Chương 6
Her eyes flashed. “I did not begin working here as an investigator.”
Victor stepped back.
She closed the suitcase. “I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t apologize.”
“I should have copied the notes.”
“You should never have needed them.”
Clara looked around the room. Her few personal things had already disappeared into luggage. A paperback lay on the windowsill beside a chipped blue mug. There were no photographs, no decorations, nothing that would be difficult to carry down a staircase.
Victor thought of Margaret describing her as a woman with no family and no standing.
“What does your agency know?” he asked.
“Only what your mother told them.”
“Did you report the bruise?”
“I called my coordinator after it happened.”
“And?”
“She said Mrs. Vale had already reported that I became physically aggressive during a disagreement. I was told not to return after the end of today’s shift.”
“Did you tell her you had been struck?”
Clara folded her arms. “I started to. She reminded me that the Vale account places six people and that the agency has a legal department.”
Victor pulled out his phone.
“Do not call them now,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because you are angry.”
“I am capable of making a telephone call while angry.”
“That is probably what worries everyone who works for you.”
He looked at her.
She looked back, then seemed surprised by her own honesty.
Victor put the phone away. “All right.”
Clara sat on the edge of the bed. The controlled stillness left her shoulders.
“I knew staying was wrong,” she said. “Every week, I told myself I needed one more clear incident. Something no one could explain away. Then I told myself leaving would make it worse because the next person might not see what was happening.”
“You should have come to me.”
“I did.”
He winced.
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, careful of the bruise. “I should have gone around you. To Dr. Hale. To his school counselor. To the county. I kept thinking I could manage it inside the house.”
“So did I,” Victor said.
Clara lowered her hands.
They sat in the silence of a room that was no longer quite hers.
A car moved along the gravel drive outside. Headlights passed across the ceiling and disappeared.
“My friend is coming,” Clara said.
“You can stay tonight.”
“No.”
“Margaret is gone.”
“That does not make the house safe for me.”
The statement hurt more because it was practical rather than dramatic.
Victor nodded.
“I’ll have Thomas drive you.”
“I called a rideshare.”
“It is raining.”
“Cars work in rain.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
For a moment, he thought she was teasing him. Then he saw the faintest trace of dry humor in her face.
“Occasionally,” he said.
The intercom chimed downstairs.
Clara lifted the canvas tote. Victor reached for the suitcase, but she took it first.
“I can carry it.”
“I did not think you couldn’t.”
“People in this house often help after they have already decided what help should look like.”
Victor let go.
At Ethan’s door, Clara paused. She did not enter. She stood listening to his breathing through the wood.
“Will you tell him I said good night?”
“He will want to know when you are coming back.”
“I don’t know.”
“You promised to stay until he came back.”
“He came back.”
Victor disliked the precision of that answer.
She looked at him. “Do not ask him to choose between me and his grandmother. Even by accident.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You asked whether he felt safe, and he looked at me before answering. You will be tempted to make that mean something about you.”
“It does mean something about me.”
“Yes. But it is not his job to fix it.”
The front door opened below. A young woman’s voice called Clara’s name.
Clara carried her suitcase toward the staircase.
Victor followed as far as the upper landing. Nora waited in the entrance hall beside a woman in a yellow raincoat. The woman’s dark curls were damp around her face. She saw Clara’s bruise and stopped smiling.
“What happened?”
“Later,” Clara said.
The woman looked up at Victor with immediate suspicion.
He did not blame her.
Clara handed Nora the agency identification card from her apron pocket. “They asked me to return this.”
Nora closed Clara’s fingers around it. “Tomorrow.”
“I’m not coming tomorrow.”
Nora’s face tightened.
Clara hugged her quickly, then pulled away before either of them had to decide how emotional staff were permitted to become in the entrance hall.
The young woman took Clara’s suitcase despite Clara’s protest.
At the door, Clara turned toward Victor.
“Keep the ribbon,” she said. “He may ask for it.”
Then she left.
The mansion became quiet in the expensive, unnatural way it had after Anna died. The radiators clicked. Somewhere in the service wing, a dishwasher began its cycle. Rain tapped against the tall windows.
Victor stood beneath the chandelier until Nora shut the front door.
“You should eat,” she said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You are forty years old. That excuse has expired.”
He almost told her not to speak to him that way. Then he remembered Ethan and the lentils.
“Did you see what happened yesterday?” he asked.
Nora folded the dish towel over her hands.
“I heard some of it.”
“What?”
“Your mother told Ethan to stop behaving like a baby. Clara told her to release his arm. There was a sound against the cabinet.”
“Did you enter?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Nora looked toward the staircase. “Because your mother told me to stay in the kitchen earlier. Because I have worked here fourteen years. Because my husband’s medication is paid through the insurance I receive from this job. Choose the answer you dislike least.”
Victor had no response.
“She came to the kitchen afterward,” Nora said. “Clara’s eye was red. Your mother said there had been an accident. Clara said nothing.”
“And today?”
May you like
“Your mother asked for the key to Clara’s room.”
“You gave it to her?”
