Nanny Dearest

by Flora Collins

Genres: Women's Fiction; Domestic Thrillers

Synopsis

“A well-crafted debut . . . horrifying . . . Psychological thrillers fans won’t be disappointed.” —Publishers Weekly

"Unsettling, compelling, elegantly paced . . . A slick, contemporary novel that explores the wispy, nagging memories of childhood.” —Julia Heaberlin, bestselling author of We Are All the Same in the Dark

In this compulsively readable novel of domestic suspense, a young woman takes comfort in reconnecting with her childhood nanny, until she starts to uncover secrets the nanny has been holding for twenty years.

Sue Keller is lost. When her father dies suddenly, she's orphaned in her mid-twenties, her mother already long gone. Then Sue meets Annie. It’s been twenty years, but Annie could never forget that face. She was Sue’s live-in nanny at their big house upstate, and she loved Sue like she was her own.

Craving connection and mothering, Sue is only too eager to welcome Annie back into her life; but as they become inseparable once again, Sue starts to uncover the truth about Annie's unsettling time in the Keller house all those years ago, particularly the manner of her departure—or dismissal. At the same time, she begins to grow increasingly alarmed for the safety of the two new charges currently in Annie's care.

Told in alternating points of views—Annie in the mid-'90s and Sue in the present day—this taut novel of suspense will keep readers turning the pages right up to the shocking end.

Release date: November 30, 2021

Publisher: MIRA Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

1

“I would recognize those bangs anywhere,” she says, clutching her large faux-leather bag, pink nails pinching the synthetic hide. I can see the laugh lines beneath her glasses’ rims. I swallow, my tongue darting between my back molars, bracing myself.

“They stuck, I guess.” I laugh lightly, a meek trickle that escapes from my lips before I can stop it. She smiles again, this time with teeth, and I see how her front two overlap, barely discernible. But she’s standing so close that it’s hard not to notice.

“You live around here now?” She stopped me in front of a church and behind us the congregation trickles out, chatting among themselves. A child wails for lunch. The sun beats down hard and yellow, speckling the sidewalk. I raise my hand like a visor, even though I feel the weight of my oversized sunglasses, heavy on the bridge of my nose.

“Yep. Moved down to Alphabet City after college,” I answer. She nods, pushing a wisp of red hair behind her ear. She is letting the sun in, the pupils of her green eyes shrinking with the effort.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” It’s a statement, not a question, one that she says confidently, as if it’s a sign of character that she is easily forgettable, that fading into my brain’s recesses is some kind of compliment.

The church group disperses and I step away to let a family by.

“I’m sorry. I don’t.” And then, even though she is secure in her stance, amused perhaps by my social transgression, I fumble for some excuse. “Forgive me. I-I’m not good with faces.”

She laughs, then—a long, exhilarating sound, like a wind chime. “I don’t blame you. I think you were about three feet tall the last time you saw me.” She reaches out a hand, dainty and freckled. “I’m Anneliese. Anneliese Whittaker. I was your nanny.” Her hand remains in the air for a moment, outstretched, like the bare limb of a winter tree, before I take it.

“Sue. Sue Keller.” But of course she knows who I am. She says she was my nanny.

“I used to babysit you when you lived upstate.” I flinch, unintentionally. She knew my mother. “How’s your dad? He always wanted to move back up there later in life.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, savoring the tenderized spot there, made bloody by my anxious jaw. “He passed last year. Car accident.”

Anneliese puts a hand to her mouth, her eyes widening behind the glasses. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. You must miss him a lot, don’t you? He was your whole world back when I knew you.”

I offer her a smile. “Yes, well, aren’t most little girls that way with their fathers?”

The child is still screaming for lunch. His mother is speaking to another woman, the three of them the only people left in front of the church.

“Yes, well, I guess that’s true. You and your dad had a special bond, though.” She gazes at me then, her face full of compassion, those green eyes penetrative.

And we’re silent, for a beat too long. So I find myself shuffling, moving around her. “I actually have to meet a friend.” I check my wrist though I’m not wearing a watch. “But it was funny running into you.” I give her what I hope is an apologetic smile, backing away from her, toward the curb.

She stops me, one of those tiny hands on my wrist, almost tugging at my sleeve like a child. “Wait. I’d love to see you again.” She digs around in her purse. I catch sight of a book, earbuds, some capped pens, a grimy-looking ChapStick. She takes out a receipt, uncaps a pen, and leans the paper against the church’s stone masonry, scrawling her number. The figures are dainty, like her hands.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Tell your friend a crazy lady stopped and demanded you spend time with her.” She laughs again, that wind chime chortle, and I pocket the receipt.

“Nice to see you again!” I call, making the traffic light just in time. When I cross the street and turn, she’s gone, consumed by the hordes, no sign of that red hair glinting in the sunlight.

---

“And you stopped? I would’ve kept on walking. No time for nutso people like that,” Beth says through the phone as I pace my studio, absentmindedly throwing trash away, smoothing out the creases in my bedspread, my phone nestled between my shoulder and ear. I set it down and put her on speaker. I have the urge, suddenly, to rearrange the furniture in this miniscule apartment. To move the bed to the other side of the room, away from the window, from the noise of the street.

“She knew my name, Beth. She called out ‘Sue.’ I wasn’t going to ignore that.” Outside, a siren wails and I pull down the shade.

“That’s why you always wear headphones. So you have an excuse not to deal with those kinds of people.” Beth smacks her gum, the noise ricocheting through the tinny speaker.

“So you really don’t remember if I had a nanny called Anneliese?” I crumple up the wax paper from my bagel, letting it drift to the floor. The old family photo albums from that period are in storage, buried deep inside the disorganized cardboard boxes I hired movers to collect when I cleaned out Dad’s apartment.

“Dude, we met when we were five. I don’t think I knew my own mom’s name back then. I certainly wouldn’t remember who your babysitter was.” I close my eyes and massage my temples, my usual insomnia-inflicted headache edging toward a dull throb. I don’t remember a long-term nanny. I never had any babysitters growing up, just my dad.

I hear Beth say something to her girlfriend, a bark, and I walk away from the phone for a minute with a twinge of annoyance that she’s not giving me her undivided attention.

I think of Anneliese’s face, those teeth, the green eyes. The hair. And.

And.

I am running in a field with her, in the yard behind the house upstate. The garden is giant. Huge sunflowers, hedges high enough to block the sun. Beneath me, the grass is lush, dewy, tickling my bare feet. And the sky is white, hot and blazing. And she is behind me, shrieking, her freckled arm outstretched, a paintbrush in her hand tinged blue.

And I feel its slick bristles on my back and I fall, stumble. But I am laughing. And she is, too, her orange hair like a halo, eclipsing the sun.

I open my eyes.

“Anyway, I’m having some people over next weekend. I know you hate parties these days but you’re so cooped up all the time in that apartment. I swear it’ll be fun...” Beth squawks on, her voice shrill through the speaker.

“I remember her.”

Beth pauses mid-ramble. “What?”

“I remember her. Anneliese. The woman who stopped me today. She’s not nuts. I remember her.”

There’s a heavy silence on the other end. “Are you sure? You just said you didn’t.” Beth’s voice has lowered an octave, as if she’s whispering. Which I know is for my benefit, so her girlfriend won’t hear.

I tighten my hand into a fist. “I’m serious. She was my nanny. We used to play this game with paint.”

Beth sighs. “Still weird to me. You’re not thinking about calling her or anything like that, right?” But I’m already reaching into the garbage bag I use as a hamper, sifting through it for the sweats I wore earlier today. I take out the receipt, smoothing it out against my knee. It’s for shampoo, coconut Herbal Essences, and I can smell it on her, as if it’s 1996 and I am on the floor of my blue-carpeted bedroom and she is swinging her princess hair to and fro as we play Candy Land, the smell even more enticing than how I imagined Queen Frostine’s scent.

Tears prick my eyelids.

“I want to see her.” It comes out sounding infantile, testy even. And I hear Beth breathing, willing herself not to lash out.

“Okay. Okay, Suzy. Just meet in public and bring some pepper spray. Remember, she stopped you in the street. She really could be anyone, even if she did babysit you a thousand years ago.” I hear her put another piece of gum in her mouth, the wrapper like static.

“I know. She’s just a nice middle-aged woman. And maybe she has some cool things to say about my parents.” I know that will get Beth off my back. Any mention of my parents gets anyone off my back.

I hear her breath as she blows a bubble, the snap of the gum sticking to her lip. “I’m just trying to be a good friend. Don’t fault me for it.” Her voice has lowered again. “I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: you’ve been spending way too much time alone. It’s not like you and I can tell it’s getting to you. It would get to me.” But my finger is already hovering over the End Call button, eager to get Beth off the line.

“I appreciate it. But for real, now I have work to do. I’ll text you.” She spends one more minute reminding me to come to her party next weekend and I promise I will, even though we both know I won’t, and I hang up first, still fingering that crumpled receipt, studying the perfectly shaped eights in the handwritten phone number, each the same height, the same size.

Outside, a dog barks. And I bark back, loud and sharp, laughing at myself, my apartment easing into darkness as the sun sets.

2May 1996

The house is massive. Just staring at it, she already feels lost.

She knew the family was rich, their house tucked into what used to be farmland so the husband could focus on his writing. Behind the house is a lake. It snakes through to her part of town—she’d capture frogs there as a child, wading into the swampy parts of the water. Once she brought one home, plopped into an old tomato sauce jar, and upon seeing his little girl clutching the jar so gingerly, her dad plunged his fleshy fingers into the container and grabbed the frog by its bulbous neck. Its eyes bulged so big she was sure they’d roll out. But instead, in what he described as a science experiment, a homespun biology-class frog dissection, he cut its throat with a steak knife, made her watch the creature’s green-tinted blood spurting out, dribbling down the wall.

She didn’t bring home another animal after that.

She reaches the front porch of this mammoth house, with upholstered chairs, a swing. A tiny spider scurries its way up a rail, disappearing into a crevice in the freshly painted wood. She knocks on the front door.

There’s silence and she knocks again, louder this time, using the heel of her hand. And finally she hears shuffling, a grunt as a jammed doorknob is turned. And then she is standing in front of a tall, slim man, checkered shirt tucked into slacks, glasses perched at the end of his nose. He looks far too old to have a daughter so young. It’s bizarre to see him in real life, as if he’s walked out of the jacket flap of one of his novels. He’s narrower than his picture, the real world diminishing him into a regular middle-aged man.

“You must be Annie,” he says, and sticks out his hand. His fingernails are finely cut, his cuticles scrubbed, like a woman’s. She takes it, after a pregnant pause.

“Yes, yes I am.” She looks up into his milky blue eyes and he smiles nonchalantly, like she could be anyone. But she’s used to that.

“I’m Mr. Keller, as you may have gathered. Come on in. You can wait in the living room and I’ll get my wife.” The front hall is bigger than her childhood home, empty except for one round, gleaming table showcasing a bouquet of sky-blue hydrangeas in an enormous cut-glass vase. The walls are lacquered in a deeper shade of the same blue, and the old parquet floor is so polished Annie can practically see her reflection in the planks. It’s so quiet, she finds herself tiptoeing, her soles flexing, so as not to make a sound.

He leads her to a room filled with color, orange couches, blue vases on the fireplace mantel. Lemony sunlight glows on the dark, reflective end tables, and the back wall is lined with books organized by color. Silver-framed photos on one table show the Kellers with some famous people—the mayor of New York City and others Annie isn’t sure she recognizes. The Sony Trinitron TV is half-concealed inside a massive cabinet stenciled with a curling pattern of vines and grape clusters.

She’s never seen anything like it, her mouth parting in awe as she imbibes the whole room. Who knew you could make a home so beautiful?

The man stands awkwardly by the entrance, staring at her staring. “I’m glad we have somebody around to admire it. We haven’t had guests yet.” He smiles at her and this time it’s genuine, his eyes crinkling. She smiles shyly back.

“Belle, the nanny’s here,” he calls into the cavernous space. When no one comes, he turns to Annie and holds up a finger. “One sec. Make yourself comfortable.” She perches herself on the edge of the sofa, placing her hands on her knees, prim and proper like she imagines you’re supposed to do in houses like this.

And then a woman comes in, her jeans dirty, peeling off gardening gloves and tossing them on a pristine mirrored table. It makes Annie wince.

She’s blonde and tiny, also older than Annie expected, five feet even, in socks. When Annie stands to introduce herself, she towers over her. But she’s one of those people who seems tall. Unlike the husband, she’s all business. No smiles, no niceties. Just a cursory glance, a hand extended. “Sorry, I was out back gardening. I didn’t hear you arrive.” She doesn’t sound apologetic. “Susanna is two and a half, almost three. So basically we’re looking for a nanny, every day nine to seven. I’ll be gone most days—either in the city or at this office space I’ve rented in town. Claudette said you have your associate’s in early childhood education?” She sits, taps her fingernails on her arm, waiting for Annie to begin.

“Yes I got my GED at seventeen and then did that program. And I basically raised my siblings, too. I’m one of five and Mom died when I was twelve, so since then, they’ve mostly been my responsibility.” Mrs. Keller’s eyes widen at that, her tongue clucking with pity. “I’m certified in CPR, first aid, and water safety.” Annie settles on the sofa again and takes the certificates out of the dog-eared folder, laying them gently on the table, smoothing out their edges. “I can clean on the days Claudette is off. And I can cook, too, if you ever want a break from the kitchen.” She smiles softly at Mrs. Keller, who snorts.

“Oh trust me, I don’t cook. But it’s good to know that you do.” And the interview continues, Annie marveling at that brilliant room, grinning with no teeth. She doesn’t want them to notice how crooked they are. It wouldn’t fit here, in this gorgeous, orderly space.

Finally, Mrs. Keller turns to her husband. “To be honest, it seems impossible to find anyone reliable in the sticks, and I really need to get out of this godforsaken house some more, so if it’s up to me, you’re hired. What do you think, babe?” And it’s like Annie is out of the room. She shifts her gaze to the floor, the carpet a mesh of pinks and oranges, swirling together in a kaleidoscopic pattern.

“I think it’ll be perfect. She’s young enough that she’ll keep up with Sue’s energy.”

Mrs. Keller nods, cracking her knuckles. “Yeah, your old girl isn’t who she used to be.”

This time Mr. Keller snorts, before turning back to Annie. “I’ll be home almost every day, up in my office, writing.”

“But only holler if you really, really need anything. He needs to finish this series so we can move back to the city quicker.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, that’s probably offensive. You grew up here.”

Annie forces herself to laugh, a tickle at the back of her throat. “No problem.” Because what else is she supposed to say?

“You know, let’s introduce her to Suzy, see how they get along,” Mr. Keller says. “You’re okay with that, Annie? She really should be the deciding factor here. Her nap time is about over now anyway. I’ll go up and get her.” He doesn’t wait for a response. Annie hears him climbing the stairs.

Mrs. Keller reaches into her pocket and lights a cigarette, exhaling in Annie’s direction. “You be good to my girl, okay? I didn’t expect her to happen. I was suddenly pregnant at forty-three. Forty-three! Can you imagine? I had no clue what to do with myself. But once you have a child of your own, you’ll see. It changes you. Love doesn’t even begin to explain it.” She puffs on her cigarette, ashing it in an elegant white tray shaped like a scallop shell. Annie has to keep from grimacing. No object that nice should suffer such an indignity.

When they hear Mr. Keller coming down the stairs again, she drops the whole thing, crushing the butt with her finger, smearing cinder all across that fine white china.

Then Mr. Keller steps in holding a doll.

That’s truly what Annie thinks for a split second as he comes in and settles down in a chair, the doll still in his lap. She’s the most beautiful child Annie has ever seen, like out of the fairy-tale book she cherished as a kid, filled with golden hues and turquoise skies. Rosy-cheeked, lips moist and full, eyes big and blue and unblinking. Blond hair cascades down her shoulders, almost white, especially in the afternoon light.

She’s nothing like Annie’s own siblings, scabby-kneed with brutal grimaces, dirt under their fingernails, their father’s face etched into each of their features. She’s delicate, elegant even, a child from a world far different from Annie’s. She wants to hold her, to nuzzle her neck and braid her hair, handle her even more preciously than she did the beloved Barbie given by her grandma on her fifth Christmas.

She just plain wants her, can feel the intangible cord of their shared soul loosening as they move nearer to one another. This is it. This is all she needs. Annie is stronger now. Nothing and no one will be lost.

And it’s like she can hear Annie’s thoughts, this perfect child, because she reaches her arms out. “You wanna say hi to Annie, don’t you?” Mr. Keller coos, and Sue toddles over and climbs into Annie’s lap without another word, resting her head against Annie’s breast and sticking her thumb into her mouth. Annie wraps her arms around the little body, the warmth penetrating her chest.

“My God, she likes you more than me.” Mrs. Keller laughs. But it’s a dry, mirthless sound.

“I’m shocked.” Mr. Keller raises his eyebrows, stroking his chin. “It’s like she already knows you.” And Annie smiles because that’s exactly what it’s like.

The little girl reaches up and tugs at Annie’s curls. “Pretty,” she says, wrapping her tiny finger around a ringlet, giggling as it bounces.

Mrs. Keller was right. Love doesn’t even begin to encompass these feelings.