In was early Sunday morning, I’d changed shift with a colleague and ended up with my first free day in ages. Xander had been up since the wee hours because of work and had set up shop on the dining table since, so not to awaken Eloim who was sleeping in as his father had allowed him to stay up a little later than usual to finish up a movie—which the kid enjoyed doing—because he had been so nice all day. I guessed he would probably grow into a cinephile.

I got up, poured myself a cup of coffee, and went digging for some breakfast.

“Have you eaten already?” I asked Xander.

“No,” she said while typing away.

“You want eggs and croissants?”

“Sure.”

I cooked in silence for a little while, not to bother him at his work, and brought the food on the table a little later.

“Thanks,” he told me as he set his computer aside.

“What type of job do you do?” I asked curiously.

“Consultant in computing crisis management.”

“What does that represent exactly?”

“You know how a lot of big companies, banks, cities, government, and so on, tend to have big servers and computers, infrastructure?”

“Mh-mm,” I acquiesced.

“Well, sometimes those systems go down, maybe it’s a virus, hacking, power shortage, human error, a variety of reasons. Well, I’m the guy they call to either setup things in preparation to those potential situation, or the one who comes in and take care of the mess afterwards, or just put some order back into the whole situation until they can return to their usual day to day.”

“You do this on your own?”

“No,” he said munching on his croissant. “I have a team. Sometimes I go to the location, sometimes I deal with things remotely and rely on my team to do the leg work if any is needed.”

“So it’s like a war-room type team only for computers.”

That made him smile. “It’s exactly like that. Some places even have a war-room-like setup for exactly those kinds of purposes.”

“You look like you really enjoy your job.”

He smiled again. “I do, I like the excitement and the adrenaline rush when there is a situation. I like the responsibility and challenges, I’m never bored with this job, and I’ve never been good with a routine anyways.”

“I can relate, I’ve never been good with routine either.”

“I guess having the soul of an artist tend to do that.”

I smiled. “It does.” I took a few more bites. “So you travel a lot?”

“I used to travel more, but I try not do travel more than once every one or two months, less if I can. It’s easier for Eloim.”

I nodded. “Can I ask what is going on with him?”

He took a bite pensively.

“When he was two,” he told me. “Enola, my wife, left with Eloim in the car. I don’t think he remembers much of it, or at least he hasn’t expressed any of it. But Enola and the car had disappeared from the surface of the earth. I suspected an accident, but as the hours passed by, a few scarier possibilities began to haunt me. Enola has had some severe postpartum depression. We had bought an old house to renovate before Eloim’s birth. We had been both fans of old and historial houses, but this rapidly became too much for her. Nearly everything was too much.

She had been doing a little better for nearly a month then, she was taking medication and had been seeing a therapist for a while and it was starting to show. But then she disappeared with Eloim. The cops thought of kidnapping right away, I didn’t. We traced her steps multiple times, but we found nothing.

A car driver saw one evening a woman on the side of the road and stopped to see if she needed help as it was a desolate part in a dangerous bend, Btu when he got out of the car, he couldn’t find her. He looked everywhere, and eventually saw a headlight reflect his flashlight, amongst the branches, down, low, in the embankment. He called the emergency services, and they found Enola’s car.

It had been a little over two days since the accident had happened. Eloim was miraculously unhurt by the collision with the trees and rocks down there, but he was highly dehydrated and in hypothermia and was transported to the hospital and stayed in intensive care for a little under a week before he could return home.”

“What about Enola?” I asked, my voice somber.

“She had died. Given the state of her injuries and the state of decomposition, killed on impact.”

“What about the woman the driver saw?”

“No one ever found anyone. Cops speculated it was an illusion given the limited visibility, and a miracle it led someone to find the car. Eloim would not have lasted another day, especially with the low nighttime temperatures at that time of the year.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts, if that’s what you’re asking?”

We took a few more bites in silence.

“It has affected Eloim regardless, hasn’t it?” I asked.

Xander signed. “Yeah, he stopped talking for nearly a full year and would go in and out of various levels of catatonic states. He started communicating again after a while. A lot of knocking, a few words, but rarely to anyone other than me or my parents. He wouldn’t look at people in the face, often keeping his back to people, and shying away from physical contact with most people.”

I nodded.

“Well, maybe not anymore.”

I looked up at him. “How so?”

“You’ve seen him for nearly two weeks. He’s chatting, playing, hugging. He adopted you pretty quickly.”

“Which is why you were so open to hiring someone with no credential as a nanny.”

“You have no idea how much of a weight off my shoulders these weeks here have been for me. I want him to have a normal life, to be happy, to go to school, make friends, have a job he loves, a girlfriend, but it’s been so hard for years. I’ve seen a lot of specialists of all kinds, he’s not been open to any of them, but he took an instant liking to you.”

“Well, it wasn’t that instantaneous,” I corrected him.

“For a child who had difficulties connecting with his own father for over a year, a few hours is instantaneous.”

I took my last croissant bite deep in thought.

“Which is why I’m considering Eloim opinion now,” he said putting his utensils back on the table.

“Which?” I asked curiously.

“Two days back. When he refused for me to hire you.”

I felt my eyes widened.

“Look, I know it’s unconventional and everything, or at least in the western world, and feel free to refuse if you’re against the idea, but I’d like it if you heard me out first.”

I blinked a few times, but nodded.