You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone by Kevin O'Brien

and none lasting very long, because Evelyn didn’t get along with any of them.
    One of the nannies got fired late in January while Luke was at an out-of-town opening for a new play. Damon was two at the time. The woman called Luke after it happened.
    â€œI came over there at eight in the morning,” she said. “And Mrs. Shuler was in the kitchen having coffee. The baby was screaming upstairs. I found him in his crib with a wet diaper on—and nothing else, not even a blanket. He must have been marinating in that wet diaper all night. And all the windows in the nursery were open, Mr. Shuler. I could see my breath when I stepped inside the room. If that poor, sweet baby catches pneumonia, you can blame her. I’ve never seen anything like it . . .”
    Evelyn maintained that the woman was lying—just trying to stir up trouble because she’d been fired. “Maybe if you were home—for a change—you’d see how lousy she was at her job. You have no idea what’s happening here. You’ve been gone for the last two weeks! What kind of husband and father are you anyway? Goddamn you for believing her lies and taking her side in this!”
    Luke called a moratorium on his traveling. He hired an au pair—a smart, resourceful fifty-two-year-old widow who agreed to let them install a nanny cam in the nursery.
    Evelyn continued to smother Luke with so much affection and attention that it became exasperating. She never left him alone. She was jealous of the time he spent writing and with their son. She was oddly cold toward Damon and talked about sending him to boarding school as soon as he was old enough. She and Luke quarreled about it.
    The irony was that little Damon adored her. He was always reaching out to her, smiling at her, trying to catch her eye. After starting school, whenever he came home with a gold star on his paper or a drawing, he’d always go to his mother first to show her what he’d done. Half the time, Evelyn would practically brush him off. Luke could do cartwheels over Damon’s smallest accomplishment, and it still didn’t seem to fulfill a need in his son. Like a faithful puppy that got kicked around by its owner, Damon kept coming back to his mother for the small crumbs of approval and affection she dished out.
    By the time their son was thirteen, Luke had completely fallen out of love with Evelyn—and she knew it.
    But he stayed with her for Damon’s sake, and threw himself into his work. On the surface, they were an ideal couple. There was even a brief profile of them in People magazine’s “Sexiest, Happiest Couples” issue. But they both were miserable. While he’d resigned himself to their situation, Evelyn became frustrated, bitter, and a little crazy. Luke wanted to go to couples counseling, but Evelyn refused. “I had my fill of headshrinkers in college, thank you very much,” she snapped back at his suggestion. “And by the way, if you think you’re going to leave me, you can just forget it. I’ll get custody of our son. And I can afford the best, most ruthless divorce attorney in the business. You won’t even get visitation rights . . .”
    â€œI never said I was going to leave you, Evelyn,” he replied calmly. All her threats weren’t going to change the fact that he didn’t love her anymore. He wanted to tell her that, but instead, he asked, “What happened in college that you ended up having to get some psychiatric help?”
    Evelyn didn’t want to talk about it.
    â€œShe had sort of a nervous breakdown,” Cynthia Werth-Hyland told him over a clandestine brunch at Anthony’s Pier 66. Luke had contacted Evelyn’s longtime friend and asked if they could meet in private. Thanks to his carefully worded questions, and a couple of glasses of Chardonnay with her salmon cakes, Cynthia was in a talkative mood.
    â€œYou mean, she didn’t tell you about