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PAGE 1
My name is Ricardo Mendoza Albuquerque. I am thirty-six years old.
A little over a year ago, I watched the woman I loved die in a hospital bed.
Her name was Claris.
She was thirty-four.
Cancer took her from us in six brutal months.
Before that, I had believed money could solve almost anything.
I was the founder of Mantec, a technology company that had grown faster than I ever imagined. By the time I was thirty-five, the company was valued at more than one billion reais.
I owned a mansion in Morumbi, luxury cars, properties I rarely visited, and bank accounts large enough to make most problems disappear.
But cancer didn’t care.
It didn’t care about my company.
It didn’t care about my money.
It didn’t care how many doctors I could afford.
And when Claris died, I discovered something I had never understood before.
There are problems money cannot even touch.
After her funeral, our house changed.
It wasn’t just quieter.
It felt abandoned.
The kitchen where Claris used to sing while making breakfast became a room nobody wanted to enter.
Her favorite mug remained on the shelf for months.
Her perfume still lingered in the bedroom.
Sometimes I would walk past her closet and catch myself expecting to hear her voice.
Then I would remember.
She was gone.
But I wasn’t alone.
I had six daughters.
Mariana was twelve.
Laura was ten.
Julia was nine.
Sofia was eight.
The twins, Beatriz and Bianca, were six.
And little Isabela was only three.
Six girls.
Six different kinds of grief.
And one father who had absolutely no idea how to help them.
Mariana became the leader.
She had always been intelligent, but after her mother’s death, something hardened inside her.
On the day of Claris’s funeral, while everyone was crying around us, Mariana took my hand and whispered something I would never forget.
“No woman will ever replace Mom.”
I knelt beside her.
“I know.”
“No woman,” she repeated.
“I promise nobody will replace her.”
She looked directly into my eyes.
“Then don’t bring another woman into this house.”
I thought she was speaking from grief.
I didn’t understand then how seriously she meant it.
The first nanny arrived three days later.
She lasted four hours.
The second lasted one day.
The third quit after the twins filled her handbag with flour.
The fourth discovered a dead cockroach inside her coffee cup.
The fifth woke up to find all her shoes glued together.
By the time we reached nanny number ten, I stopped asking questions.
By number twenty, I stopped getting angry.
By number thirty, I stopped believing the situation could be fixed.
And then came number thirty-seven.
She lasted less than twenty minutes.
She ran out of the house crying.
Her uniform had been stained with green dye.
Her hair had somehow turned bright green.
Beatriz and Bianca stood at the upstairs window laughing.
I watched the woman get into her taxi.
Then I closed my eyes.
Thirty-seven.
Thirty-seven women had entered my house.
Thirty-seven had left.
And every one of them had said some version of the same thing.
“Those girls don’t need a nanny.”
“They need their mother.”
But their mother was dead.
And I couldn’t bring her back.
That afternoon, my assistant Augusto entered my office carrying a folder.
He looked exhausted.
“Mr. Mendoza.”
I didn’t look up.
“What?”
“There are no agencies left.”
I finally raised my eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ve contacted every agency willing to work with us.”
“And?”
“They’ve refused.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“All of them?”
Augusto nodded.
“Apparently, you’re officially considered an impossible placement.”
I looked toward the window.
Outside, six children were supposed to be playing in the garden.
Instead, they were hiding behind bushes, watching each other like soldiers preparing for battle.
I rubbed my face.
“What am I supposed to do?”
Augusto hesitated.
“There is another option.”
“What?”
“We hire a housekeeper.”
I laughed bitterly.
“A housekeeper won’t fix this.”
“No,” he said quietly. “But perhaps she can keep the house functioning until we find something else.”
I stared at the empty hallway beyond my office.
Then I heard something crash.
A few seconds later, Bianca screamed with laughter.
I closed my eyes.
“Call whoever will come.”
I had no idea that those words would change all of our lives.
