3. Nichole
— ? —
Nichole
The house manager’s name is Mrs. Fairfax, which seems too perfect to be real, like someone named her specifically for this job in this house in this life that doesn’t feel like mine.
She walks me through the halls with the same brisk efficiency she probably uses to organize linen closets, pointing out rooms and rules in the same flat voice.
“The east wing is family quarters. You’ll be in the adjoining room to Miss Olivia’s - there’s a door between, in case she needs you at night. Mr. Lippitt’s suite is at the end of the hall. You won’t have cause to go there.”
I nod because nodding seems to be what she expects.
“Breakfast is at seven. Lunch at noon. Dinner at six, unless Mr. Lippitt is entertaining, which he rarely does, or traveling, which he often does. When he’s away, you’ll take your meals with Olivia in the small dining room.
When he’s here-” She pauses, considering.
“He prefers to eat alone. You’ll manage Olivia’s dinner and put her to bed by eight. ”
“Does he see her? In the evenings, I mean.”
Mrs. Fairfax’s stride doesn’t falter, but something shifts in the set of her shoulders. “Mr. Lippitt is very busy.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She stops then, turning to face me in the middle of a hallway lined with paintings that probably belong in museums. Her eyes are sharp, assessing, the eyes of a woman who has watched a lot of people come and go from this house.
“He’s not cruel,” she says finally. “He’s just… finished. With people.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means don’t expect him at dinner. Don’t expect him at all.” She resumes walking. “The less you expect, the less you’ll be disappointed. That’s true of this house in general.”
I file that away with everything else I’m learning about this place - the coldness of it, the careful distance built into every room.
The way the staff move like ghosts, present and invisible at the same time.
The way the whole house feels like a museum where nothing is touched and nothing is lived in.
“The study is off-limits unless you’re summoned,” Mrs. Fairfax continues. “Don’t speak to Mr. Lippitt unless he speaks first. Don’t ask questions about the family. Don’t-”
“Don’t, don’t, don’t.” The words are out before I can stop them. “Is there anything I’m actually allowed to do?”
She stops again. For a moment I think I’ve crossed a line, but when she turns, there’s something almost like approval in her expression.
“Take care of the child,” she says. “That’s what you’re here for. That’s the only thing that matters.”
She’s right about that, at least.
Olivia finds me an hour later, while I’m still unpacking my single suitcase in the room that’s bigger than my entire apartment back home. She appears in the doorway like she’s been summoned, rabbit in hand, watching me with those dark, serious eyes.
“I can show you the house,” she offers. “If you want.”
“I’d like that.”
And so begins the strangest tour I’ve ever been given.
“This is the room where I’m not allowed,” Olivia says, pointing at a closed door on the second floor. We’ve been walking for twenty minutes, and she hasn’t let go of my hand once.
“Why aren’t you allowed?”
“I don’t know. I asked, but nobody told me.”
“What do you think is in there?”
She considers this with the gravity of a philosopher. “Maybe dragons. Or maybe just boring stuff. Probably boring stuff.”
“Probably,” I agree.
We move on. Down another hallway, past another row of paintings, through a door that leads to a sunroom full of plants that someone else must water because I can’t imagine anyone in this house having time for something as frivolous as caring for living things.
“This is the room where nobody goes,” Olivia says.
“It’s pretty.”
“It’s lonely.” She says it simply, without sadness, like she’s just stating a fact. “Rooms can be lonely, did you know that? If nobody sits in them, they get lonely and then they get cold.”
My chest does that strange, tight thing again. “Is that what happened to this one?”
“I think so. I come and sit in it sometimes, so it’s not so bad. But it’s still pretty cold.”
We keep walking. Through a library that smells like dust and old paper. Past a music room with a piano that looks like it hasn’t been touched in years. Down a back staircase that the staff use, narrower and less polished than the grand one in the front hall.
“This is my favorite window,” Olivia says, stopping at a small alcove overlooking the driveway. The glass is old, wavy, distorting the view just enough to make everything outside look like a watercolor painting. “This is where I watch for Daddy’s car.”
“Does he come home late?”
“Sometimes.” She presses her forehead against the glass. “Sometimes the car doesn’t come at all. But I watch anyway, because maybe today it will.”
I crouch down beside her, bringing myself to her level. Outside, the driveway curves away through the manicured grounds, disappearing behind hedges that look sharp enough to cut.
“My brother used to wait by the window for our mom,” I tell her, not sure why I’m sharing this, only knowing that I want to give her something in return for all these small truths she keeps handing me. “When she was working late. He’d sit there for hours, just watching.”
“Did she come?”
“She always came. Eventually.”
Olivia nods, absorbing this. “Your brother. Is he the sick one?”
“Yes.”
“Is he going to get better?”
The question hits me somewhere soft, somewhere I’ve been protecting. I don’t have an answer for her that isn’t a lie or a prayer.
“I hope so,” I say finally. “I’m going to do everything I can to help him.”
“That’s good.” She reaches out and pats my hand, a gesture so adult and so childish at the same time that I almost laugh. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. Help the people you love.”
We end up in her bathroom an hour later, and I run a bath while she sits on the edge of the tub and tells me about Rabbit’s many adventures.
He’s been to the moon, apparently. And to the bottom of the ocean.
And once he fought a dragon, but it was a nice dragon who just wanted someone to talk to, so they became friends instead.
“Your turn,” she says, when the dragon story is finished. “Tell me a story.”
“I don’t know any good ones.”
“Everyone knows good ones. You just have to remember them.”
So I tell her about the girl who lived in a house made of rain, and the boy who could talk to fish, and the old woman at the end of the world who collected lost things and kept them safe until their owners came back.
I don’t know where the stories come from.
They just appear, like they’ve been waiting inside me for someone who wanted to hear them.
Olivia listens with her whole body, leaning toward me, her bath forgotten, her rabbit propped up on the edge of the tub so he can hear too.
“One more,” she says, when I try to stop.
“One more and then bed.”
“Two more.”
“One more and you don’t argue about teeth brushing.”
She considers this negotiation with the seriousness it deserves. “Deal.”
I’m toweling her hair dry when Mrs. Fairfax appears in the doorway. She watches us for a moment - Olivia on the little stool, me kneeling behind her with the towel, both of us still half in the world of the story I just finished telling.
“Funny,” she says. Her voice is strange, softer than I’ve heard it. “For a second there, in this light - you could be hers.”
I look up, startled. “What?”
“The hair. The way you’re both sitting.” She shakes her head, already dismissing it. “Never mind. Just a trick of the light.”
She’s gone before I can respond, and Olivia is tugging at my sleeve, demanding her one more story, and I file the comment away in the same place I’m keeping everything else I don’t understand about this house.
You could be hers.
It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t mean anything.
Bedtime takes longer than it should, because Olivia demands not one more story but four, and I don’t have it in me to refuse her. She’s so hungry for it - for the attention, for the time, for someone who sits beside her and doesn’t look at their watch.
“Are you staying forever?” she asks again, when the fourth story is done and her eyes are heavy.
“I’m staying for a while.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No. It’s not.”
She’s quiet for a moment, her small hand wrapped around mine in the dark.
“I don’t like forever anyway,” she says finally. “Forever is too long. But a while is nice. A while is good.”
“A while is what we have,” I tell her. “Let’s make it count.”
She falls asleep like that, holding my hand, and I sit beside her bed longer than I need to because leaving feels like breaking something.
When I finally slip out into the hallway, I feel him before I see him.
Callum. Standing in the shadows at the end of the corridor, still in his suit, still wearing that expressionless mask. He’s watching. I don’t know how long he’s been there. I don’t know how much he heard.
“She’s asleep,” I say, because the silence feels like something I should fill.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond. Just stands there in the dark, looking at the closed door of his daughter’s room like it’s something he doesn’t know how to open.
I should go to my own room. I should leave him to whatever this is, this strange vigil he’s keeping. But my feet won’t move, and the words come out before I can stop them.
“You could go in. She’d probably like it if you-”
“She’s never done that.” His voice is low, rough at the edges. “Not once. Not with anyone.”
I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t know what to say to a man who sounds like he’s just watched a miracle happen to someone else.
“She chose me,” I say finally, because it’s the only true thing I know. “I don’t know why.”
He looks at me then, and there’s something in his eyes that I can’t read, something complicated and raw and almost desperate.
“Neither do I,” he says.
He walks away before I can respond. His footsteps fade down the corridor, around a corner, gone.
For a long time I stand there in the dark, my heart beating too fast, trying to make sense of any of this.
I can’t.
I go to bed anyway.