Chance Encounters

Today is the day. After staying home with Jess for the first four years of her life and savoring every second of it, we’ve finally decided it’s time I get back to work. I have an interview this morning with a top advertising firm. I’m really looking forward to getting back in the game, it’s the one thing that’s always been a constant success in my life until I met Mark. After years of bad relationships, and lots of therapy, I finally met Mark seven years ago. At 37 I thought I was destined to always be alone. But then it happened and we just clicked. We know each other's life’s stories. It was hard at first opening up, but he’s just so easy. Then we had Jess when I turned 40. I know, it was a late start, but I’m so happy that I finally had my baby girl. I just wouldn’t want to imagine life without Jess and Mark in it.

So I went to the coffee shop this morning before my interview. After coming out the door, I bump into some lady looking at her phone instead of watching where she’s going. While I spill some coffee on my new jacket, and she’s apologizing profusely. I tell her it’s no problem, get to my interview and all goes as I hoped. Offered the job on the spot, I tell them I can start in two weeks. I’ll have to find a nanny first. 

I’ve got the ad on craigslist and we’ve put notice out to some friends and our first round of interviews start tomorrow. So I decided to go to the grocery to get some refreshments and fresh flowers for the women coming tomorrow to interview. While I’m so excited to get back to work, I’m also very nervous about who will be taking care of Jess. As I turn the corner to go to the deli counter, someone else turns at the same time next aisle over and our cart bump feels like I got t boned on the side of the road. The lady says sorry and takes off like she’s leaving the scene of an accident. All the while I’m thinking was that  the same lady that I clashed with at the coffee shop this morning. I look all around the store and I just can’t find her.

I go to pick Jess up at our babysitter’s and we head to her favorite park, before we are going to go home to fix dinner. Jess is laughing as I swing her back and forth, shouting higher mamma. Next thing I know I have a small dog running towards me, followed by a distraught lady screaming no Bumper, no. When she reaches us, I’m exasperated, it can’t be. We look at each other and say at the same time. Are you following me? She’s very pretty, maybe 30 years old and seems completely distraught that we’ve had another run in. Surely it’s just a coincidence.

That evening at dinner I told Mark about the day and all my strange collisions with the same stranger. I tease him, you don’t have a young girlfriend I should be worried about? He knows I’m joking and plays along. After all we’ve been through this is the furthest from my mind.

It’s been a week and we’ve had no luck finding the right nanny yet for Jess. I’m starting to get worried I’m being too picky. So Jess and I go for our weekly date to the park. That’s when I see her again, she’s sitting on a park bench crying her poor eyes out, Bumper by her side ready and waiting to go for a stroll. I say fancy meeting you here, anything we can do to help you? I find out her name is Allie and she’s been looking for a job for weeks, so she can afford her rental and school loans. She’s scared to death she’s going to be kicked out into the street soon. I just feel this overwhelming compassion for her. After talking to her for an hour in the park I feel like I know her. I find out she has actually worked as a sitter before. Allie and Bumper are playing along so well with Jess, I just feel like she’s the one. Allie was put in my path for this reason. 

So that evening I invited Allie to dinner to meet Mark. Everything went perfect and Jess seems to be totally infatuated with her in one day. Mark and I decided to offer her the job that same evening.

It’s been a few months and Allie feels like family. I’ve already gotten a promotion and have to work late a couple nights a week. Allie luckily doesn’t mind, she even helps with dinner, house cleaning and errands. She has become a godsend. Mark and I can’t believe how we lucked into finding her and how smoothly things are running.

One evening I’m reading Jess a good night story and tucking her in and when I go to leave Jess's room, I find Allie in the doorway crying. She says, that’s all I ever wanted is for you to love me like that. My jaw drops, no, no, no, this can’t be. Those records were supposed to be sealed. Allie takes one look at my face, she must see the fear, disgust and look of hate on my face as she goes racing past Mark out of the house. My world has collapsed and I feel like I’m spiraling. All the control that I’ve worked so hard far is gone in a second. It takes Mark an hour to get me out of the panic attack I have entered and explain what has happened. 

After everyone, including me growing so fond of Allie, I feel like I owe her an explanation and to see if after that we can somehow work past it and be able to move on with or without her. After getting to know her pretty well over the past few months, and after all these years I still don't know if I can get past it.

Allie agrees to meet me the next day. I don’t even know where to begin. How to explain this to her. Before I can start she apologizes to me and says, she kept bumping into me on purpose, trying to come up with a way to introduce herself. Then she saw me with Jess and she just knew she had to become part of my life and make me want to love her, so I could see what I had missed out on and given up so long ago.

This is when she sees the pain written all over my face, this is when she has to learn the horror of it all. Something I never wanted her to know, something I wish I could forget. Allie I wasn’t in a place to take care of you, I was 15 years old. I wanted you to have parents who loved you, that could give you a better life than I could and a better life than I had. When I was a child I was molested by my father, when I was 14 I became pregnant by him. When I told my mother she said I was a lying slut and sent me to a home for wayward teens. I gave birth to you there and put you up for adoption. I ran away shortly after and have worked nearly all my life to forget the pain I was put through. It’s been a long hard road and I just never wanted you to have to know how you were conceived. My father, your father and your grandmother are long gone now. May they rest in hell. 

Somehow after all this, we’ve managed to continue our relationship and now Jess has a sister as well as a nanny. It’s been another hard battle that we all have had to overcome. We are scarred, but we are strong and we are survivors.