Chương 4
“No. It’s what I told myself.”
A machine in the corridor began to beep. Someone laughed near the nurses’ station, then hushed himself. The ordinary sounds made the room feel more exposed.
Julian rubbed one thumb against the chair arm.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did.”
“You just said you didn’t.”
“I told you the safe version.”
“Why?”
Mara looked at him.
“Because you were going to marry her. Because every person in that house knew it. Because I had been employed for nine weeks and she had been choosing flowers for the chapel. Because when I said Lila seemed nervous around her, you asked whether Lila might be reacting to change.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“I remember.”
“So do I.”
He stood and walked to the window. The hospital parking structure filled most of the view. A man in green scrubs stood beside a concrete column eating crackers from a vending-machine packet.
Julian watched him for longer than the sight deserved.
“I thought I was being measured.”
“You were being comfortable.”
He turned.
“That was unkind.”
“Yes.”
Mara did not take it back.
The social worker arrived twenty minutes later. Her name was Dana Ruiz, and she wore a cardigan with one cuff stretched wider than the other. She asked Julian to leave the room while she spoke with Mara.
He did not argue, which Mara counted as the first useful thing he had done since ending the engagement.
Dana’s questions were practical. Who slept where? Who had regular access to Lila? Were there weapons in the house? Who supervised bath time? What happened when Lila misbehaved? Did Mara believe Julian could keep Celeste away?
“I believe he intends to.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Mara almost smiled despite herself.
“I don’t know yet.”
Dana wrote that down.
Lila woke near dusk and vomited once, which brought the doctor back and extended the observation. A scan was discussed and then judged unnecessary after another neurological examination. She cried when Julian tried to wipe her mouth, then apologized to him.
The apology nearly undid him.
“You don’t say sorry for being sick,” he told her.
She looked at Mara for confirmation.
“That’s right,” Mara said.
Lila lay back. “Can I say sorry for the dress?”
“No,” Mara and Julian answered together.
The child’s eyes moved between them.
After a moment, she said, “That was loud.”
It was the first hint of her ordinary self, and Mara laughed before she could stop. Julian made a sound that might have been a laugh too, though it broke in the middle.
They brought Lila home after ten that night.
Bellweather House looked different with most of its lights off. During the day, the neoclassical façade invited admiration. At night, the aligned windows resembled shut eyes.
Henry Keating met them beneath the portico. He was a broad man who had managed security for the estate since before Julian inherited it. He gave Mara a written list of the locks and codes changed, along with the names of the three staff members authorized to admit visitors after hours.
“Miss Ashford’s name has been removed,” he said.
Julian looked at Mara, not Henry.
“It’s in writing.”
Mara folded the paper and slipped it into her apron pocket.
Lila would not enter through the central hall because the marble there shone like the music salon floor. She stopped on the threshold, one shoe suspended above the pale stone.
“No.”
Julian glanced at Mara.
“There’s a service entrance through the kitchen,” she said.
He nodded.
They walked around the eastern side of the house in the cool dark. Julian carried Lila, though she held one fist closed around Mara’s collar. Near the kitchen door, a motion light came on and revealed three moths beating themselves against the glass.
Mrs. Bell, the housekeeper, had left soup warming on the stove. She stood beside it in a robe beneath her coat, gray hair pinned in a careless knot.
“How is she?”
“Bruised,” Julian said. “No broken bones.”
Mrs. Bell crossed herself so quickly she seemed embarrassed afterward.
Lila asked for toast and ate half a piece at the servants’ table while Julian sat beside her. He had probably not used that table since childhood. He kept looking at its scratched surface as if surprised that a piece of Bellweather House could show ordinary damage.
Mara carried Lila upstairs by the back stairs.
At the nursery door, Julian said, “I’ll stay outside.”
Mara did not know whether he meant to respect the child’s fear or whether he feared being refused again. Either way, she let him.
Lila slept in Mara’s bed instead of her own.
At two in the morning, she woke and said, “I didn’t put the bird in my pocket.”
“I know.”
“It was under the piano.”
“I know.”
“I picked it up because nobody saw it.”
Mara brushed hair from her damp forehead.
“That was kind.”
“The blue lady said it was hers.”
“She was wrong to hurt you.”
Lila was quiet.
“Is wrong the same as bad?”
Mara had once believed children asked simple questions. Working with Lila had corrected that.
“Sometimes people do a bad thing,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you have to decide everything about them tonight.”
“Will she come back?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
Mara looked toward the dark nursery door.
Promises made by employees in other people’s houses were delicate things. She had learned that early. Her mother had cleaned rooms at a hotel in Providence and refused to promise anything she could not purchase, repair, or personally carry.
“I promise I won’t let her near you,” Mara said.
It was narrower than the promise Lila wanted.
It was also true.
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The next morning, two police officers came to Bellweather House.
They did not arrive with lights or sirens. One was a woman in her fifties who carried a paper cup of coffee. The other was young enough that he looked briefly impressed by the carved ceiling in the central hall before remembering not to be.
