Babysitter Story Prompt Beginning

She crept quietly down the stairs leading back to the kitchen. The baby had finally fallen into a deep enough sleep for her to leave the room. The clock on the microwave said it was half past eleven, but the heavily detailed instructions Mrs. Aspen left on the counter gave notice that all the clocks in the house were fifteen minutes fast. That still meant she had missed the first fifteen minutes of her show.

         Sighing, Leslie hoped her mom had remembered not to mess with the TiVo tonight. She would have to catch up on her TV time later. She padded barefoot through the kitchen and glimpsed into the dimly lit master bedroom. Four year old Riley was still fast asleep in his parent’s room, books scattered across the thick white comforter. “Who would want a white comforter?” she murmured to the Aspen’s rotund old cat. The cat had been following her all night, watching her carefully, almost distrusting.

Leslie continued down the hallway, passing a well cleaned laundry room and what seemed to be a coat closet, despite its enormity. On her left, a dark room with glass double doors revealed a bright computer screen. She looked back down the hall, listened for a moment to the silence of the children and then pressed a hand gently to the cracked office door, pushing it open. As she did, the cat nipped her ankle gently. “Ow, you big sourpuss!” she frowned at the cat. “What’s your deal anyway?”

She reached down to rub her ankle softly but didn’t stop her nosy journey into the office. She sat down in the big leather office chair and relaxed, glancing around the room. It was well used, messier than all the other rooms. Judging by the general disarray of things it seemed as if the cleaning lady never came in here. “I wonder why.” She said aloud, curious.

The computer was locked, but she landed on “Riley” after a few misguided attempts at unlocking the main account. Smiling to herself, Leslie went straight for the pictures. There were a few albums full of family oriented pictures. One of Mrs. Aspen and her son at the zoo, one of and exhausted Mrs. Aspen holding their tiny second child only four months before now in the hospital after delivery. The last album, comprised of about twenty photos, consisted of Mrs. Aspen staring longingly at the camera in various suggestive poses in the living room and master bedroom, wearing a silky crimson nightgown. “I knew she was a minx.” Leslie looked down at the cat again. He was grooming himself methodically; a vain and annoyed look in his eyes.

Leslie exited out of the pictures folder and went to documents. Tons of Mr. Aspen’s work popped up. Taxes, billing, Power Point projects, and a bunch of other boring things popped up. She scrolled through this quickly before going to the internet. She looked up the history and found mostly email and search engine websites. “He’s smarter than I thought.” He must be on top of cleaning up after himself on the computer, despite the look of the rest of the office.

         She checked the drawers of the desk, finding absolutely nothing of interest. Anything interesting must have been kept in the last drawer, which was locked with no key in sight. She let her imagination run for a bit, wondering what could be in it. She sighed again, knowing she wouldn’t find out tonight.

The snoop in her had not subsided though, so she checked the recycle bin on the computer, finding it freshly emptied. Then she took a final half-hearted stab at the Downloads file. Here she found a mother lode of files with suspicious names suggesting porn. She double clicked one and a popup bolted to life, a loud noise filling the room. She darted the mouse down to mute the volume. “Yikes,” she exclaimed, “Surround sound.”

The popup rudely announced it’s inability to open the file, saying it was no longer available.

“Shit,” Leslie exclaimed under her breath. “He sure is a sneaky old man.” She grinned to herself. Mr. Aspen was far from old, probably in his early forties. He was easy on the eyes, had a chiseled jaw line with dark wavy hair. She’d say his wife was lucky, but Mrs. Aspen was quite lovely herself, especially in the silky nightgown pictures. Feeling frisky, she plugged a zip drive in and stole copies of Mrs. Aspen’s dirty pictures. “These might come in handy.”

She scrolled through the Downloads one last time and noticed that the last file had a different icon than the others. Titled “myLS,” the file intrigued her. She opened it and gasped, surprised at the photo. It was a scanned in copy of a black and white photo. The picture was of a young woman, maybe early twenties. She bore an alarming likeness to Leslie herself. She studied the details of the photo. There was a tree behind the woman, and she had short fair hair and held a book in her gloved hands. She was dressed nicely, as if she was going somewhere formal. The book had a tiny cross embellished in the bottom right corner. “A Bible?” She thought aloud.

She thought she might know that bible from somewhere, but then again it could just be a common copy. She could’ve seen it anywhere. She zoomed in on the face. It definitely resembled hers. Leslie looked like her mother. “But… mom’s name is Eloise.” She tried hard to figure out the meaning of the picture. She copied the file into her zip drive. “My L. S.” she shook her head.

Leslie heard a cry, and she quickly ejected her zip drive and logged out, practically racing across the house and up the stairs. She didn’t want both kids to wake up. “Rosie, why won’t you sleep?” She cooed to the four month old, scooping her up to rock her in the chair by the window. This room was so much neater than the office had been. Very organized and usefully furnished with a crib, changing table, dresser, and rocking chair only. That’s all a baby this age needed, after all.

She hummed a soft song to the baby, which seemed to do the trick. From the window, she could see the Aspen’s luxury car pulling into the garage. “Finally,” she whispered to herself as she placed the baby back in her crib and went back down towards the kitchen. The clock revealed she had spent more than an hour in the office snooping.

The Aspens were already coming in through the garage as she straightened herself out, trying to look presentable. She slipped her shoes back on, unwilling to look too comfortable in their home. This was the first time she had been here to babysit and she wanted to come back. She was sure the pay would be good, and she had to find out more about this peculiar picture, after all.

“Hello, darling, did the kids do alright tonight?” Mrs. Aspen came over to greet Leslie warmly. A twinkle in her eye and a faint scent about her gave hints at a relaxing tipsy evening date with her husband, who hung back at the door. “Ready to go?” his whisper was deep and sleepy, as if he would rather be crawling into bed than taking a babysitter home.

Leslie swallowed, feeling a sudden lack of words. She looked back at Mrs. Aspen and smiled. “It was wonderful. Riley passed out on your bed though, sorry it’s a mess in there. He insisted on sleeping there instead of his room and…”

“Oh, it’s alright, I’ll take care of it.” Mrs. Aspen cut off Leslie’s rambling. “He’s been going through a phase, wanting to be in our room. I think because of the baby. I should’ve put that in the instructions.” Leslie felt bad mentioning anything that made Mrs. Aspen feel like she hadn’t been clear enough. “No, no. Your instructions were very helpful, Mrs. Aspen. I’d love to come and babysit again sometime.” She began edging towards the garage door.

“Call me Robin. And of course, we’ll call you when we need you, darling. Have a good night.” Robin took her coat off and went down the hall to put it away in her massive coatroom. “Come on, let’s get you home. It’s late.” Mr. Aspen took initiative, leading her out to the car. It was still running, driver’s side door open. “It looks like we’re all ready for this night to be over.” Leslie noticed aloud.

Mr. Aspen laughed, opening the other door for her. “They weren’t that bad, were they?” His eyes shined with the same tipsy mischief as Robin’s had. Leslie slid into the leather seat. It was warm and made her feel sleepy. “Oh no, they were cool. Riley has a wild imagination, time flew by really fast.” Shit. She really wanted them to think of her next time they needed a sitter. She didn’t want to mess this up.

He closed her door and ran around to the driver’s side. “He’s been talking everyone’s ear off lately about dinosaurs. I don’t know what made him fall in love with it.” Mr. Aspen laughed again. Leslie smiled. She liked his laugh, his tired and low voice. She nodded, “Yeah, he made me read dinosaur books for half an hour before he finally crashed out.”