22. Lucy
LUCY
At six in the morning, Lucy had to make her own bed look slept in.
She had left it made the day before—corners tucked in, the throw folded across the bottom—and it had stayed that way all night while she spent the night in the main house with Carrington.
She pulled the covers back, pressed a dent into the pillow with her fist, and left a corner of the sheet hanging out.
She hadn’t slept all night. She had let herself in the cottage at half past four and sat on the couch with her shoes on until the sun lightened the sky. Melinda Alvarez would be in this room by half past ten, doing her rounds and checking it against the household list Carrington had mailed back.
She put yesterday's jeans and shirt in the hamper and hung her coat on the hook inside the door, with the sleeve pulled forward so it fell open.
She washed the mug and stood it upside down on the rack.
She had left the logbook out on the counter the night before.
She carried it to the table and turned back to Monday.
Slept through. Ate her dinner, all of it. Worksheet finished before six. Talked the whole way to school.
She ran her thumb under the last line. The grooves were still in the paper from the line she had written and erased.
One pull and the page would be ripped out of the book, and nobody would ever know she had written anything on it.
Instead, she shut the book and lined it up with the edge of the table.
It had taken twenty minutes for her to go through the cottage and make sure it looked sufficiently lived in and all traces of Carrington were removed.
She switched the lamp off and went up to the house at twenty to seven.
The chef had already lit the range, wedged the back door open, and floured the marble.
Lucy took the green cup down off the shelf and rinsed it.
Carrington came through from the hall at ten to seven in a red dress. Lucy had seen her in it once since February, on the night at the harbor. Her hair was pinned up, with more pins in it than Lucy had ever taken out of it at night. Carrington set a folder on the end of the island and left it shut.
"Ms. Harper. Melinda Alvarez will be here at ten. She'll want to speak to you on your own for part of the visitation."
"Just like she did in March?”
"Yes." Carrington took the coffee Bettina poured her and set it down on the table. "She's seeing Grace at school after lunch. Grace goes in at the ordinary time."
"All right."
"Thank you."
Lucy wanted to ask whether Carrington had slept at all after she had left, but she stayed quiet and reached for the milk instead.
Carrington opened the folder, drew a single sheet out of it, and read it through.
From Lucy's side of the island, it was upside down: three typed lines and a signature underneath them.
Lucy saw her own name on the third line.
She had known what was on that sheet since the night Carrington asked her to move her things back to the cottage.
Grace came down at ten past seven, dressed, with one side of her hair still stuck up. She climbed onto the stool and pulled the bowl over.
"There's a lady coming today," Lucy said.
"To here?"
"Here this morning, and at your school after lunch. It's the same woman who came and talked to you in March."
Grace held the spoon and didn't say anything for a second. "Is she going to ask me about my favorite colors again?"
"She might."
"It's still teal," Grace said, and put the spoon back in the cereal.
Carrington looked up from the sheet. "Eat that before it goes soft."
"It's already soft."
"Then eat it anyway."
Grace swung her heel against the leg of the stool twice. Carrington didn't tell her to stop. Lucy worked the tangles out of Grace's hair with a brush and loosely braided it while she ate.
At eight, Carrington put her cup in the sink with some coffee still in it. "I'll be in the study until she comes," she said. "Ms. Harper."
"Ms. Cole."
Grace waved at her with the spoon.
They were out the door a few minutes later.
On the coastal road, Grace wanted to know whether the aquarium had many octopuses or one octopus, and whether you were allowed to touch the sting rays.
Lucy answered both questions. In the school drop-off line, Grace climbed out and hitched her bag onto both shoulders.
She held on to the door instead of shutting it.
"Are you picking me up?"
"Yes, I'm picking you up," Lucy said.
Grace shut the door and walked in the school without turning around.
By the time she got back to the house, the gardeners had walked the mower off the front lawn and were loading the trailer.
She sorted the mail into the drawer, straightened the chairs at the long table, and pulled the dead stems out of the arrangement in the hall.
She wiped the marble twice. By half past nine, she had run out of things to do to keep her busy.
The study door was shut. Through the door, Lucy heard Carrington say yes, and then yes again, and then go quiet for a long time.
At ten sharp, the gate buzzed. Lucy pressed the button in the hall, and the car came up the drive and stopped well back from the fountain.
Melinda Alvarez wore short heels and carried the same canvas bag she had with her in March, with a folder tucked under one arm. She shook Carrington's hand and then Lucy's.
"I'll take a look at the house and the cottage, then I'll sit down with you both. It shouldn't take long."
While she walked through each room, she wrote notes in a notebook braced on her forearm. She looked at the kitchen and the courtyard, then went up the stairs and stood just inside the door of Grace's room without touching anything.
"Does she sleep through the night yet?" Melinda asked.
"Yes," Carrington said. "She wakes up if there's bad weather or if she has a nightmare, but she goes back to sleep after a while."
"What does she eat in the morning?"
"Cereal, mostly. Toast if the chef makes it. She likes it cut in triangles."
Melinda’s pen kept moving.
"Who takes her to the doctor?"
"Ms. Harper takes her. I've been to the last two."
"Where does she do her schoolwork?"
"At the kitchen table," Lucy said. "Or outside at the porch table if it's warm enough."
She asked about the school, then about the pediatrician on Wells Street, then about who had signed the consent form.
Carrington answered every one of them without a pause.
Lucy stood down the hallway and listened.
She smiled when Carrington got all the details right.
In February, Carrington had needed to be told what color Grace liked.
They came down to the kitchen. Melinda went out into the courtyard on her own and stood on the stones with her back to the glass. Then she wrote something and came inside again.
The cottage was next. Lucy opened the door and stepped aside to let her in.
Melinda inspected the entire space in under three minutes.
When she had finished going through everything, Melinda sat down on the left end of the couch to finish writing her notes while Lucy stayed by the door.
Melinda got up and picked the logbook up off the table, turning the pages with her index finger.
Her eyes scanned each page for about four or five seconds before she flipped to the next one.
When she got to the end, she closed it and set it back down on the table.
"Do you write that yourself?"
"Every night."
"Is this everything of yours?"
"Yes," Lucy said.
Melinda Alvarez sat at the island with the folder open and her notebook beside it. Carrington stood across from her, and Lucy made the coffee and poured two cups for them. After, she went back to the sink and picked up a dish towel.
"Ms. Harper, what hours are you scheduled?"
"Seven in the morning until Grace is asleep. I have every other weekend off."
Melinda did not look up from the notebook.
"Does anybody else look after her?"
"No. The chef's here during the day, but she’s cooking."
"Any night in the last three months when Grace was in the house on her own?"
"No," Lucy said.
"Good." Alvarez turned a page. "Two more things and I’m finished. There's a written statement in the file. It came in after this visit was scheduled, so you wouldn’t have seen it. It's from someone named Deborah Mensah."
Carrington placed a hand flat on the island. "She was my sister's oldest friend."
"That's what she says. She's asking to be considered as somebody with a relationship to Grace.
That part isn't mine to decide." Melinda turned the top page over.
"The rest of it is about the household, and it's the reason I have to go through each detail of the form with you. I'll read you the part that matters."
Nobody said anything. The chef put something down on a shelf in the pantry.
"I'm not asking to take Grace anywhere. I think there’s something more going on in that house than is reported, and I'd like somebody to look at it and tell me I'm wrong." Melinda put down the form and looked up.
"She called the house in March," Lucy said. "Nobody called her back."
"She says that too."
"She can write to my attorney," Carrington said. "Diane Bell."
Melinda wrote that down. "Have you met her, Ms. Harper?"
"Once. She brought Grace a box of things out of Clara's house." Lucy pushed her sleeves back. "Grace didn't want her to go."
"Did you tell Ms. Cole she'd stopped by?"
"Yes, that Saturday."
Melinda wrote that down, too, and then she put the statement back in the folder and turned to a printed sheet behind it.
"The household list is the part I sign off on. Ms. Cole, the paper you returned says there are two people living in the main house and Ms. Harper is in the cottage as a live-in nanny. Is that current?"
"It is."
"Is your relationship with Ms. Harper personal in any way?"
"No," Carrington said.
Lucy was wringing the towel out over the sink. She stopped.
"Ms. Harper." Melinda turned her head to look at her. Her voice did not change at all. "Is your relationship with Ms. Cole personal in any way?"
Lucy flicked her eyes across the kitchen. Carrington didn’t move and was perfectly statuesque, but Lucy had learned to read Carrington’s tells by now. She was looking at the folder on the counter and didn’t look up, but Lucy knew she was listening to every word.
"Yes, it is," Lucy said.
Carrington pulled the stool out from under the counter and sat down on it. The legs dragged over the tile. She didn’t say anything or look over.
Alvarez's pen didn't move for about two seconds.
"I'm going to note that the two answers don't match," Melinda said. "That's all it is at this stage. It doesn't change anything I do today."
She wrote one line and found her place on the page again.
"Does she talk about her mother?" Melinda continued.
"Not often. There's a book of her mother's that came here in a box a couple of weeks ago." Lucy folded the towel over once. "She read it out loud to herself every night for about a week. Then she put it back in the box under her bed."
"Did she say why?"
"No. She put it away herself, so I left it."
"Does she see friends outside of school?"
"One. Kayla. Grace was over at her house a few weeks ago, and they're sitting together on the bus to the aquarium in June."
Melinda wrote that down, too, and underlined Kayla’s name. She asked who else was going on the trip.
Lucy had been waiting all morning for her voice to shake. It still hadn't. The towel was cold and wet in her fists. She put it down, took the pot off the warmer, and refilled Melinda's coffee cup.