Chương 2
Victoria looked at him. “Why are you closing those?”
“No reason for the neighbors to watch,” he said.
“Oh, so now I’m a spectacle?”
“No one said that.”
“You closed the doors.”
“Yes.”
“That says it.”
Daniel exhaled and glanced toward Emma’s cheek.
Alexander was still holding Noah.
“Daniel,” he said, “call Dr. Lewis.”
Victoria’s eyes narrowed. “No.”
Alexander looked at her.
“You’re not calling anyone.”
“Victoria.”
“I said no.”
“She needs a doctor,” Emma said before she could stop herself.
Three faces turned toward her.
Emma immediately regretted speaking.
She was twenty-eight years old. She had worked in private homes for six years and knew the survival rules better than anyone. Employees did not diagnose employers. Employees did not comment on marriages. Employees did not confuse access with belonging.
Most importantly, employees did not become morally courageous five minutes before rent was due.
Victoria stared at her.
“You’re fired.”
Emma felt something drop inside her.
The mortgage did not care whether an employer had slapped you.
Neither did the hospital billing office that had been sending her father pale blue envelopes for the last eleven months.
Alexander shifted Noah higher on his shoulder.
“You’re not firing anyone.”
“It’s my house.”
“Our house.”
“She just accused me of trying to kill my child.”
Alexander’s expression changed at the word my.
Emma noticed it.
Victoria noticed that Emma noticed it.
For months, Noah had been “the baby” when Victoria was angry, “your son” when she was angry with Alexander, and “my beautiful boy” when there were guests.
Emma had never heard her call him my child while the two of them were alone.
Daniel pulled out his phone.
Victoria’s voice sharpened. “Who are you calling?”
“The doctor.”
“Put it away.”
“No.”
The answer came so calmly that Victoria actually blinked.
Daniel walked toward the library for privacy.
Victoria turned back to Alexander.
“You’re going to believe the maid?”
Emma looked down.
There it was.
Not Emma.
Not the woman who had woken Noah at two in the morning when he had a fever because Victoria had taken a sleeping pill and Alexander was in Dallas. Not the person who knew he refused mashed peas unless sweet potato was mixed into them. Not the person whose fingers he grabbed while bottles warmed.
The maid.
Alexander stared at Victoria.
“I believe what I walked into.”
“You walked into her grabbing the bassinet.”
“With her face already red?”
“She could have hit herself.”
Emma looked up.
Victoria seemed to hear how absurd it sounded only after she had said it.
Alexander did not answer.
That silence hurt her more than argument might have.
She looked toward Emma.
For a second, something almost pleading entered her eyes.
Emma had seen that expression once before, three weeks earlier, after Victoria had shouted at Noah for waking during a lunch with two board members’ wives.
Emma had taken him upstairs.
Ten minutes later, Victoria appeared in the nursery doorway.
She had looked exhausted, smaller somehow without the sharpness in her voice.
“I’m not good at this,” she had whispered.
Emma, trying to be kind, had said, “Nobody is good at it every day.”
Victoria had stared at the floor.
Then she had asked Emma not to tell Alexander about the shouting.
Emma had agreed.
She remembered that now because the chandelier above them made the same faint electrical hum it had made that afternoon.
She wished she could take that agreement back.
Daniel returned.
“Dr. Lewis is coming.”
Victoria folded her arms.
“Fine. Let him come. Then when he tells all of you I’m not insane, I’d like an apology.”
“No one called you insane,” Alexander said.
“You didn’t need to.”
Noah whimpered against him.
Victoria flinched.
It was small.
Almost nothing.
Emma saw it anyway.
Alexander did too.
He began walking toward the family room.
Victoria blocked him.
“Where are you taking him?”
“Somewhere else.”
“He needs his nap.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know his schedule.”
Emma expected Alexander to defend himself.
Instead he said, “You’re right.”
Victoria seemed briefly disarmed.
“I don’t,” he continued. “Emma does.”
The words landed harder than he intended.
Emma saw it immediately.
Victoria’s face emptied.
Alexander saw it a second later.
He closed his eyes for the briefest moment, not in regret exactly, but recognition.
There were problems in this house that had begun long before a bassinet moved across marble.
“Emma,” he said, “would you come with me?”
She hesitated.
Victoria laughed once.
“Of course.”
Alexander stopped.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Make this uglier.”
Victoria looked at him for several seconds.
Then she walked away.
Her silver heels struck the marble in clean, measured beats.
At the bottom of the main staircase she stopped, turned, and said, “You should all be very careful about what you say happened.”
Then she climbed the stairs.
Emma waited until Victoria disappeared.
Only then did she realize she was shaking.
Alexander took Noah into the family room. Emma followed and closed the door behind them.
The room was warmer than the foyer, paneled in pale oak, with books no one seemed to read arranged by color on two walls. A cartoon giraffe lay sideways on the rug beside a coffee table worth more than Emma’s car.
Alexander sat on the sofa with Noah.
The baby had stopped crying but continued gripping his father’s tie in one fist.
Emma stood near the door.
“Sit down,” Alexander said.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re bleeding.”
Emma touched the inside of her mouth with her tongue.
“It’s nothing.”
“That wasn’t nothing.”
She looked away.
Alexander removed his tie from Noah’s grip and loosened it.
Emma had seen Alexander make billion-dollar decisions on conference calls with less discomfort than he seemed to feel now.
“Has she hit you before?”
“No.”
“Has she pushed him before?”
Emma did not answer quickly enough.
Alexander looked at her.
“Emma.”
“No.”
Something in his shoulders eased.
She hated herself for causing that relief.
“But there were other things.”
His shoulders tightened again.
May you like
“What things?”
Emma rubbed her palms against her apron.
