Chương 2
His seven-year-old son was shaking three feet away.
He put the phone into his inside jacket pocket.
“Noah, where do you want to go?”
The boy looked confused by the question.
“Go?”
“For a little while. Your room, the kitchen, the den.”
Noah glanced at Vanessa.
“Maya's room.”
Vanessa's mouth opened.
Ethan raised a hand.
Not at her. Just enough.
“Maya?”
She nodded.
“I'll stay with him.”
Vanessa gave another short laugh.
“You're actually doing this.”
Ethan ignored her.
Maya led Noah toward the staff corridor. The boy kept one hand in hers and looked back twice. Both times, he checked where Vanessa was standing.
Ethan noticed.
He wished he hadn't.
When the door at the end of the corridor closed, Vanessa said, “You have no idea what you've just done.”
Ethan took off his suit jacket.
The movement was ordinary enough to make her pause.
He had flown back early because a Sunday afternoon meeting had been canceled. He had expected to find Noah finishing homework or trying to convince Maya that frozen yogurt counted as dinner. He had expected Vanessa to be leaving for a benefit in Midtown. The red dress made sense now. The earrings, the makeup, the car that was probably waiting downstairs.
He laid the jacket across a narrow console table.
The phone stayed in his pocket.
“What did Maya do?”
Vanessa looked toward the closed corridor door.
“Give me the phone first.”
“No.”
“It's mine.”
“Noah recorded it.”
“On a device I bought.”
Ethan almost smiled, not because anything was funny but because the argument was so absurdly familiar. Ownership. Control. Technicalities. They had spent the last year having conversations in which the subject changed but the structure didn't.
“Then you can ask a lawyer who owns it.”
Her face changed.
There it was.
Not shock.
Recognition.
“You've already decided what this is.”
“I heard you tell someone to blame Maya if Noah told me the truth.”
“You heard eleven seconds.”
“I heard enough to ask you what happened.”
“And I told you. You don't know what she did.”
“So tell me.”
Vanessa looked at him for a long time.
Then she walked past him into the sitting room.
Ethan followed.
She did not sit. Neither did he.
The room looked untouched, which irritated him. The books arranged by color, the pale sofa nobody liked, the bowl of lemons one of the housekeepers replaced every few days even though nobody ate them. Manhattan moved beyond the windows, bright and distant, people driving, walking, ordering lunch, having ordinary arguments that did not involve a seven-year-old being instructed to manufacture evidence.
Vanessa removed one earring.
Her hand shook slightly.
“Maya lost Noah in Central Park.”
Ethan stared at her.
“What?”
“Six weeks ago.”
He looked toward the staff corridor instinctively.
“For how long?”
“Long enough.”
“Vanessa.”
“Ninety seconds. Maybe two minutes.”
His stomach tightened.
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there.”
“You were there?”
“I had met them near the playground. Maya was talking to another nanny. Noah went through the gate.”
“Where?”
“Toward the carousel path. He was found near a pretzel cart.”
“Found by who?”
“Me.”
Ethan rubbed his mouth.
“And nobody told me.”
“I told Maya I would handle it.”
“You told her not to tell me.”
Vanessa shrugged.
“I told her I didn't see the point in blowing up the household over something that was already over.”
“That's not your decision.”
“It wasn't your decision either. You were in California.”
He looked at her.
She held his stare.
That was Vanessa's gift when she was cornered. She could make the most accurate sentence in the room do the work of a lie.
“So six weeks later,” Ethan said, “you made Noah record that Maya pushed him.”
“I did not make him.”
“I heard you.”
“You heard me telling him to repeat what he had already said.”
“He said you told him to lie.”
“He's seven.”
The words came out cold.
Vanessa seemed to hear them after she said them.
Her expression flickered.
Ethan's voice lowered.
“Be careful.”
“Oh, stop.”
“Be very careful.”
“He is seven, Ethan. He gets confused. He tells stories. Last month he swore there was a man living in his closet.”
“He was talking about the coat rack.”
“That is not the point.”
“No. The point is that you just used his age to discredit him after using his voice to accuse someone else.”
Vanessa pressed her lips together.
For a second neither spoke.
Outside, a horn sounded somewhere far below.
Ethan could hear the elevator machinery through the wall.
Vanessa put her earring on the coffee table.
“I wanted Maya gone.”
There was no drama in the admission.
That made it worse.
“Why?”
“Because she has no boundaries.”
“She takes care of our son.”
“She behaves as if she's raising him.”
“She practically is when we're both working.”
The sentence slipped out.
Vanessa's face emptied.
Ethan regretted it immediately.
Not because it was entirely false.
Because it was cruel.
Vanessa looked toward the window.
“You see?”
“That's not what I meant.”
“It is exactly what you meant.”
“I meant we depend on her.”
“You depend on her.”
“We both do.”
“No. I stopped depending on her a long time ago.”
“Then why is she still here?”
Vanessa looked at him again.
“Because every time I suggested replacing her, Noah panicked and you said we shouldn't disrupt his routine.”
Ethan remembered those conversations.
He had treated them like staffing questions.
Vanessa had said Maya was too attached.
Ethan had said Noah loved her.
Vanessa had said that was the problem.
He had laughed once. He remembered that now.
Not kindly.
“You made a false accusation because you're jealous of his nanny?”
Vanessa's nostrils flared.
“You really want to reduce it to that?”
“I want you to explain what I'm missing.”
“You're missing this entire family.”
The sentence was almost soft.
Ethan said nothing.
May you like
Vanessa crossed her arms more tightly.
“You come home with gifts. You know his teacher's name because Maya puts it in your calendar. You know when he has soccer because your assistant reminds you. When he has a fever, Maya sleeps outside his door. When he has nightmares, Maya knows which one before he finishes describing it. When I try to change anything, you ask whether Noah is comfortable, which means you ask whether Maya approves.”
