My anxieties usually emerge in the middle of the night. I wake with wide-open eyes and a fast-beating heart, and the house is eerily silent except for the slow, deep breaths of my husband’s sleeping form beside me. My mind begins to churn, spinning dire thoughts about our finances or, even worse, the next day’s tasks.
Lately, however, the night wakings find my thoughts spiraling about Jenny, our former nanny. My children are years past needing a nanny, but you can never forget a person who loved your children well.
In the middle of the night, I wonder whether Jenny is working, how she’s faring, whether her daughter completed her college studies. I last connected with Jenny when I provided a reference for her a few months ago. But in the deep of the small hours, I think paranoid, disjointed thoughts: What if someone traces my texts to her and they somehow find her? Jenny is an undocumented immigrant.
