19. Carrington
CARRINGTON
"Then tell me what closes the file," Carrington said.
"Nothing closes it," Diane Bell said. "It isn't a proceeding, Carrington. There's nobody on the other side of it to beat."
Diane had written the will and handled every piece of paperwork that came out of Clara's death, and she didn’t call on a Saturday for no reason.
Carrington had come down for coffee at ten past nine, and she was still at the island with the phone against her ear.
She hadn't poured the coffee or gotten dressed yet.
Grace was up on the stool at the other end with the bowl dragged over in front of her, and Lucy was melting butter in the pan, tilting it to coat the bottom.
"Read me the rest of it," Carrington said into the phone.
Diane read it. The file had opened when Grace’s custody was signed over to Carrington, and it ran twelve months from that date, which put it into next January.
A social worker, likely Alvarez since she had opened the file, would check in every so often, and there would be one more visit to the house. It was set for Wednesday at ten.
"Reply by Friday," Diane said. "Confirm the appointment and that you'll be there. Confirm her address and her school haven't changed. And they want the household list again."
"The what?"
"Everyone living on the property, what they do there, and what hours they’re there. It's the same sheet you filled in for me in March."
Grace cracked an egg on the rim of the bowl and got most of it in. Lucy picked the pieces of eggshell out of the bowl, and Grace reached for a second egg.
"Is this the school again?" Carrington said.
"No. Nobody has said a word about Grace since March, and nobody has complained about you.
" Diane turned a page. "I have four clients getting one of these visits this month.
The only ones that ever drag on are the ones where the list of who lives on the property doesn't match who the caseworker finds there when she walks in.
Then she has to come back and work out why you got it wrong.
Write down the people who actually live there and she'll be gone in forty minutes. "
"It'll match."
"Good," Diane said. "And is there anything going on out there I should know about before this goes back?"
Behind her, Lucy poured the first pancake into the pan and it hissed.
"No," Carrington lied.
Carrington looked back at her. Lucy had shoved her sleeves up past her elbows, and there was a smear of flour along the inside of her right forearm. She watched the edges of the pancake set and didn't look up.
Carrington wanted to cross the kitchen and put her hands on her, but she stayed where she was.
"Then you're fine. I'll send the copy Monday." Diane waited a beat. "How is she?"
"She's fine. She's making pancakes."
"Get the reply back to me by Friday," Diane said, "and then you don't have to think about it again." She hung up.
Carrington turned the phone over on the counter. She had said no to Diane before she decided to. Her ear was hot where the phone had been against it, and she rubbed it until she made herself stop.
Lucy turned the pancake over and it was the right color underneath. "Deborah Mensah came here Thursday," she said. "She brought a box of Grace's things from Clara's house."
Carrington took a cup down out of the cabinet. She had last seen Deborah Mensah at the cemetery; she was wearing a long black coat cut for a much taller woman.
"She did the whale voice," Grace said animatedly.
"There was a picture book in the box." Lucy slid the pancake onto a plate. "Apparently, Clara used to read it to her."
Grace turned around on the stool with the spoon still in her hand. "Deborah does it the same way Mom did it."
"Is that right?" Carrington said.
Grace turned back and beat the batter hard enough to slop some of it over the side.
The kitchen smelled like hot flour and butter burning at the edge of the pan. Carrington held the empty cup and watched them make a second pancake. Grace tipped the bowl over, and Lucy quickly reached out a hand to catch it before it spilled.
Lucy stacked the two pancakes on a plate and cut them into quarters, then handed the plate to Grace. "Take that outside to the table before it gets cold."
Grace got down off the stool and carried the plate out through the courtyard door with both hands, keeping her eyes trained on it, and sat down at the metal table in the sun with her back to the house.
"How long was she here? Deborah, I mean," Carrington said.
"About an hour and a half."
"Where were you all?"
"In here, mostly. Grace took her upstairs to see her room."
Carrington looked up at the ceiling over the island. Grace's room was directly above it. "What did she ask you?"
"Ordinary things. She wanted to know whether Grace sleeps through the night." Lucy laid the spatula across the top of the pan. "And she asked me to tell her if you weren't all right."
"If I weren't all right," she repeated detachedly.
"I told her I would," Lucy said.
"Did she go into any of the other rooms up there?"
"No."
"Did she ask about me?"
Lucy ran the water into the bowl and left it soaking in the sink. "No. She asked how long it takes me to get Grace to school on the coast road."
Out in the courtyard, Grace had propped up her feet on the second chair and was eating her pancake with her hands. Carrington looked back at Lucy. "Did she ask you for anything?"
"No." Lucy dried her hands on the towel over the oven door. "She called the house in March. She left a message with somebody, but nobody ever called her back."
Nadia would have written it on a slip and put it in the pile Carrington never asked to see.
"I let her in the house myself." Lucy took the pan off the heat and left it there. "I should have called the office to ask first, though."
"You didn't do anything wrong."
Grace brought her plate in and put it in the sink. She didn't go back outside. "Deborah's coming back."
Carrington set the cup down. "Did she tell you that?"
"No."
Grace went out into the hall. Carrington listened to her go up the stairs and shut her door.
"She's decided it for herself," Lucy said.
Carrington went upstairs to dress. She stopped at the window at the end of the landing. From there, she could see the whole path that led to the cottage, sixty feet of gravel worn pale in the middle where people walked on it. The cottage was at the bottom with its curtains still open.
On the twentieth, Alvarez was going to come to the house for a walk-through and inspect that cottage. Carrington stood there, looking at the cottage.
At ten that night, Carrington sat down at the foot of her bed.
She had written the list out by hand at the desk after dinner. Herself and Grace in the main house, and Lucy in the cottage, the live-in nanny. It was the same thing she had reported in March.
Lucy let herself in the bedroom at twenty past. She looked at the paper in Carrington's hand and didn't ask about it.
Then she went around behind her and started removing the hair pins.
She took them out one at a time, and every one of them pulled a little at Carrington's scalp.
Her knuckles were warm against the back of Carrington's neck while she worked the fourth one out.
Carrington wanted to put her head back into her hands, shut her eyes, and not have to do anything else. She let her finish.
"There's a visit on the twentieth," Carrington said. "Family Services. Apparently, it’s routine."
"Okay."
"There's a form I have to fill out that goes back with the social worker for the case file. It asks who lives on the property and in what capacity."
Another pin slid out.
"I'd like you to move your things back down to the cottage and sleep in your own bed until after the visit."
"All right," Lucy said.
"The form says you live in the cottage," Carrington said. "So the social worker will walk down there and verify it. She did that in March, and if she goes there and finds something suspicious, she’ll think something doesn’t add up and keep scheduling surprise visits to find out what.
And Grace will have to stand in the hallway and watch a stranger go through her things in her own home. "
"I said all right."
"I know you did."
"Then you can stop." Lucy got the next pin free. "What else?"
"The log. Start it again tomorrow."
Lucy stopped, one bobby pin halfway out. "You said that it was optional."
"I’m changing my mind. It isn't optional until after the twenty-first."
Lucy took out the rest of the pin. Then the next one.
"In front of the chef and in front of Alvarez," Carrington said, "I'm Ms. Cole and you're Ms. Harper. All the time, not just when there's somebody in the room. If we only do it when it matters, one of us will slip eventually."
"Okay."
Carrington had walked past Grace's door on the way up. It was shut, with the night light glowing underneath it. Grace had been asleep since half past eight.
"If she watches the two of us for ten minutes, she'll see it," Carrington said. "She's paid to see it. So there has to be nothing to look at."
Lucy stepped around in front of her and stood there with the pins closed in her fist. "There's nothing in the log since April," she said. "If I start it up tomorrow, she'll see a month of empty pages and then a page a day right up until she walked in the door."
"Start it anyway," Carrington said. "One more thing. If Deborah Mensah comes out here again before the twentieth, don't open the gate. Call the office and let me handle it."
Lucy's hand tightened on the pins. "She hasn't done anything."
"I know she hasn't."
"I told her I'd call her if you weren't all right."
"Then tell her I'm fine," Carrington said.
"All right."
"Thank you."
Lucy laid the pins out in a row on the nightstand, small and bent, and picked her book up off the chair. She stood there holding it, and Carrington wanted to take it away from her and put it back down, but she didn't move.
"You don't have to go down tonight," Carrington said.
"If I'm doing it, I'm doing it." Lucy stopped at the door with her hand on it. "What do you want in the log?"
"Whatever's true," Carrington said.
"All right," Lucy said and left.
Carrington sat where she was until she heard the courtyard door open and shut again. Then she crawled into bed. She lay down on the side she had been sleeping on since April and left the other side alone.
Carrington was in the study before six with the lamp off. The reply to Diane was on the desk mat, signed, with the household list clipped behind it to go out Monday.
She had been awake since four. She looked out the window.
The low lights were still illuminating the path as far as the hedge and the grass shone with dew.
The cottage light was on, but the curtain was pulled so she couldn’t see inside.
At almost six, the cottage door opened and Lucy walked up the gravel pathway, not rushing.
She was in the house for about ten minutes.
Carrington did not go out to the hall. Then Lucy came back out through the courtyard door with a box against her hip and went down the path again, never once taking a backward glance at the house.
When she got to the cottage, she opened the door and carried the box inside. A minute later, the light winked out.
Carrington breathed out, and something in her chest that had been clenched since the day before let go. She stood there and waited to feel bad about being relieved, but she didn't.