.”
“More like in pieces,” I retorted with a laugh. “But the problem with my strong-willed child is that I haven’t been able to keep a nanny for more than a month or two since Regina left us. I hoped it would be better here—you know how we all look after our own in Cottonwood Falls—but I’ve already had three nannies quit.”
Liv’s eyes bugged out. “Three? I thought you’ve only been here a week?”
“I have.” I raked my fingers through my hair. It had grown longer on top, and I was in desperate need of a trip to Ms. Rhonda’s salon. “The first nanny didn’t make it past lunchtime. The second told me she quit after two days, and the third only lasted a day. It’s like Maya has made it her personal mission to run them all away.”
Liv’s eyes widened. “Who were the nannies?”
I counted off on my fingers. “Laura Roland, Patty Walsh, and Frances Finch.”
Her mouth fell open. “Patty quit? She had eight kids!”
“She’s the one who quit before lunch,” I said. “And that’safterI offered to double her pay.”
She cringed and sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Let me see that picture again?”
I turned the phone screen, showing her the photo.
“Where are the claws and green skin?” Liv asked.