2. Lucy #2
"Who's the family?" she asked.
There was the smallest pause, the kind recruiters left when they already knew the name was going to do some work on its own. "The Cole family. The child is Grace Cole. The aunt is Carrington Cole."
Across the table, Mira's wine glass stopped halfway to her mouth.
"Carrington Cole," Anjali repeated, too loudly, drawing a glance from the bench woman who'd already had her afternoon interrupted once by shrieking grass.
"Like, Cole Developments Carrington Cole?
The one from the Business Journal cover, the one they called—" she dropped her voice into something between awe and dread "The Ice Queen of Phoenix Ridge? "
Lucy held up a hand, still on the phone, still listening. "Sorry… Go on, Ms. Voss."
"I'll be honest with you, since I'd rather you hear it from me than discover it on your first day," Patricia said reluctantly.
"Ms. Cole has a reputation. She's exacting.
Two nannies were sent through before you—very good candidates, strong references—and neither lasted the week.
I'm not telling you this to scare you off.
I'm telling you because I think you're exactly the kind of person who could actually manage her, and because that little girl needs someone who's going to manage her, not just survive her.
Ms. Cole would like to meet candidates in person before making a final decision.
Tomorrow morning, nine o'clock sharp, at the estate in Highland Bluffs.
I should mention she does not care for lateness. "
"I'm never late," Lucy said, and meant it as fact rather than boast.
"Good. That'll matter more than you'd think.
" Patricia's voice picked back up its brisk rhythm.
"A few practical notes. It's a genuinely live-in role—private cottage on the grounds, not a room down the hall, so you'd have your own space.
The child's name is Grace, she's seven, she hasn't spoken more than a handful of words to either of the previous nannies, from what I understand.
Ms. Cole works long hours and travels for business, so on paper you'd have a great deal of autonomy with Grace day-to-day.
In practice, I gather Ms. Cole likes to be informed of everything, in detail, promptly.
That was, if I had to guess, part of what didn't work out for the others. "
"What happened to them? The other two."
"One resigned after three days and wouldn't tell me why beyond 'it wasn't a fit.
' The other lasted four and told me, verbatim, that she'd rather clean office buildings for less money than sit through one more of Ms. Cole's morning check-ins.
" A pause, softer. "Ms. Harper, I'll say one more thing, and then I'll let you decide.
This is the best money I've placed anyone for in three years doing this job.
But if you're only doing the math on the number, don't take it.
She'll know in about ten minutes, and it won't go well for either of you.
If you're doing the math on the little girl, though—I think you should come. "
Lucy looked across the table at Anjali's stricken face, at Mira setting her glass down like it had suddenly gotten too heavy, and thought about a seven-year-old in a household that could apparently afford a hundred and forty thousand dollars a year for a stranger to manage her grief, and no one, evidently, who could simply sit with her instead.
"I'll be there," she said. "Nine o'clock. Thank you."
She ended the call to a silence that lasted exactly as long as it took Mira to suck in a sharp breath through her teeth.
"Absolutely not," Mira said. "No. Lucy. That woman eats junior associates for a mid-morning snack.
There was an entire feature on her in Ridge Monthly last year that was basically forty column inches of other CEOs being afraid of her on the record.
My cousin's firm did a deal with Cole Developments and he still flinches when someone says her name in a meeting. "
"I'm not marrying her, Mira, I'd be looking after her niece."
"You'd be living with her. In her house. At her mercy, on her schedule, three feet from the Ice Queen at all times—"
"Grace," Lucy said. "The girl’s name is Grace.
She's seven, and she lost her mother six weeks ago.
" She heard her own voice steady out, the way it always did once she'd found the actual point underneath the noise.
"I don't care what Carrington Cole is like at the office.
I care what it's like for a little girl who's currently living with a woman who scares her own lawyers.
Somebody needs to be the calm thing in that house, and I'm apparently very good at being the calm thing. So. I’m taking the interview, at least."
Anjali reached across the table again, but this time she didn't squeeze Lucy's hand, she just let her fingers rest there, warm, wordless, the kind of support that didn't require Lucy to explain herself any further.
Mira, for her part, looked like she wanted to argue three more times and had decided, visibly, against all of them.
"Text us the second you're out," Mira said instead. "The second. If we don't hear from you by ten fifteen, I'm calling the police and possibly a hostage negotiator."
"I'll text you."
Lucy did not sleep especially well that night, in the rented room with its one narrow window and its landlady's television murmuring faintly through the floor, but it was not Carrington Cole's reputation keeping her up.
It was the other thing, the small, stubborn hope she'd been trying not to let herself feel in months, the hope that had gotten her hurt exactly once already and that she had promised herself she would guard more carefully from now on.
She dressed with care the next morning: plain navy dress, low heels, hair pulled back neat and simple, nothing that could be read as trying too hard and nothing that could be read as not trying at all.
She took the bus two transfers north into Highland Bluffs, where the shops got quieter and the hedges got taller and the sidewalks, she noticed, were swept completely clean of the ordinary debris of a city, as though even the leaves knew better than to fall out of turn here.
By the third transfer, she was the only passenger left on the bus, and the driver glanced at her twice in the mirror like he was trying to place which household she might belong to, because women who rode this route alone in low heels at quarter to nine usually belonged to someone.
She got off two blocks early on purpose, needing the walk to settle the flutter that had started somewhere around her sternum and refused to be reasoned with, no matter how many times she reminded herself that she had sat across from hostile parents and indifferent fathers and once, memorably, a golden retriever that had eaten a job application whole, and survived all of it.
The estate itself was set back behind iron gates twice her height, stone pillars on either side, a camera angled down at her.
Beyond the bars she could see a drive curving out of sight through manicured hedge, and past that, just barely, the pale corner of a house too large to take in from the sidewalk.
Lucy stood in front of the call box for a moment longer than she needed to, smoothing her dress with both hands.
She pressed the buzzer.
Static crackled through the little speaker, and then a voice came through it.
"You're two minutes early."