Chapter Five
Since I’ve never worked a normal job, I call the one person in my life who has on my way to pick up the girls that afternoon.
“One sec.” Piper talks to someone in the background. Her femme-and-them-only fitness club started as a single location, but now there are three in the greater San Antonio area, and she’s on the hunt for sites four and five. “Sorry about that. What’s up?”
“How’s work?” I try to ask more questions than Can you watch my kids? and, apparently, Have I hit the glass ceiling?
But Piper doesn’t fall for it. “What do you want?” she deadpans.
Despite my sour mood, it yanks a laugh from my throat. “Can you watch the girls? Tomorrow night? It’s date night. Our regular babysitter isn’t available.”
“I thought I was your regular babysitter.” She’s joking. Kind of. We do occasionally hire a high school senior up the street, but she’s a social butterfly and has canceled twice at the last second.
“Well—”
“It’s no problem. I just need to leave by nine.”
“That works.” Brian and I are hardly the type to stay out late. “How was your date?”
“So good,” she purrs. “So, so good.”
“Jesus, Piper.”
A bark of laughter. “I gotta go, new potential hire to interview. But I’ll be there at five tomorrow?”
“Wait, I have a question.”
“Hmm?”
“When you left your job in corporate America…” I chew my lip, flip my turn signal on, pull into the pickup line. Twenty other cars are parked ahead of me, gleaming Lexuses and town cars with drivers, delivery people for the rich parents’ children.
“What about it?”
“You were getting paid less, right? Than the men?”
She gives a huff of annoyance. “I started at the same time as this guy named Frank—and he was awful at his job. Meanwhile, I was pulling in new clients left and right, and I was making fifty thousand dollars less than him. Fifty thousand. That’s half of a new car.”
Oh, to be young and single and think $100K is a normal price tag for a vehicle. The sight of the school’s principal coming out of the building in a skirt suit and tie distracts me. I frown. Does she make as much as a male principal would? “So, did you ever speak up about it?”
A beat of silence.
“Why are you asking? You’re self-employed. Give yourself a raise.”
“I’m just curious.” I tap the steering wheel, hanging on her words, wanting to know.
She’s told me the story before, but this is the first time I’m getting details.
The principal catches sight of me and waves with a big smile.
I clench my teeth in response. Surely it looks vaguely smile-like from this distance.
“I did speak up.”
“And?”
“They said no. Said the business couldn’t support a raise, that their hands were tied.”
“What did you say?”
She gives a half laugh. “Nothing. I quit.”
That sounds like my big sister. We finish our call, and I inch forward in my minivan.
For me, quitting is not an option. I love my job.
Moreover, I’m driven by a psychological need—to stalk, to study, to kill.
When I go too long between jobs, the pressure builds inside me—slow, steady, until it feels like it might boil over.
My hands tighten, thinking of it. Thinking that in a world where I wasn’t raised by a good family, I might be the sort of serial killer you read about in newspapers.
The bad kind, who eventually gets caught and put to death or sentenced to life in prison.
In fact, without my grandmother, I still might have ended up that way.
But Gran—a five-foot-nothing fury of a woman—she saw the real me.
She’s maybe, besides Ian, the only person who ever has.
She saw the gleam in my eye as I watched other humans, how I studied my fellow children instead of playing with them.
And when Piper’s boyfriend died, she knew what I’d done.
She didn’t judge—only gave me a warning.
You make sure you’re killing the right kind of people if you’re gonna be doing shit like that, you hear me, Nadia?
Make the world a better place. Make it your superpower.
I think about that a lot. My superpower.
I also wonder if she recognized what I am because she wasn’t so different.
Now she lives in a memory care center. While I don’t remember him, I understand that my grandfather was not a kind man.
When my father talks about his childhood, his stories are filled with horrific accounts of physical and emotional abuse—not just toward him and his brothers, but also toward his mother, my grandmother.
It’s a miracle my dad turned out to be okay after everything he went through; I have no doubt it was thanks to her.
Despite her being a wonderful grandmother, I’ve always thought she had another side. My grandfather died mysteriously and unexpectedly when he was a mere sixty years old. I’d never tell my dad, but I’m pretty sure Gran killed him. I’m also certain that if she did, he deserved it.
It’s an odd thing to feel a kinship with her about, but I’ll take it.
Honestly, anything that makes me feel connected to family.
While my mom and dad did a good job raising me, I’ve always known they considered me to be the odd one out.
It’s hard to be close to a child who scares you a little.
I think they about melted with relief when they found out I was getting married, when I bought a house and got pregnant and offered them anything in the vein of normal.
“Helllloooo!” A distant voice, a sharp rap on my passenger side window. I jolt, but I don’t dive for my gun. It’s only the principal, a sixtysomething woman with white hair piled on top of her head, a pencil tucked behind her ear like it’s part of her uniform. Maybe it is.
I roll down the window. “Hello, Mrs. Brown. How are you?”
“Oh, lovely. I can’t believe the school year’s nearly over, can you?”
“Sure can’t.” Somehow, I’d forgotten that little fact.
“Have you thought about teaching? I know you’re a stay-at-home mom, but we have a few teacher’s aide positions open. You could dip your toes in, see if you like it.” She beams at me like she’s given me a golden ticket.
“Uh…I have a job, actually. But thank you.”
“Oh. Well, I know you have that little events planning thingy, but it just seems—so…” She waves her hand and leans in. “I mean, like selling makeup or something. Surely it doesn’t keep you busy.”
I take a drink from my now-cold coffee to give myself a moment. You know when you kind of want to strangle someone, but of course you wouldn’t? Imagine that. Except I actually have.
“Oh, here comes Eliza. Good to see you!” I whisper a thank-you to whatever higher power does exist and wave at my daughter, who is still fifty feet away, giving me plenty of time to continue this conversation if I want to.
But I don’t.
A half hour later, we’re home, and I’m feeding the girls a snack of raw veggies with hummus.
Fifty-fifty on whether they’ll eat it or beg for Pop-Tarts, but according to every Instagram mom ever, I should at least offer it.
So I set them up with an educational show (don’t judge), put the snack plate within easy reach, and sneak my work phone out as I turn on the oven and toss potatoes in to bake.
I can’t leave the girls downstairs alone to creep into my hidey-hole, so I break one of my own rules, dialing John from the kitchen as I keep one eye on them and pull the ingredients for a salad from the fridge. It rings until his voicemail picks up.
“Call me,” I say. I glance over at the girls, who are mesmerized by Blippi, allowing me to take another moment to myself.
A sudden urge to text Ian hits me. To message Thanks for this morning or What do you think I should do?
or maybe Should I get a new handler and communicate only by email and pretend to be a dude?
I don’t though. I turn the phone’s volume to silent, tuck it away inside my purse, and instead text my husband with my other phone: Love you, sweetie. I just started dinner!
I may be who I am—but for my husband, I have to keep up the pretense. Perfect wife. Mom. And…little events thingy planner.
Speaking of events to plan. I pull my secret phone back out and scroll through the photos I took of one killer pharmacist today. She’s apparently diluting cancer drugs. Selling off a portion on the black market. Pocketing the money she makes. And in the process, letting patients die.
These are my favorite jobs. The ones where I get to kill a killer—the worst kind, who hurt good people. The ones who aren’t like me.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself.