Page 61 of Nanny for the Rockstars

We exchange another look amongst ourselves. Again, we’re struck by how mature she is. It’s entirely different than how she has been this entire time, and we’re not sure we can trust her.

“Look,” I say. “I love that you’re telling us this now, but I can’t make sense of this. You were, for lack of a better word, crazy. You made us pick between Jeanette and Hendrix. And that was downright cruel. I don’t know how you thought we were going to do that, and we have so much resentment toward you for that. It wasn’t okay, and it did some damage to us.”

“And I’m sorry for that,” she says. “Like I already said. I wish I could apologize to her too, and since you’ve found her again, I hope you’ll be willing to tell her on my behalf that I want to apologize to her for what I’ve done. I know she’s not ever going to see me again, so if you could promise me that you’ll do that, I would be so grateful.”

“We’ll tell her,” I say. “But how do we know you’re serious?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you,” she says. She opens up the envelope and pulls out a few papers. “This is a document I had written up with my lawyer. It’s entirely legal, and you can take it to your own lawyer to check everything. I don’t have to do anything further with it, so you don’t have to worry about trying to hunt me down again.”

“What is it?” Caleb asks.

“It’s a document that terminates my parental rights, and it gives them entirely over to you. With this, Jeanette is going to be able to legally adopt the baby, and it ensures I have no legal recourse to come back later and try anything. I don’t want shit from you or her, I just wanted to know that my baby would live a good life, and I can see now that he will. You can see that the papers have been signed, so…seriously, all you have to do is go to your lawyer, and they’ll tell you the same thing I just did. With you having this paperwork, I can’t do shit,” she says.

She slides the papers over to us, and we eagerly look over what she has written on the paper. There’s a lot of legal jargon, and I have to admit I don’t understand it, but it seems Caleb does, and he quickly takes the paper and the envelope.

“Now what?” he asks her. “You gave us all we wanted, so what do you want?”

“Nothing,” Clarissa says. “I have a life waiting for me. You might think this strange, but I’ve started dating someone, and we’ve got plans that match up with what the other person wants. I’m walking out that door, and you’re never going to see or hear from me again. I just hope we can leave each other on a good note. I don’t know if you’ll ever tell the baby about this, but if you do, I don’t want him to have the idea that his mom was some crazy woman who didn’t care about him.”

“He won’t,” I say.

My brothers look at me, and I clarify what I mean. “He’s not going to hear that his mom didn’t care about him. He’s going to hear that his biological mother wasn’t in a place where she could give him the life she wanted him to have, so she let us take him, and she loved him enough to do it. I don’t have any interest in making you sound like a monster. I think you’re young, I think life has its surprises, and I think we’re now in a place where you’re right—we can part ways on good terms.”

“Thank you,” Clarissa says with a smile. She reaches over and takes our hands in hers. “Really, thank you for everything. I think that’s all I wanted to say, so I have to get going. I have a plane to catch.”

She gets up to go, and just as she turns, Caleb stops her.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“What did you name the baby?” he asked. “You never put a name on that note, and we’ve talked about it a few times.”

“What have you been calling him?” she asks. “I think I got it right, but I want to make sure.”

“Hendrix,” Caleb says.

“Then that’s his name,” she says. “And I think it’s a good one.”

With that, she turns and walks out of the coffee shop, and the three of us look at each other.

“What the fuck just happened?” I ask. “Am I dreaming?”

“I never would have thought that was what she wanted to talk about,” Terry says. “Never in a million years would I assume she wanted to give us the baby. I thought we were going to be talking about how we were going to work out us letting her see him and shit.”

“She said now Jeanette can adopt Hendrix,” Caleb says. “If there’s anything we can do that’s going to make her see that we want her and no one else, I think having her adopt our son is the way to do that.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” I say. “How do we go about that?”

“I think we need more paperwork,” Caleb says. “But I bet you anything we can get it at the courthouse.”

“Let’s go,” Terry says. “Let’s surprise her in the best way possible.”

The three of us get up and head out of the coffee shop with a pep in our step that wasn’t there before. I can’t believe we’ve gotten so lucky, and I can’t wait to get back to the hotel and give the paperwork to Jeanette.

She asked us for a way to prove to her that we’re going to be with her, and I can’t think of any better way than handing her this stack of papers.

We already know she’s going to be so surprised, she’s likely going to break down in tears. But they’re going to be tears of happiness, I know that, and I can’t wait to see how thrilled she’s going to be.

More than that, I’m happy that Hendrix now has a mother. He’s not going to have to be raised by nannies, and he’s going to have the stability in his life we want him to have. Sure, he might have questions down the road, but I’m okay with that.

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