Chapter Text
“Will you tell us a bedtime story?”
Eloise paused at the request, squinting down at her sneaky little wards. Amanda and Oliver had just turned eleven three weeks prior, and story time was decidedly not cool anymore.
But she had a large suspicion this sudden need for a bedtime story had to do with the prior events of the day…
Four Hours Earlier…
“Eloise, I need you to pick up the twins from school,” came her boss’ curt greeting.
“Hello to you too,” she muttered.
Across from her, her brother’s fiancé raised an eyebrow. Francesca, while patient, did not take too kindly for their weekly wedding planning lunches to be interrupted. Not when Eloise was the current co-maid-of-honor while Hyacinth was off getting her masters across the country.
“May I ask why I need to get the twins when it’s,” Eloise checked her watch, “only 1:15?”
“Because apparently their science class decided to cover sex ed without parent notification.”
Eloise winced. If there was one thing she learned while being the twins’ nanny for the last three years, the little private preparatory academy’s parents had their noses in everything. Including the curriculum and their rights as parents regarding that.
“Right—so you want me to pick them up as what? A form of protest?”
“Sure, if you want to call it that.”
“Okay, I’ll be there soon—and he’s already hung up,” Eloise announced, showing the ended call screen to Francesca.
Her sister chuckled. “Does his research really need him twenty-four hours?”
Eloise dropped her phone back into her satchel. “I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care.”
Maybe that was a bit harsh to say about her boss. He was generous man. Paid her well, provided room and board on his property. To be perfectly honest, he let her do whatever the hell she wanted. All Eloise had to do was take care of the kids and ensure they were growing up into ‘well-adjusted adolescents’.
An easier task said than done.
With a kiss on the check and promise to continue their planning that weekend, Eloise marched on to pick up the twins.
When she arrived at the academy, parents were in a tizzy, swarming the front office as they attempted to pull their children from school for the day.
Eloise had no desire to wait in the line to parrot off the complaints her boss listed off in his forwarded email to her. All she wanted to do was grab the little terrors and leave, yet she followed the herd, patiently waiting for the sign-out clipboard to reach her.
A half-hour later, with less than an hour left in the school day, Eloise checked the twins out and met them at the front steps.
“I learned how babies are made Eloise!” Oliver announced. “And where they actually come from.”
“Oh boy,” Eloise uttered, already bracing herself for unfortunate fun facts for the rest of the weekend. From the top of the steps, Eloise spotted Amanda stomping her way down. “Quite an eventful day, yeah ‘Manda?”
The girl’s pale face spoke of horror. “We watched a birthing video. I never want children. Ever.”
Eloise’s eyebrows shot up. “Perfect. I am sure your uncle will be delighted by the news.” Dropping a hand on either twin’s shoulder, she led the two off down the street where she parked. “Now let’s get out of here before someone asks me to sign a petition or PTA form.”
“Is Uncle home?” Oliver asked, loosening up his uniform tie.
“Nope, unfortunately he won’t be back for another week. His research had a breakthrough last night and requires him to stay a bit longer.”
He emailed her last night, somewhere between two and three in the morning. She’d been awake, like usual, and responded in congratulations.
His extended departure was unspoken, especially since he sent her a new list of tasks to complete while he was gone—
- Pick up the flowers I ordered for Amanda’s recital next Friday. Receipt is attached.
“Typical,” Amanda grumbled. “He’s never coming home, is he?”
Eloise paused. Amanda had been getting into these moods as of late, especially about the lack of her uncle’s presence. “Now I wouldn’t say that—”
“Can we get ice cream?” Oliver interrupted, climbing into the backseat of Eloise’s hatchback. “It is Friday, Eloise.”
“Sure, Oliver.” Hard to say no to long standing traditions.
Ever since she started nannying the twins, Friday ice cream had become a well anticipated event. Their Uncle had never been a big fan of it, but he couldn’t stop them, not when he worked up north on his research for weeks on end.
Upon reaching Sophie’s Scoops, Amanda’s spirit seemed to have lifted the slightest. Two scoops of chocolate cookie dough ice cream later, a smile graced the girl’s face. The three sat together outside the ice cream parlor, hurrying to catch their dripping cones as the warm March sun shined down on them.
“Do you want babies, Eloise?” Amanda asked, mid-bite of her waffle cone.
“Um—” She honestly didn’t give the idea much thought. At least not since the twins entered her life. Maybe once, when she was seriously considering getting married, but…
At thirty and without a single successful relationship in sight, the idea wasn’t one she entertained with any great gravity.
“No, not really.”
“Good, you’d look like a whale pregnant,” Amanda declared.
Eloise snatched Amanda’s ice cream and took a large bite out of what remained of her cone.
“Hey!” the girl cried out. The measly cone was passed back to her, maybe a few nibbles left, at that. “Get me a new cone.”
“How about we learn not to call the nice ladies who buy us ice cream whales, yeah?” Eloise shot back. She resumed eating her own English toffee ice cream, ignoring Amanda’s huffing and puffing.
Oliver laughed at his sister’s grumpy face. “Eloise can’t have babies ‘Manda, because she’s not married or has a boyfriend.”
“Clearly, you didn’t pay attention in class,” the girl huffed. “Anyone can have a baby, if they have s—”
“Okay!” Eloise jumped from her seat and tossed her remaining ice cream in the trash. “Enough of baby talk. It is time to go home.” She ushered the twins up from seats and towards the car as they grumbled and picked at each other, pinching their siblings’ arms when they weren’t looking. They didn’t know how to stop, did they?
“But you could have a baby if you want to, right?” Oliver asked minutes later, as they drove out of downtown and towards the outskirts and into the countryside.
“Sure.” Eloise decided to humor him. “If I had a partner or not. Some women have surrogates and sperm donors—”
“Ew, you said that word.” Amanda’s nose wrinkled.
“Yeah, because it is a technical term in this instance,” Eloise shot back, trying to keep her focus on the road than her wards. “And I think we need to take step back from the whole ‘Eloise having a baby’ conversation—which I do not by the way—” She was going to have to have this conversation wasn’t she? Why the fuck did their uncle need to be away this weekend? Why not last weekend? Her damn luck. “But I think we you two need to understand babies can come into this world in many different ways! And the um… process—” Yeah, ‘process’. Perfect word for it“—of creating an uh, baby, happens between two people who love each other very much—married or not.”
“Like our parents,” Oliver supplied.
The tension in Eloise’s shoulders eased at the mention of the twin’s parents. Not the happiest of topic, but one she never avoided. Not like their uncle.
“Yeah, Ollie, like your parents.” Eloise smiled to through the rearview mirror. “They loved each other very much.”
“You knew our parents?” Amanda squinted up at Eloise, questionable doubt in her eyes. “You were friends with them?”
Eloise hesitated.
Yes, technically she knew Marina and George.
However, the term ‘friends’ may have been a stretch…
“Yes, I was friends with them.” Eloise hopped she didn’t go to hell for this. “I actually knew you two before you knew me! Back when your mother was pregnant with you two.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “What? How can you have known her for that long?”
“She stayed with my best friend’s family one summer.” That was a full truth.
“That can’t be true,” Amanda insisted.
“Uh, it is totally true.” Eloise took a right, taking the well-worn dirt road to the Crane’s property. “I am not a liar, Miss Amanda Crane.” Driving through the clearing, the cottage-like house came into view. “Believe it or not, all adults had a life before you two menaces came into the picture.”
The conversation momentarily died as Eloise parked the car and the three made their way into the house. Coat were hung in the mudroom, and shoes were tucked into their appropriate cubbies. There were grumblings about the school day as homework was emptied from backpacks and carried to the study room.
It wasn’t until showers we taken, comfy clothes on, and hot homemade pizza served on their plates, did the kids bring back the topic of the adults in their life.
“Does that mean you knew our uncle before you became our nanny?” Oliver asked, picking at stringy mozzarella cheese on his pizza.
He naturally asked this question as Eloise took a big bite of her pizza.
Honest answer: Yes.
But the kids didn’t need to know her history with their uncle.
“No,” she answered with a full mouth.
“Do you know if our uncle has ever been in love?” Amanda asked reaching for another slice of pizza. “Or wanted to have babies of his own?”
“Why don’t you ask him when he gets back.” Eloise went for another bite. She refused to have this conversation.
“If he comes back,” Oliver mumbled quietly.
“He’s coming back,” Eloise insisted. “Your uncle loves you both very much and it is silly to not think so.”
The twins shared a look. Neither believed her. Not shocking. Oliver and Amanda, despite their bickering, tended to stick together when it came to attacking their ever-faithful nanny.
“Then have you ever been in love?”
Eloise froze, half of her pizza crust shoved into her mouth.
Has she ever been in love?
A couple of times, yeah. But was it really love, or infatuation.
She liked to think the latter because then maybe the truth wouldn’t hurt as much.
“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. But that is in the past. I got all the love I need from my family and you two.” At that she dunked her crust into ranch, pleased with her answer.
“That sounds like something a sad lonely woman with no life would say,” Amanda stated matter-of-factly. “You had to have been cool at one point, Eloise. You did say the adults we know had lives before we came around.”
She did say that didn’t she?
“I think…” Eloise drawled out, capturing the kids’ attention. “You two need to go get ready for movie time. We got a long drive tomorrow, so might as well get at it early.”
Amanda groaned. “You really are no fun.” She shoved her seat back and stomped up to her room.
Oliver huffed, before turning to Eloise pleadingly. “Can we watch Ratatouille this time?”
“Of course.”
Ratatouille was as eventful as it had been the other hundreds of times Eloise watched it with the twins. As the end credits rolled, it was already half past seven meaning to kids had the option to watch another movie or have some reading time before bed. Their uncle’s orders. And while Eloise didn’t always like following their uncle’s orders…sometimes she did, especially when they were implemented with decent reason.
Eloise pushed herself upright on the loveseat catty corner of sofa where the twins sat. Popcorn and licorice covered the cushion between the siblings, the two snacking away throughout one of their favorite movies. “Okay, I say we either watch Lilo & Stitch or Tangled, those two haven’t been in the rotation for a while—”
“Will you tell us a bedtime story?”
Eloise paused at the request, squinting down at her sneaky little wards. Amanda and Oliver had just turned eleven three weeks prior, and story time was decidedly not cool anymore.
But she had a large suspicion this sudden need for a bedtime story had to do with the prior events of the day.
“A bedtime story about what?” Eloise quirked an eyebrow, ready for whatever half-assed, cobbled up lie the two would piece together.
“A love story!”
“A story about you!”
The two answered got jumbled up together, the siblings squabbling immediately.
“Ugh, a love story? Are you stupid?”
“You’re stupid. I want to know more about Eloise!”
“Eloise knows nothing, she’s boring.”
“But a lovestory is stupid!”
“Not if it is a love story about someone we know! Like mom and dad, or uncle, or El—”
“Okay, okay, okay!” Eloise shouted at the top of her lungs. “We are shutting this down, you two!”
“Look what you did now!” Amanda snapped at her brother.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, ‘Manda,” Eloise warned. “Let’s bring it down a notch shall we?” Wrapping her duster cardigan tighter around herself—God, when did she become her mother?—Eloise got up from her sofa and plopped herself down on the ottoman across from the twins. “So you want a bedtime story that’s about me but also maybe a love story?”
The menaces glanced at each other, their dark curls then bobbed up and down at the same time. “Yes and yes.”
Eloise pursed her lips. This is the most interested in her past life the twins had ever been. Hell, this is the most interested they’d been in anything beyond their own little lives. Maybe she did owe it to them to give a little glimpse of what life was like before them?
But how to go about it…how to go about telling them this story….
“Alright—I’m going to tell you two a story, but it part of a bigger story. It has love and heartbreak and if you can figure out who is who, then maybe I’ll give you a prize.”
Oliver perked up. “A prize?”
“A prize,” Eloise confirmed.
“Then get on with it,” Amanda insisted, arms crossed over her chest. “We haven’t got all night.”
“Alright Miss Bossypants,” Eloise shook out her shoulders and sat up straight, preparing to weave together a tale. “The year was 2012…and the top song that summer was Icona Pop’s I Love it.”