The Nanny's Billionaire Blunder

The nanny took my fiancée out of her bassinet and carried her into the room next door. I was five years old. She never saw me.

She came back with her own daughter and set her down in the blankets like she belonged there. She took five minutes. I took the next five. I switched them back.

Nineteen years later, at our engagement party, she tore the trust papers out of my mother's hands and held them over her head like a winning ticket.

Then she shoved a thin girl into the middle of the ballroom and screamed that this was the real Sutton heiress. She never once wondered who else had been in that room.

For nineteen years she had looked at the girl she beat and never once seen her own chin, her own hands. She didn't know it was that girl's birthday, too.

I had waited nineteen years to watch her find out. Chapter 1 "Adrian. We're going to St. Anne's to see Aunt Delphine and baby Wren. Shoes.

Now." I was five, and there was a pudding cup on the table with my name on it. One a week. Sundays only. I stared at it like it might grow legs. "Mom.

Can I finish my pudding first?" My mother did not wait. She got a fist in my collar and lifted. "No." "Delphine is alone in that hospital.

If that deadbeat shows up and upsets her, what then?" "Now. Right now. Move." "Okay," I said. One shoe. Then the other. Slowly.

In the car seat I thought about the baby I had never met. "Dad. Why is the baby going to marry me?" My father was driving.

He answered without a pause. "No idea." I gave up and pressed my face to the window. Behind me, both of my parents let out a breath. The bassinet was by the window.

My mother got there first. I got there second. Inside was the smallest person I had ever seen, asleep, white and soft. Softerlooking than pudding. I wanted her to open her eyes.

I breathed louder, like I wasn't trying. She didn't look at me. "Hi, Aunt Delphine." While the adults talked, I found my way back to the bassinet. I wiped my hands on my shirt.

I touched her cheek with one finger. Softer than pudding. I went up on my toes and laid a chocolate down by her hand, where she could find it later. The chocolate melted.

Brown spread across the front of the little pink dress. I rubbed at it. It got bigger. It looked like a dirty handprint, pressed right over her heart.

I pulled my hand back and looked around the room the way a burglar does. Nobody was watching.

So I stayed there, hunched over the bassinet, guarding the evidence, until my parents called me to the door. Aunt Delphine tipped her head at me. "Adrian loves that baby already.

Should he come live with us?" Her house was next to ours. I nodded. "I'll live at Aunt Delphine's." I would live there and wash Wren's clothes. When you ruin something, you fix it.

My mother looked at me with her eyes narrowed. "Adrian. Why don't you just spend the night here with your Aunt Delphine, then." I thought about it.

I looked her right in the face. "Can I go home and finish my pudding first, and then come back?" She laughed the laugh that isn't a laugh. "No." "You would be nothing but trouble for Delphine." "You can help with the baby when they come home." I looked at the bassinet one more time.

My chest hurt. "Okay. I'll come see Wren tomorrow." At home I would find one of my own shirts and give it to her, to make up for the dress.

Aunt Delphine's eyes were already closed when we left. She looked asleep. In the hallway my mother stopped and studied me. "You've been good all afternoon.

What did you do?" Her voice went up. "School starts tomorrow.

You haven't finished your homework, have you." Because when you ruin something you have to say so out loud, I tried again. "Mom. I left something in Aunt Delphine's room.

I have to go back." My mother wasn't listening. She was staring down the hall at something. "Franklin. That's Delphine's ex. Come with me." "Adrian, you sit with your Aunt Delphine.

We'll come get you." "Sit still. Don't wake her up." Then she was gone, towing my father behind her, and I hadn't finished my sentence. So I walked back on my own.

A woman came out of Aunt Delphine's room with a baby in her arms. There were only two people in that room. Aunt Delphine. Wren. I didn't blink.

I watched the woman carry the baby through the door of the room next door. She came out with her arms full again. Wren was gone. Somebody was stealing her. A thief.

There was a thief. Chapter 2 I ran. There was a baby in the bassinet. All babies looked the same to me. I couldn't have picked Wren out of two. But I knew the dress.

I had ruined the dress myself, that afternoon, with my own chocolate. Aunt Delphine was still asleep.

I got both hands into the little collar and pulled it open, an inch at a time, looking. Nothing. The pink was clean. Clean like it had come straight out of the package. Not her.

I stood there breathing hard at a stranger's baby. Whose kid is this. I'm not trading. I looked at Aunt Delphine, asleep. I remembered my mother saying sit still, don't wake her up.

I turned in a circle on the rug, twice. Then I decided.

I climbed onto the couch, because that was how high my mother's arms were when she picked up a baby, and I got my arms under the stranger and copied her. I carried it out.

Twice I nearly went down. I hit the door of the next room with my shoulder and it swung, and I went straight for the bassinet, and there it was.

The pink dress with the chocolate on it. Chapter 3 She was lying in a blue blanket. I switched them back.

She still had the ruined pink dress on, the chocolate spread over her chest like a brand.

I got her into her own bassinet and stood there with both hands on the rail, sweating, breathing like I'd run a mile.

She still didn't open her eyes. "If I hadn't put you back," I told her, very quietly, "you'd have grown up in somebody else's house." I didn't like being in other people's houses.

I wasn't going to let her be in one. Then I stood there and worried about the dress. "Adrian? Why are you back?" Aunt Delphine's voice was soft.

I held still and waited to find out how much trouble I was in. "I'm sorry. I got chocolate on Wren's dress. I gave her a chocolate and it melted.

I'm sorry." I pointed at the brown stain. A hand closed around my finger. A very small hand. My mother would have had me by the ear.

Aunt Delphine only laughed under her breath. "It's all right." "Wren likes you." I ran to the side of her bed. "It's really all right? I can wash it.

I know how." She rubbed my head. "It's really all right. The nanny washes Wren's things." The nanny. The nanny. The woman who tried to take Wren away worked in Wren's house.

I opened my mouth to tell Aunt Delphine that her nanny was a bad person, and the door banged open. "Trevor Hale is downstairs, creeping around like he's casing the place," my mother announced. "I told him exactly what I thought of him.

He didn't argue. He just stood there like he was waiting for somebody." "Then he saw whoever it was and grinned like a lunatic." I went very still and listened.

She didn't say who he was waiting for. But I had just seen a woman carry a baby into the room next door. My mother's face had gone red and blotchy.

Aunt Delphine looked at her and actually smiled. "Why waste it on him? He walked out with nothing.

He isn't worth your blood pressure." She got out of bed and leaned over the bassinet, making a face at the baby. "Everything I have goes to Wren." The property had been impossible to split in the divorce, so they'd put all of it in the child's name.

A trust. Hers at eighteen. Signed over in front of a room full of people on her nineteenth birthday. I tilted my head and understood none of it. The baby had opened her eyes.

They were better than my best marble. So that was it. The nanny had seen how pretty Wren was and wanted her. Good thing I switched them back. Ten years went by.

I was next door at Aunt Delphine's most days, looking after Wren. Her tenth birthday party was at the Whitcomb, downtown, in the big ballroom.

Wren wore a white dress and a small diamond crown pinned into her braids. The two of us sat in a side room off the ballroom, waiting for the adults. The doors stood open.

The nanny got there first. I watched her come in. I always watched her come in. "Nana Marsh. What do you want?" Once, I saw her hitting her daughter in the kitchen.

I told every adult in the house. She beat that girl harder, in front of all five of us, and said, "I'll hit my own daughter if I want.

Who does it hurt?" I never opened my mouth again. Nana Marsh smiled down at me. It was the smile people who work for your family give you when you are small. "Mr. Ashford.

I brought Miss Sutton a birthday present." She produced a box, and opened it, and held it out to Wren. "Wren, sweetheart. Nana got you something for your tenth.

See if you like it." A music box. A ballerina turning on a spindle in the middle of it. Pretty. Harmless. I let my shoulders drop and sat back in the chair.

Wren took it with both hands, delighted. "Thank you, Nana Marsh. I love it." Then a hand came out of nowhere and knocked it out of hers.

Renata was standing behind her mother with her eyes red. "That's mine!" "Mom.

You said if I came first in my class you'd buy me a music box." "Why is it Wren Sutton's birthday present?" Chapter 4 Renata looked past the open doors, at the wall of wrapped boxes stacked behind Wren, and the tears finally came. "Today is my birthday too.

Wren Sutton has everything. Why does she get the one thing I wanted?" Same year. Same month. Same day. Same hospital. Same night. "Mom.

Which one of us is your daughter?" The music box rolled across the floor and nobody picked it up. I stood and put Wren behind me. "Out." "Security.

Get them out of here." "Nana Marsh. Wren doesn't need your present. Take it home to your daughter." We had kept Wren too safe for too long. She caught my sleeve. "Adrian. Is she.

Is something really wrong at home?" Her fingers were shaking on my cuff. Nobody had ever shouted anywhere near her.

Every year her mother's company got bigger and the faces around her got softer, and everyone she knew spoke to her gently. I knew what she was thinking.

Nobody talked to her own mother like that unless something terrible had happened to her. Something had. I couldn't say so. "Wren.

Whatever's wrong at home, it has nothing to do with us." I was old enough by then to understand what I'd seen. Nana Marsh hadn't tried to trade because Wren was pretty.

She'd tried to trade so her daughter could have Wren's life. When I was fourteen I took a strand of Wren's hair and a strand of Delphine's and sent them off.

The day the report came back I opened it alone, in the study. It's still locked in my drawer. I never planned to use it.

I just wanted, on the day somebody finally opened their mouth, to be able to put it on the table. I never told my parents. Wren had all of us around her.

One nanny couldn't get anywhere. Whatever the woman was cooking, she'd choke on it herself. The slap cracked across the room. "Renata! Look at yourself.

You think you deserve anything I paid for?" "You were born to this.

You will never be Wren." Her hand landed on that thin girl's shoulder with everything behind it. "Nana Marsh." I didn't raise my voice.

Every table past the open doors heard me anyway. "You didn't hit her at home. You waited until we were watching." For half a second nothing in her moved.

Then the woman who'd been screaming at her own child turned around and smiled at me, apologetic, small. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, we've spoiled Wren's party." "Mr. Ashford.

We're going." She bent and gathered the music box off the floor, cradling it, and carried it back to Wren in both hands.

Two women at the nearest table, just past the open doors, watched her bend down. "That Sutton nanny.

Twenty years, and she's more of a mother to that child than most mothers." "I'd give anything for help like that." I stood there with a glass in my hand and said nothing.

Which hand she'd used, and on whose shoulder, only one person in that room knew. "Wren, I picked this out for you specially. Don't listen to Ren.

She talks nonsense." She'd picked it out for her own daughter. It had cost her a month's pay.

Renata watched all of it with the print of her mother's hand still on her, and said nothing at all. I set my glass down. "Wren has plenty.

Nana Marsh, take your daughter and go." Wren hadn't done anything wrong. Renata hadn't either. The only people in the wrong were the adults with something hidden.

Wren crossed to the cake tower in the ballroom, lifted the top tier down, the small one, and carried it back. "Today's your birthday too." "That's my piece." Renata's face went red.

She looked into Wren's clear eyes and it hurt her worse than the slap had. "I don't want your cake!" She wasn't a beggar. Chapter 5 The slap landed across Renata's back.

Nana Marsh took the cake out of Wren's hands before it could reach anybody else, and her smile got wider than it ever got on payday. "Thank you, Wren." "Renata.

How did I raise something this ungrateful. Say thank you." I said, "Nana Marsh.

Whatever else is true, Ren is your daughter." She didn't even hear it. "My daughter is." Her voice dropped into the register people use when nobody is supposed to hear. "My daughter is.

Is. Is." "They both came out of Trevor Hale. Why does his get to be a princess with her name on a trust, and mine scrapes by for the rest of her life?" I forgot to breathe.

When I started again it hurt