Chapter 6
I still had no word from Wallace by the time I left for the Brownings’ the next morning, but I did have a text from Bray.
Good luck with your first day! ?
I rolled my eyes at the smiley face and considered sending a middle-finger emoji back.
I’d had three cups of coffee, and my hands had almost stopped shaking by the time I stepped onto the stone pathway bisecting the Brownings’ front lawn and leading to the door like a scene from a storybook.
Evidence of movie night had been cleaned up and tucked back into wherever it had come from.
This morning, the front yard was all bird chirps, soft sunlight, and a rose border prim enough to look like each bud had its own butler.
I didn’t even get a chance to knock before the front door swung open and Melanie and Scott Browning were beaming at me like Barbie and Ken.
“Good morning!” Melanie cheered.
I put on my best nanny smile. “Hi!”
“This is my husband, Scott,” she said and gestured to the handsome blond man beside her.
The prom-king aesthetic was even more pronounced in person.
Tan, gleaming smile, and a distant look in his bright blue eyes, which said he mentally spent most of his time someplace far from wherever he was physically.
“Pleasure to meet you, Laura,” he said and extended his hand. His palm was soft and a tad clammy.
“It’s Lauren, sweetheart,” Melanie said and pecked his cheek. She brushed the smudge of gloss her shiny lips left behind.
“Ah, forgive me,” Scott said with a demure smile. “Pleasure to meet you, Lauren.”
“No problem. Nice to meet you, Mr. Browning,” I said.
“You can call me Scott. Please, won’t you come in.” He pressed an unnecessary hand to my lower back as I stepped across the threshold.
The thought of how quickly I could reach back and break his fingers flitted through my mind, but sending my new employer to the hospital two minutes into my first day was not likely to get me invited back for a second day.
I discreetly stepped out of his reach and gazed up into their entryway.
It opened into an airy space with a skylight at its summit, showering down natural light like it was hooked up to the sun itself.
A dark wood banister shiny enough that it must have been someone’s full-time job to clean it of fingerprints curved the eastern wall in a dramatic sweep fit for Scarlett O’Hara.
An enormous vase spilling orchids like a white volcano perched atop a round table in the center of the room.
At first glance, it didn’t look like any children lived in the house.
In fact, it didn’t look like anyone lived in the house.
It was too perfect. There wasn’t even a dust mote floating in the high-beam sunlight.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Scott said and returned Melanie’s earlier peck on her cheek.
“I’ve got to meet the guys at the country club for a morning nine in a few anyway.
” I noted the tight smile Melanie shot him as he stepped away.
I also noted his attempt at discreetly squeezing Melanie’s taut rear end on display in her spandex pants.
I’d known him all of five minutes but got the sense he was a handsy guy.
“So,” Melanie began once he walked off into the far reaches of the house.
“This is the foyer, obviously. Formal living and dining rooms to the left, family room to the right. Kitchen is in the back of the house along with Scott’s office, the playroom, and two bathrooms.” She pointed her toned arms in each direction like a windmill as she spoke.
I logged the information that she’d called the entryway the foyer, which, given its grandeur, was fitting in addition to pretentious.
Melanie headed for the stairs. She placed her left hand on the pristine railing, and I wondered if Melanie Browning’s hands didn’t produce oil.
Perhaps she had no fingerprints. “The kids spend most of the day downstairs; you’ll be in the playroom if you’re not outside.
Kaden went through an awful sleep regression, and our pediatrician recommended we reserve their bedrooms for sleep only, so they don’t spend much time up here during the day. ”
I made a mental note to google sleep regression when I had time later.
“Kaden, Karli, bathroom,” Melanie said and pointed to the first three doors to the right of the landing. One was decorated with a pink K, the other with a green K, and the third door was nondescript but partially open to view a shower curtain with rubber ducks on it.
“Scott’s and my bedroom is back there, and the laundry room is behind those doors.” She pointed at the suite at the end of the hall and the accordion doors shoved shut over the sound of a churning washing machine.
She very pointedly did not mention the sixth door opposite the bathroom and to the right of the suite.
“What’s that one?” I said. It had a brass knob on it, which did not match any of the others in the hall, and I would bet good money it required a key.
Melanie gave me a tight smile. “My office. You won’t need to go in there at all.
” She said it with an innocence holding an underlying threat, and I knew of every room in the house, that was the one I needed to get into most. She waved her hand in a big scooping motion and turned around. “Let’s go back downstairs.”
As we walked, she began rattling off the kids’ schedule.
I did not hesitate to pull out my phone and take notes because there was no way I’d remember they had apples for snack on Mondays, and dance class on Tuesdays, and playtime at the park every afternoon except Friday, and Kaden went to preschool three half days a week, and Karli was allergic to strawberries, and Kaden hated broccoli but he had to eat it due to an iron deficiency …
“Honey, are you writing this down?” Melanie asked when we arrived in the kitchen, which seemed to be one continuous expanse of granite and stainless steel.
“Oh, um, it’s just a lot to remember, so I thought—”
She cut me off with a charming laugh. To my profound relief, and slight terror, she reached for a binder on the counter-top. “It’s all in here, don’t worry.”
“Oh good,” I said and took it.
She eyed me with another smile. “Though, I doubt you need an instruction manual with your experience and credentials.” She left the words expectantly hanging in the air as if they were a challenge.
Feeling called out, I disguised the nervous gulp I took.
I’d played many parts in my life; I’d fooled many marks.
Hell, I’d had guns pointed at me and been forced to snort illegal substances so no one pulled the trigger.
But somehow none of that measured up to Melanie Browning.
The intimidation I felt standing inside her palatial home looking at her beguiling smile, which I could not determine the sincerity of, knocked me on my undercover ass.
“Juice?” she sweetly said, and I didn’t dare refuse.
“Yes, please.”
She went to the fridge, a double-paneled behemoth camouflaged to look like the cabinets, and yanked open a door.
“I have a few things to take care of before we head to the park. The kids are in the playroom.” She tossed me a bottle of organic apple juice like it was a live grenade and gave me another cryptic smile. “Good luck!”
I stared after her as she crossed to the wall of French doors leading out to the pool deck. Through the paned glass, I saw what had to be their pool house or gym or yoga studio or maybe all three sitting like a cute little sidekick cottage in the backyard.
I snapped the seal on the juice and drank it like it was booze.
Elite suburbia was a trip, that much was clear.
I clutched the binder and tried to remember which direction it was to the playroom.
I backtracked into the hall and found it by way of a loud shriek.
My instinct was someone was injured, perhaps gravely, but then I remembered children were prone to screeching for no good reason at all.
Still, I hurried to the room opposite the kitchen at the back of the house.
Upon entry, I noted the kid stuff was most definitely concentrated to one part of the house.
A toy store had exploded inside. An expensive one.
A rainbow of toys, puzzles, books, balls, mats, costumes—literally everything a kid could want—littered the space.
Shelves lined the walls in a nod to organization, but most of the stock was on the floor.
Karli and Kaden sat in the midst of it, and, thank God, they were laughing.
The screech appeared to have been in response to a game they were playing with a tower of blocks and a set of stuffed animals. I exhaled in relief that I didn’t walk in on a full-blown tantrum minutes into my first day.
The kids stopped what they were doing and looked at me. Kaden’s face split into a grin, and he held up a stuffed penguin. “Want to be Flips?” My tree acrobatics last night appeared to have been enough to impress him into welcoming me.
I smiled. If they were not screaming or crying or touching me with sticky hands, I would be anyone they wanted me to be.
“I would love to be Flips,” I said and entered their space. I set the binder on a miniature, color-blocked wooden table and knelt with them.
“Flips lives here,” Karli instructed and pointed to a ring of wooden blocks someone had constructed in a wobbly circle. She was younger than Kaden, with blond braids dangling at her shoulders.
“Oh, is this his iceberg?” I asked and made him dance side to side.
Karli giggled.
“Here comes Willy!” Kaden bellowed and brought a stuffed orca crashing down onto Flips’s iceberg.
I jumped at the sudden violence.
Kaden made war sounds as he smashed the whale into the blocks over and over, and I had to admit, the kid wasn’t wrong about the animal’s natural demeanor.