Read Nanny Returns for Free Online

fresh-faced folks with one hand on their denim-clad hips and the other lifting said tool like it’s light as a toothbrush. No sweat, no blisters, no balloon of profanity attached to their pleasantly smiling mouths. As if the photographer stumbled upon them as they were deciding between eating an apple or just picking up this tool here and installing a shower. No hint of the aching arms, stiff back, fried fingers, or God knows how many layers of sickeningly pink paint laughing at the tepid tan I am currently giving it.
    At the slightest sweating hint of chemical separation, I lay the gun on the nearby edge of the sink and set to scraping and sanding and scraping and sanding. I may not be able to find out where in that cesspool of a basement the backup circuit breaker is. I may not be able to get a single electrician to come north of Ninety-sixth Street for another damn week. I may not be able to get in touch with my goddamn contractor, whose opening act of gutting two bathrooms and one kitchen has been followed by resounding silence. And I may never be able to get Grayer to listen to an excruciatingly long overdue apology. But I’m …getting the …hideous pink paint …off this …@#%ˆ* molding. “Fuck!”
    I drop the sanding block and stuff my bleeding knuckle into my mouth. Grace waddles over, head down in her assumption that all expletives issued from me are hers to amend. “Okay,” I mutter around my curled fingers. “I’m okay.” I reach over her attempted licking and turn on the sink. The water shoots out in three spastic brown blasts before eking into a steady trickle, under which I stick my stinging wound.
    I take a deep breath and sit on the edge of the tub as the coolness dribbles over my fingers. “See that?” I nod at the six-inch stretch of bare wood on the window frame that the last five hours of labor has uncovered. “All me.” Grace flops her head on my knees. “Thanks for being here.” I drop down to kiss her furry snout, catching sight of my cell as it lights up by the toolbox.
    Trailing red droplets in the paint curlings, I grab it, hoping it’s Ryan returning my calls so I can tell him about Grayer, but instead I’m surprised to see a Swedish area code. “Hello?”
    “Nan?” an older gentleman croaks on the other end of the line. “Nan Hutchinson?”
    “Yes, this is Nan Hutchinson,” I drop into a professional octave. “How can I help you?”
    “Philip Traphagen, here.”
    “Yes?”
    “My secretary got your name from the university. You were a consultant here at my firm’s office in Stockholm …last fall, I believe.”
    “Yes! Yes. The Tipton Fund.” A rapid succession of slides from my final graduate internship fly through my mind’s eye: white man, white man, white man—distinguished only by the monogram colors on the cuffs of their custom shirts. Not a clue. “Of course. How can I help you, Mr. Traphagen?”
    “Well, I’m on the board of my alma mater in Manhattan—that’s where you are now, yes?”
    “Yes, yes I am.” I glance out the window at the Key Food bags that appear to be blooming off the backyard tree.
    “It’s a splendid preparatory institution, but we’re in need of a consultant.”
    “I’m delighted you thought of me.” I wipe my wet hand across my T-shirt and grip the phone, back straight, wallet open.
    “Well, we were a bunch of cranky old coots and you brought some order to the place.” I flash to the weeks of sessions it took to get formalized employee reviews to replace the Tipton tradition of promoting based on a “feeling about a guy.” “And the school’s in a bit of a crunch—their director of staff development, which in my time was the headmaster, but hell, I’ve only been on this board twenty years.” He lets out a disgusted huff. “At any rate, this woman was due back from her maternity leave yesterday and sent a resignation note in her place. So they think the position needs to be filled, but I prevailed inasmuch as we