Chương 4
“Then count the towels after I leave.”
She turned and walked toward the stairs.
Behind her, Lillian said, “What did you say?”
Claire kept walking.
Her knees trembled on the first three steps.
By the fifth, they stopped.
Her room was not really a room.
It had once been called a staff suite, according to Lillian, though no live-in staff had used it in years. Claire did not live there either. The narrow bedroom off the second-floor service corridor was where she changed into the uniform Lillian required and kept spare shoes, toiletries, aspirin, a cardigan, and occasionally food she did not want to leave in the shared refrigerator downstairs.
Claire closed the door and leaned against it.
Then she cried.
Quietly, angrily, for perhaps forty seconds.
She covered her mouth with one hand because making noise felt like allowing the house to hear her.
When the tears stopped, she became annoyed with herself for having cried at all.
She pulled the gray dress over her head and stood in her underwear beside the narrow bed, breathing harder than the physical effort required.
Her black jeans were folded in the bottom drawer.
A green sweatshirt lay on the chair.
She dressed quickly, wiped mascara from beneath one eye with the corner of a towel, then sat down to put on her sneakers.
Her hands stopped at the laces.
Yesterday.
Four twenty.
The black object in Lillian’s hand.
Claire had not merely seen it.
She had seen where Lillian came from.
The library.
A room Lillian claimed had been locked.
Claire stood.
Her first instinct was to go back downstairs immediately.
Her second was stronger.
Don’t.
She had spent a year learning that information inside the Mercer house was dangerous in ways ordinary information was not.
A coffee cup on the wrong desk could become proof somebody had been in a room.
A missing charger could become a forty-minute discussion about boundaries.
Once, Graham had asked Claire whether she had moved a folder from the library desk. She had said no. Lillian had walked in halfway through the conversation and asked why he was “dragging Claire into private matters.”
Afterward, Lillian had found Claire polishing the dining table and said, pleasantly, “It’s healthier when employees don’t become confidantes.”
Claire had not known what to say.
So she had said, “Yes, ma’am.”
The next morning, Lillian gave her a two-hundred-dollar Christmas bonus three weeks early.
Claire remembered thinking the timing was strange.
She had deposited the money.
Now, sitting on the little bed with one shoelace tied and the other loose, Claire felt ashamed of the memory, though she could not explain exactly why.
A knock came at the door.
She stood.
“Who is it?”
“Graham.”
She exhaled.
“I’m changing.”
“I’ll wait.”
Claire looked around the room.
Her canvas tote sat beside the dresser.
She shoved her toiletries inside, added her spare shoes, zipped the bag, then opened the door.
Graham stood in the service hallway.
He had removed his suit jacket. His dark-brown shirt sleeves were still buttoned at the wrists. The small change made him look less formal and more tired.
He held nothing in his hands.
“Did she send you?”
“No.”
“Did she fire me?”
“She believes she did.”
Claire stared.
“That sounds like something rich people say when they don’t know who signs the checks.”
Graham rubbed his forehead.
“Fair.”
“Do I still have a job or not?”
He was silent too long.
Claire laughed once.
It contained no humor.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to answer before I know what happened.”
“My employment is not a murder trial.”
“No.”
“If your wife says I’m fired, I’m not coming here tomorrow unless somebody tells me in writing that I’m supposed to.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“Thank you.”
He winced slightly.
Claire did not apologize.
“What did you see yesterday?” he asked.
She looked at him.
“You said five minutes.”
“It’s been four.”
Despite herself, Claire glanced at the clock on the wall.
Graham noticed.
“Lillian was right about that.”
“I hate both of you.”
The words escaped before she could stop them.
Graham blinked.
Claire covered her face with one hand.
“I’m sorry.”
A surprising sound came from him.
A laugh.
Brief, exhausted, genuine.
Claire lowered her hand.
“I didn’t mean—”
“You probably did.”
“No.”
“It’s fine.”
“That phrase means nothing.”
“Also fair.”
The tension loosened for one second.
Then Claire remembered why he was standing there.
She sat on the edge of the bed.
“Yesterday I was cleaning the upstairs hall. Your wife came out of the library.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“The door was locked when I got home.”
“She locked it.”
“You saw her?”
Claire nodded.
“She had the little black thing in her hand. I didn’t know what it was. The red light was on.”
“Did she see you?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“She asked why I was upstairs.”
Graham frowned.
“You work upstairs.”
“That’s what I said.”
“And?”
“She told me to finish downstairs instead.”
“That’s it?”
Claire looked at the floor.
“No.”
“What else?”
“She asked whether I had been in the library.”
“What did you say?”
“The truth. I said no.”
“And then?”
“She stood there for a while.”
“Doing what?”
“Nothing.”
Graham waited.
Claire hated that he was good at waiting.
“She put it in her pocket,” Claire said. “Whatever it was. Then she asked about my dad.”
His eyebrows moved.
“My dad had surgery in June.”
“I remember.”
Claire nodded.
“She asked if he was working again. If I was still helping him.”
Graham looked toward the closed door at the end of the service hallway.
“That’s strange.”
“She asks me things.”
“About your father?”
“Not usually.”
“What did you think?”
“I thought she was trying to be nice.”
“Did it feel nice?”
Claire gave him a look.
He accepted it.
“Right.”
“She gave me an advance once.”
“An advance?”
“Last winter.”
His expression changed.
Claire immediately regretted mentioning it.
“How much?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How much, Claire?”
May you like
“Three thousand.”
Graham stared at her.
