My job was my lifeline. After everything, after years of struggling, this was it. This was my last chance to put my life back together, to finally build something stable. Losing it meant losing everything I’d fought so hard for, losing the small, fragile hope I still clung to.
Then she called me into her office. My lady boss, impeccable as always, cool and detached. She started with the usual work-related pleasantries, then her tone shifted. It hardened. She had a “personal favor” to ask. My stomach clenched. No, not another late-night email that requires me to work through the weekend.
She laid it out, cold and flat. Her regular nanny had quit unexpectedly. She needed someone, immediately, to cover evening childcare for her two children. And she wanted me. Me, her executive assistant. I stared at her, utterly speechless. It was an outrageous, unprofessional demand. My role had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with childcare. This wasn’t some casual request; it was an order. She said it was non-negotiable. Babysit, or find another job.
My heart pounded against my ribs. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her exactly where she could stick her “favor.” But the words died in my throat. My lease was up next month. My savings account was a joke. I had nowhere else to go, no family to fall back on. My past had already stripped me bare. What choice did I have? I swallowed the bitter pill, nodding curtly. “Yes,” I heard myself say, the word a whisper of defeat. “I understand. I’ll do it.”
Diane Keaton as Linda and Woody Allen as Allan in a publicity still for the film “Play It Again, Sam,” in 1972 | Source: Getty Images
The first few evenings were a blur of awkwardness. Her house was enormous, pristine, filled with things I could only dream of owning. The children, a girl, perhaps seven, and a boy, maybe five, were polite but reserved. They seemed used to a revolving door of caregivers, used to their mother’s frequent absences. I tried to be professional, to keep the boundaries, but it felt impossible. I was in their home, cooking their dinner, reading their bedtime stories. I was no longer an assistant; I was a glorified hired hand, a temporary fixture in their opulent, emotionally distant lives.
Days bled into weeks. I saw less and less of my boss, more and more of her children. We fell into a routine. They started opening up. The little boy, he was quite observant, always pointing out small things, asking endless questions. The girl was quieter, more artistic. She loved to draw. I found myself softening, despite myself. They were just kids, caught in the middle. They didn’t ask for this any more than I did.
One evening, the youngest was having a nightmare. He cried out, calling for his mom. I went into his room, gently rubbing his back. He clung to me, his small hand gripping my shirt. As I soothed him, his head rested against my arm. That’s when I saw it. A small, distinctive birthmark, just behind his left ear. A tiny, pale brown splash, shaped like a teardrop. My breath caught. I felt a cold dread creep up my spine. No. It can’t be. It was exactly like the one I remembered on… No. Stop. My mind was playing tricks. I was tired, overworked.
A few nights later, the girl was drawing. She’d made a beautiful picture of a swan. She told me it was her favorite animal, because her “first mommy” used to sing her a song about swans. Her first mommy? My hand paused, holding her crayon box. I asked her, as casually as I could manage, “Oh? And what was your first mommy like?” She shrugged. “I don’t remember much. Just the song. And that she had hair like yours.” My heart hammered.
Later that week, while the kids were asleep and I was cleaning up a spill in the living room, I noticed a small, beautifully carved wooden box on a high shelf. It looked old, handmade. My boss had mentioned it once, a family heirloom. Curiosity, morbid and insatiable, got the better of me. I reached for it. Inside, nestled amongst dried flowers, was a small, worn leather-bound photo album. I hesitated, knowing I shouldn’t, but my fingers trembled as I opened it.
It wasn’t a formal album. It was a collection of faded, candid snapshots. Pictures of the children as babies. My stomach dropped. I saw the boy’s birthmark in one of the infant photos. A wave of nausea washed over me. I flipped through the pages, faster now, a growing terror seizing me. Then I stopped. The air left my lungs.
Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in the film “Annie Hall,” circa 1977 | Source: Getty Images
There it was. A picture of me. Me, younger, so much younger, my hair a little messier, my eyes wide with exhaustion and a raw, untamed love. I was in a hospital gown, a tiny swaddled infant cradled in my arms. There was a unique, silver ring on my finger, a gift from my grandmother, a ring I’d sold years ago in my deepest despair. And in the background of that picture, blurred but undeniable, was my grandmother herself, smiling tearfully.
The picture was undated, but the year, I knew that year. I knew that baby. It was my baby. MY CHILD.
The next picture showed a slightly older baby, perhaps a year old, with a young, unfamiliar woman – my boss – beaming, holding the child. My hands started to shake uncontrollably. I flipped back and forth, comparing the infant in my arms in the first picture to the infant in my boss’s arms in the next. The features. The way the light caught their hair. The tiny, distinctive earlobe.
IT WAS THE SAME CHILD.
I looked at the present-day photos of the older girl, the one who drew swans, the one who remembered a “first mommy.” The same wide eyes, the same curl to her lip when she concentrated. She was my daughter. The one I had been forced to give up, told I would never see again, promised she was going to a loving, distant family. The boy, my son, had been born almost two years later, under equally devastating circumstances, adopted out through the same agency.
My lady boss. My boss who forced me to babysit. She adopted them. Both of them. She knew. She had to know. My face, my history, it must have been in the adoption files. Or maybe she recognized my unique name during the hiring process. And she had waited. She had planned this. She had brought me into her home, made me care for my own children, children she had taken from me when I was at my most vulnerable.
My knees buckled. I sank to the floor, the album falling from my numb fingers. Every “favor,” every late night, every moment of forced proximity… It wasn’t just about childcare. It was a cruel, twisted game. She made me babysit my own children. She made me mother them, unknowingly, under her roof, while she watched. She stripped me of my job dignity, then she stripped me of my past, forcing me to relive the deepest, most agonizing pain of my life.
Woody Allen and Diane Keaton walk along a street and talk in a scene from “Annie Hall,” in 1977 | Source: Getty Images
I stared at my sleeping children, my heart shattering into a million pieces. The silence of the huge house pressed in on me. What do I do? What do I say? How do I even breathe? My children. My lost children. And the woman who held all the cards, who held my destiny, and theirs, in her cold, manicured hands. She didn’t see what was coming? No. I was the one who didn’t see what was coming. And now, the twist of the knife was so deep, I wondered if I would ever be able to pull it out.
