21. Carrington
CARRINGTON
"She's seven. She's in third grade, and her teacher is Renata Ford. Ms. Ford teaches three days a week and runs the counseling office the other two," Carrington said to the empty room.
She stopped and said it again without the second half. Melinda Alvarez, the social worker, hadn’t asked about Grace’s teachers in March. Caseworkers notice when you offer extra details they didn't ask for.
"She's seven. Third grade. Her teacher is Renata Ford."
Better. The only light on in the study was the desk lamp, and the courtyard past the glass was pitch black.
She had come in here at nine to do this and had been doing it for an hour.
Her mouth had gone dry enough that she kept having to start the longer answers twice.
She had started sitting down and finished on her feet.
It had taken her the first twenty minutes to stop hearing how strange she sounded.
"She goes to bed at half past eight, and she sleeps through the night. She eats dinner at six, and on Saturdays she makes pancakes for breakfast and cracks the eggs into the bowl herself."
She cut that. Nobody would ask about pancakes either. She had included those details to be liked.
The copy of the household list was on the mat in front of her: Carrington Cole, owner, main house; Grace Cole, minor, main house; Lucy Harper, live-in nanny, cottage. All true information. The original had gone back to Diane on Monday of last week.
"Ms. Harper has been with us since February. She lives in the cottage. She's off at seven and every other weekend."
True as well.
"The cottage has one room and a bathroom. You're welcome to look at it."
Carrington knew Melinda Alvarez would look at it. She had walked down there in March as well. This time, she would find the small tells of a woman who lived in the space daily: a coat on the hook by the door, clothes in the hamper, the logbook on the table.
"Is your relationship with Ms. Harper personal in any way?" Carrington said it in Alvarez's voice, flat and unhurried, the way a woman asks a question she has asked forty times that month.
"No," Carrington said smoothly. There was nothing in her voice that would betray her. She said it twice more and it sounded the same both times. It would also all have to be true for the rest of the year because the file didn’t officially close until January.
And when Melinda Alvarez asked Lucy the same set of questions, Carrington had to trust her to do what was best for Grace.
Any other problem in Carrington’s life would have been splayed open in a pros and cons list, but she knew there was nothing about this one that she could put in writing without it potentially getting leaked. Carrington shut the lamp off and sat in the dark for a minute before standing up.
The form for the aquarium field trip was on the hall table where Lucy had left it, filled in, the permission box ticked and the emergency number written out in full. Carrington uncapped the pen and signed it before going back upstairs.
From the landing window she could see the entire path, and the cottage light was on behind the curtain.
She stood at the glass and looked at it, wondering what Lucy was doing alone in there.
Eventually, she went to her room and removed her hair pins one by one, methodically, placing them in the small dish on the nightstand.
After, she got under the covers and lay on her side.
She hadn’t gone to bed before midnight since the day Diane Bell called about the letter.
At eleven, somebody opened her bedroom door.
Grace stood in the gap, barefoot, in pajamas that dragged on the floor. "Are you awake?"
"I am now." Carrington switched the lamp on. "Come here."
Grace came to the footboard and put one hand on it.
"Are you sick?"
"No."
"Did you have a nightmare?"
"No," Grace said.
Carrington got up, put her robe on, and walked her back down the landing.
The nightlight was still illuminated and the closet door was firmly latched.
The blanket was shoved down into a heap at the bottom of the bed, as it always was by eleven.
Grace got in and sat up against the headboard with her knees drawn up.
"Do you want me to read to you until you sleep?"
"Not tonight."
Carrington brought the water over from the nightstand. Grace took two swallows and handed it back with a thank you. Still, she didn’t lie down. Carrington looked at her. Grace was being careful with everyone, the way you’re careful with people who might not keep you.
"Do you want me to sit here?"
"You can if you want."
Carrington put the glass back on the nightstand and sat down on the bed. She pulled the covers up over Grace's knees, and Grace let her.
"Lie down," Carrington said in what she hoped was a soft voice.
Grace lay down, then she rolled onto her back again.
"Can Lucy come here tonight?"
"She's asleep."
"Okay," Grace said, and lay there awake.
Carrington stood by the bed with her palm flat on the covers.
If she brought Lucy up to this house tonight she was going to take her to bed, knowing full well that the caseworker would arrive in the morning.
She went out onto the landing and called the cottage anyway, and Lucy picked up on the second ring.
"Grace is awake," Carrington said. "She's asking for you."
"Two minutes."
It was closer to five minutes. Carrington heard the courtyard door creak open while she waited on the landing. Then Lucy came up the stairs in a coat thrown over the T-shirt she slept in and untied shoes. She had one hand in her hair, pushing it away from her face.
"Ms. Cole."
"She's in bed. She won't tell me what’s wrong."
Lucy walked past her, down the landing, and into the room.
Carrington followed Lucy as far as the doorway and stopped there. Lucy didn’t turn on the light or ask Grace what was wrong. Instead, she took her shoes off, lay down on top of the covers on her side facing Grace, and put an arm under her head, saying nothing at all.
After a while, Grace started talking about Kayla, the aquarium in June, and whether the school bus took the long way on the coastal road or the short way. Lucy said maybe six words the whole time. When Grace ran out of things to talk about, she flipped around to her other side.
Ten minutes, and Lucy had not asked her one question.
She had not explained anything to her or talked her down.
She had simply given Grace space while staying close.
Carrington had never been able to do that without filling the silence.
She felt the urge to walk into the room and place her hand between Lucy’s shoulder blades, but she stayed where she was.
Lucy gave it another few minutes, then inched out of the bed so the mattress wouldn't give her away and picked her shoes up in one hand.
"Can you leave it open?" Grace whispered, still facing the wall.
Lucy came out and left the door wide open behind her. She stopped a couple of feet from Carrington.
"She'll go to sleep now," Lucy said.
"Is she all right?"
"She knows something's coming." Lucy had her arms folded and her coat still on. "She’s noticed a difference in how we interact, and because nobody told her anything, she’s decided it’s because of her."
"The gardeners come to the gate at seven. Alvarez at ten."
Lucy looked at her. Carrington heard how it sounded a second after she said it. Two facts, both of which Lucy already knew, in the voice she used on people who worked for her. She had always been able to say the right thing in any room she walked into. She had nothing for this one.
"I'll go back to the cottage," Lucy said.
She walked to the top of the stairs and took hold of the banister.
"Lucy."
Lucy stopped. She stood there a second without turning around.
The name came out before Carrington decided to say it. What’s more was she wasn’t sorry. She wanted Lucy upstairs, in her bed. Carrington stayed where she was because she wasn’t sure her legs were steady enough.
Lucy came back toward her and didn’t say anything. She stopped about a foot short of her, and Carrington took the shoes out of her hand and set them against the wall. They went into her room. Carrington turned the lamp off and pushed the door without letting it fully latch closed.
Carrington could hear how loud her breathing was and couldn’t quiet it, even though she knew they had to stay quiet, tonight of all nights.
Lucy pulled the coat off and dropped it.
The bed creaked when they laid down on it, and both of them stopped moving and listened for five or six seconds.
Nothing from Grace's room. Carrington got a fistful of the T-shirt and pulled it up over Lucy's ribs, and Lucy made a sound. Carrington put her hand over her mouth.
Lucy's breath went hot against her palm and came back cold. Her eyes opened and stayed on Carrington, and Carrington held still. Then Lucy nodded once against her hand. Carrington didn’t take it away.
Carrington could feel Lucy under her—the warm shift of her ribs, the cotton of a shirt rucked up past her navel, the denim still on one leg and gone from the other where they'd pulled it down to the knee and no further because the bed had creaked when Lucy arched.
They'd both stopped, Carrington's hand already clamped, Lucy's fingers digging into the sheet, both of them listening to any sound down the hall.
Nothing. The house held its breath around them.
Carrington moved her hand down to Lucy's jaw and swept her thumb across Lucy's lower lip.
She felt it part for her. Lucy's tongue touched the pad of her thumb and that was all it took for the desperation to come back.
Carrington leaned down and put her mouth where her thumb had been.
Lucy's hand came up and gripped the back of Carrington's neck, fingers pushing into the loosened hair.