The Nanny's Secret Baby. Lee McClain Tobin

house. He’d been here a couple of times in the early days of his marriage, but Chloe hadn’t gotten along with her aunt and uncle—hadn’t gotten along with a lot of people, including Arianna—so he didn’t know them well.

      When he rang the doorbell, Arianna’s aunt Justine answered. “Hey, Dr. Jack, you sure you want to come into the craziness?”

      “I got a message that my son’s here,” he said.

      “In the kitchen.” She gestured behind her. “Come on in.”

      Jack’s eyes widened at the stacks of magazines and newspapers that allowed only a narrow path through the hallway.

      “I don’t want any more people in here!” came a bellow from the other end of the house.

      “It’s just Dr. Jack,” Aunt Justine yelled back. “He’s here to get his baby.”

      “Well, send him on his way.”

      She gave Jack an apologetic shrug. “Go on in and see Arianna and Sammy. He—” she gestured in the direction from which her husband’s shout had come “—he’s embarrassed about how the house looks. I just have to calm him down.” Justine turned and hurried toward the back of the house.

      Jack picked his way through the mess, his uneasiness growing.

      When he got to the kitchen, his focus immediately went to Sammy. His son sat straight-legged on a clean blanket next to Arianna, who was talking at a computer screen.

      Sammy held a wooden spoon and was tapping it against a plastic bowl with intense concentration.

      “I have experience with teenagers, yes,” Arianna was saying to the screen. Her wild curls were pulled back into a neat bun, and her peach-colored shirt was more tailored and buttoned-up than what she usually wore.

      She also had a streak of what looked like blueberry jam across her cheek that matched the streaks on Sammy’s shirt. Oops.

      “I’m staying with relatives in Esperanza Springs right now,” she said, apparently in answer to an interview question. “But I’m able to relocate for the right job.”

      She was doing a Skype interview and, for whatever reason, she was also taking care of his son.

      And she was thinking about relocating? Jack’s chest tightened.

      But he didn’t have time to wonder what that was about. “Come here, buddy,” he said quietly, holding out his hands to pick up Sammy. The steady banging noise his son was making couldn’t help Arianna’s cause.

      Sammy noticed him for the first time and pumped his little arms. Jack’s heart lifted, and he swung Sammy up.

      But not before Sammy’s flailing feet made a stack of plastic containers clatter to the ground. The noise startled Sammy, and he began to cry.

      Jack glanced at Arianna in time to see her slight cringe. The person doing the interview, blurry on the screen, frowned.

      “I can send you reference letters or give you phone numbers,” Arianna said over the din.

      She turned up the sound and Jack heard the fatal words: “We’ll be in touch.”

      He carried Sammy out of the room, waved to Justine, who stood at the end of a hallway arguing with her husband, and went out the front door. He started toward his truck, then paused. He needed to get Sammy home, but first, he’d better wait and find out from Arianna what was going on. And apologize for disrupting her job interview.

      Putting Sammy down on his blanket, he showed him a smooth stick. True to form, Sammy found it fascinating and began to bang it on the ground.

      It wasn’t three minutes before Arianna came out. “Hey,” she said when she saw him.

      “How’d your job interview go?” he asked. “I’m sorry for all the noise.”

      She shrugged. “What will be will be,” she said. “I was just hoping... It’s my only semilocal opportunity.” Her words were casual, but her eyes were upset. She was fingering her necklace, and Jack saw that it was a cross.

      Yeah, he’d heard she’d come to the faith in a big way.

      “So what happened with Sammy?”

      She sighed. “It’s my fault.”

      “What’s your fault?” Arianna meant well, but chaos followed her wherever she went. Chloe had always said as much.

      “The sitter was talking about his autism in the park, where everyone could hear,” she said. “I sort of got upset and told her she shouldn’t share his diagnosis—which wasn’t my business, and I’m sorry—and she ended up dumping him and all his stuff on me.”

      “She was talking about his diagnosis? At the park?”

      “She didn’t mean any harm. I think she was just trying to figure out how to cope.”

      That sounded like Mrs. Jennings.

      Sammy looked up, and Jack sat down to be closer, rubbing his son’s back. How was he going to do right by Sammy? The child needed careful, consistent care, and he’d known for a while that Mrs. Jennings couldn’t fit the bill, even before they’d gotten the diagnosis. But now, his interviews with so-called serious sitters weren’t going any better. He’d even tried Skyping with a couple of women from out of state, but he’d not gotten a warm feeling from any of them.

      “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. Right now, he felt like just a struggling dad and was glad to have a relative to vent to, someone who seemed to care about Sammy almost as much as he did.

      She tilted her head to one side. “This could be a God thing.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I need a job,” she said slowly. “And you need a nanny.”

      He saw where she was going and let his eyes close. “Look, Arianna, I don’t want to hurt your feelings. But I just don’t think—”

      “Don’t think, then,” she said.

      “But I’m responsible for—”

      “Don’t think—pray.” She stood smoothly, leaned down and ran a finger across Sammy’s shoulders—which he normally hated, but accepted from Arianna with just an upward glance—and then walked toward her car.

      “Arianna...”

      “Don’t answer now. Pray about it,” she called over her shoulder. “See you at church tomorrow.”

      * * *

      The next morning, Arianna thought about how much she loved art. One reason was the way it distracted you from your problems. It had distracted little Suzy Li from missing her mom, right here in the second-grade Sunday school class, and it had distracted Arianna from thinking about her own ridiculous offer to Jack DeMoise the day before.

      “I’m sorry Suzy got a little paint on her shirt,” she said to Mrs. Li as Suzy tugged her mom’s hand, pulling her over to look at the picture she’d painted, now drying on a clothesline with the rest of the primary kids’ paintings.

      “I’m just thrilled she made it through the whole class,” Mrs. Li said in between hugging Suzy and admiring her picture. “It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to stay for a whole church service. What a big girl you were, Suzy!”

      “I missed you, Mommy.” Suzy wrapped her arms around her mother. “But Miss Arianna said I was brave.”

      Mrs. Li smiled at Arianna. Thank you, she mouthed.

      Arianna was glad she’d helped, but she felt a pang; she couldn’t deny it. It was fun and rewarding to get her kid fix through helping with Sunday school, but in the end, those precious little ones wanted their own mommies. In the end, Arianna went home alone.

      Fortunately,