Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
It was the morning after the party. Nora awoke to a soft tug on her hand and opened her eyes to find Felix, wearing his pajamas and smudged glasses. It was rare for any of the kids to come into her room. Panic shot through her, and she jumped out of bed, asking, “Felix, are you all right?”
Felix pushed his glasses high up on the bridge of his nose, then murmured, “Mom and Dad are fighting.” After that, he burst into tears that nearly sent his glasses to the ground.
Nora didn’t think twice before gathering Felix into her arms and padding down the hallway, back to the other kids’ rooms. Sure enough, downstairs, Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Everett were fully screaming at one another, hurling insults from what sounded like one end of the living room to the other.
If Nora had to guess, they were both hungover from drinking last night, so unhappy in their bodies and minds that they had to hurt each other.
But she also wondered if something had happened last night to cause this argument.
What had Max said about not trusting her Uncle Everett?
She couldn’t remember. Her mind and heart were blocked with the memory of kissing him. It had been the best kiss of her life.
Felix wasn’t the only child awake. Even Mona stood in her crib, her hands clutching the railings as she peered out at Nora.
“I’m hungry,” she told Nora as she pulled her into her arms and carried her warm body into the next room to check on the others.
Eventually, she gathered all the kids in the playroom to make a plan.
Her head roiled, maybe from her own string of champagne from last night.
She’d never been hungover before. She didn’t know what it felt like.
Eventually, the kids began to cry harder, echoing their parents’ unrest downstairs.
Nora knew that she needed to get to the kitchen to fetch them breakfast. Only then could she distract them, get them dressed for a day at the beach, and get out of their parents’ hair.
She had to hope that Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Everett would sleep off whatever this was before they returned.
Nora put Henry in charge, telling him, “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Help your brother and sisters get their swimsuits together, will you?”
Henry seemed to take this very seriously. He saluted Nora, then turned to Felix and translated exactly what she’d said to him. Nora smiled to herself and crept down the stairs, just as either her aunt or uncle threw something. It landed with a crash.
“Really mature,” Uncle Everett said, which meant it was her aunt who’d thrown it. “You’re a really good model for our children, aren’t you?”
“Shut up!” Aunt Cynthia cried.
Nora’s heart went cold. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she crept around to the back entrance of the kitchen, where she found Greg, Toby, and Jan hiding behind the swinging kitchen door.
Greg and Toby had already plated Aunt Cynthia’s and Uncle Everett’s breakfasts, but it seemed as though they’d forgotten them.
They were too frightened to tell them it was time to eat.
“For the kids?” Jan asked Nora. Nora nodded, and the two of them hurried to gather enough food for a full day out of the house.
As they packed, Nora muttered under her breath, “What’s going on?”
“It happens from time to time,” Jan said. “They’re getting their frustrations out. Things will be normal in a few hours. I hope.”
“They sound like they want to kill each other,” Greg said, offering an icy smile.
“Did something happen at the party?” Nora asked.
Jan’s eyelashes fluttered. “Everything always happens at those parties. But those are matters for rich people. Those aren’t for us.”
Nora bowed her head. Jan didn’t want to gossip. Nora had to respect that, although she ached to know the truth.
With two picnic baskets laden with fresh bread and butter, strawberries, blueberries, cheeses, boiled eggs, cured meats, and plenty of different types of cake, Nora packed up the car, then went upstairs to get the last of the children’s things.
Henry had done well, demanding that everyone, except Mona, change into their swimsuits immediately.
He’d also packed a bag of all the beach toys they usually brought with them.
Nora thanked him formally, sensing that he wanted to be seen as a businessman or a strategist.
“It was my pleasure,” Henry said.
Nora drove the four of them to Madequecham Beach, which was far enough away from the mansion to feel at a distance from the horrors of her aunt and uncle’s anger.
Sitting in her swimsuit, watching the waves roll in and applying sunscreen to Mona’s back, she thought back to last night, to the secrecy with which Max maneuvered through the crowd.
How had he known that they wouldn’t be sighted?
How did he know to move through wealthy people as though he belonged?
She’d felt like she stuck out like a sore thumb.
Was it possible that that was why her aunt and uncle were fighting?
Had they discovered that she’d snuck down and joined them?
But that didn’t make sense, she decided.
They would have yelled at her, rather than each other.
For a few hours, Nora and the kids played on the sand.
Nora carried Mona into the waves, laughing as the little girl shrieked with joy.
When clouds rolled over the ocean, Nora headed to shore to get out a selection of snacks, eating strawberries as she kept tabs on the older kids.
Mona remained beside her, playing with her sand bucket, filling it and dumping it out again.
Suddenly, there was a horrible scream. Nora focused her eyes on seeing that, up ahead, little Sarah had fallen forward onto a log that had washed up on shore.
She flailed, tossing her legs in a way that made her look like a broken spider.
Nora got to her feet, leaving Mona on the sand, and raced toward the sound of Sarah’s screaming.
Felix and Henry joined her. At first, nothing seemed serious.
It almost looked as though Sarah was playing a game.
But when she turned over to reveal her thigh, Nora gaped at a gash the size of her thumb, gushing blood.
“Oh, Sarah,” she whispered, dropping to her knees in the sand. “Sarah, what happened?”
Seeing Nora’s panic, Sarah burst into tears. Nora knew they had to clean the wound and put a bandage on it. But she hadn’t thought to pack a first-aid kit, probably because she was an inexperienced babysitter who shouldn’t have been doing this anyway.
Nora gathered the picnic supplies, carrying the very heavy Sarah in her arms as Henry held Mona’s hand and led her back to the car.
Sarah’s sobs filled her head. Nora thought she was going to go crazy.
As they neared the car, blood oozed down both Sarah’s leg and Nora’s.
Nora cursed herself for not thinking straight.
She drove the kids back home, telling Sarah over and over, “It’s going to be okay.
It’s going to be okay.” But maybe she was telling herself that, too.
When she pulled into the driveway, Nora remembered her aunt and uncle’s awful fight.
She wondered if they were still at it, hurling things at one another in the living room.
Maybe she could make her way through the foyer and past them without attracting questions?
Or maybe they were asleep upstairs, having forgotten what was wrong. Regardless, Nora had to risk it.
“Wait in the car, okay?” Nora told the kids.
Sarah’s blood oozed across the seat. She cried harder.
“I’m going to get everything we need,” Nora said. She didn’t want to tell them that bothering their parents was impossible.
Nora crept past the pool, assessing the mess left to clean up from last night. There were beer cans, wineglasses, and plates everywhere. She hoped that Max would be there soon, maybe to help throw things in plastic bags and scrub things down. But she couldn’t think about that right now.
Entering the foyer, she heard nothing from her aunt and uncle at first. She closed the door behind her slowly, grateful for how quiet it could be, then crept to the stairs, listening harder. Something was off, she thought. Something she couldn’t figure out.
When she reached the stairs, she heard a strange suction sound.
She spun around, half imagining aliens or snakes, and discovered Uncle Everett, still in the living room.
He was sprawled on the sofa, kissing a woman who wasn’t Aunt Cynthia.
For a long, awful moment, Nora gaped at her uncle and this strange woman, before realizing that the woman was her Aunt Cynthia’s dear friend Margo.
If she remembered correctly, Cynthia and Margo went as far back as preschool.
It meant that Margo had once known Nora’s mother.
Nora’s blood ran cold. She knew she needed to turn around and continue up the stairs before she was noticed.
But she physically couldn’t figure out how.
Finally, Uncle Everett opened his eyes and locked his gaze on her.
He didn’t stop kissing the woman, but he stared at her, angry and surprised, until she spun around and scuttled up the stairs. She felt like a frightened rabbit.
In the bathroom, her arms shook so violently that she almost dropped the first-aid kit three times. She prayed that her uncle would be gone by the time she went down the stairs. She thought of poor Sarah, bleeding and crying in the car, and told herself she had to be brave.
But what if Uncle Everett sent her away now that she’d seen him commit this horrible act?
She wondered if this was what Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Everett had been fighting about. She wondered where Aunt Cynthia was now. An awful, dark part of her wondered if Uncle Everett was capable of killing her aunt, if what Max had inferred about his “power” could really be so dark.
Steeling herself, she raced down the stairs, past her uncle and Margo and back to the car, where Sarah continued to sob, and the other kids had begun to cry, too.
Even Henry had wet eyes. Hurriedly, she cleaned up Sarah’s wound, bandaged it, and said, “Right as rain, Sarah, honey! Look!” As soon as the bandage was on, Sarah stopped crying, as the blood had frightened her more than anything else.
After that, Nora led the kids back to the beach in front of their house.
They were happy to play wildly again, to make sandcastles, sing songs, and race into the waves.
The drama was over, sort of. Nora told herself to breathe easier, to think things through.
She wouldn’t tell anyone about what she’d seen, would she?
Or was not telling her Aunt Cynthia an act of betrayal in and of itself?
She wished she could ask her mother what to do.
It was then she heard her name. It was a powerful, masculine, booming voice, one that nearly pulled her soul from her body. “Nora?”
Slowly, Nora crept around, delivering Uncle Everett the brightest smile she could muster. “Oh. Hi,” she said, stupidly.
“How’s it going?” Uncle Everett crossed his arms. He looked like he’d trapped her in something.
“Not bad,” Nora said. “Just beaches all day long.”
“What a dream, right?”
Nora nodded. She glanced at the house, looking for some sign of Margo or Cynthia. But it seemed that they were alone.
“Nora, have you ever been on a sailboat?” Uncle Everett asked.
Nora shook her head. “No. I haven’t.”
“Is that something you’d like to try? The reason I’m asking is that I’m taking a few friends of mine out next week.”
Nora couldn’t breathe. “I have to watch the kids.”
Uncle Everett waved his hand. “We’ll arrange something else. A temporary babysitter. What do you say? These friends of mine, they’re powerful people. They have companies in the city. They know professors at universities. They can suit you up with any career and any kind of life.”
Nora recognized the lifeline he was casting.
She knew that Uncle Everett had incredible connections that could be the difference between a poor and middling life and an extraordinary one.
She also knew that Uncle Everett was buttering her up in the hopes that she wouldn’t share what she’d seen with her Aunt Cynthia. Was she going to let him?
Uncle Everett took a large step toward her. His voice deepened. “You need to be ready for college when the time comes, Nora,” he said. “It creeps up on you. Before you know it, you’re an old maid without any prospects. Before you know it, you’re dead broke.”