Then he looked at me. My jeans, washed so many times they'd faded to near-white. My plain T-shirt.
His face turned bright red. He stomped over to me and shoved me hard.
"Who told you to come?!"
"You're just the nanny! You think you're good enough to show up at my parent-teacher conference? My mom is right there! Get out!"
"Or I'll make my dad fire you!"
Audrey watched from her seat, a smug smile curling at the corners of her lips, as if she'd expected this all along.
I lowered my head and looked at Felix in silence.
When he was two, he'd been so fragile. He cried in the middle of the night constantly, sometimes burning with fever. The doctor said it was probably because he'd lost his mother—he had no sense of security.
It broke my heart. I held him through the night, every night, rocking him to sleep.
When he got sick, I stayed up without rest, watching over him, making one nutritious meal after another, trying anything to get him to eat.
Felix had grown up in my arms. There was even a time when he clung to me, refusing to let go.
But this child I'd loved as my own, together with his father, had treated me like a fool.