28. Lucy #2
She was going to be my new nanny. Grace took the pad back and wrote underneath it, pressing hard. She got down on the floor next to me. I didn't want her to. I went and sat on the stairs until she left.
Lucy handed the pad back. "You did that to her on purpose?"
Grace kept her eyes on the pad and said nothing.
"Listen to me. Somebody else is going to be in this house to be your nanny sooner or later. You can be as rude to her as you like for the first week, and then you have to let her do her job." Lucy tapped the pad. "That's not me being on her side or choosing her over you."
Grace wrote one word and showed it to her. Okay.
"Talk to your aunt."
Grace shook her head.
"I don't mean tonight. She's downstairs right now, and she's the one raising you." Lucy waited. "You do it when you want to do it. Whenever you’re ready."
Lucy took the rabbit out from inside her coat and stood him on the rug between them. "He's been sitting up on a box in a rented room with his back against a wall. That's no good for anybody."
Grace picked him up by the middle and turned him over once. Then she rose onto her knees, hooked two fingers in Lucy's coat pocket, and pushed him into it headfirst.
"Grace."
"I gave him to you."
"You did."
"He's not for lending." Grace flattened both palms against the rug. Then she twisted around and dug the whale book out from under her pillow. She held it against her front with both hands crossed over it. "You have to take this one too."
"No. I’m not going to."
"You can bring it back when you come back."
"Grace, no." Lucy put her hand flat on the cover and pushed it gently back toward her. "That's your mom's. That one stays in this house and it stays in this room, and nobody takes it anywhere, including me."
Grace didn't let go of it.
"If I took that out of here tonight, you'd have given me everything you own that you love," Lucy said. "And it wouldn’t change that I’d still be getting in a car and leaving at the end of this. So it stays. You can be mad at me."
Grace read the cover of it like she hadn't seen it before. Then she put it back under the pillow, adjusted the pillow up over the top of it, and sat down again on the floor where she had been.
"Okay," she said, polite and level and completely empty.
Lucy had heard that voice on the morning she left. It had been the worst thing in that entire day. It was worse now, because she knew what Grace had to do to herself to get it that monotone.
"You're allowed to be mad at me," Lucy said.
"I'm not mad at you."
"All right."
"Are you going now?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
"I'm going down to say goodbye to your aunt before I go." Lucy stood up. "Get your homework folder finished."
At the door, she looked around. Grace was down on the floor with the folder open across her knees and the pad next to it.
Carrington was in the kitchen with a glass of red wine in her hand. She had her hair down.
"How did she find you? Bettina, I mean," Carrington said.
"She called Ashworth and asked. They gave her my address once she said she works here.
" Lucy said it matter-of-factly, not feeling the need to hide anything Bettina had already told her.
"She told me she was worried that she would be let go for it.
She said she'd worked that out before she got in the car. "
"Yes. That sounds like Bettina."
"Don't let her go for it."
"I wasn't going to let her go."
"Then tell her that tonight. She's sitting out in the driveway waiting to be fired."
"She'll hear it from me before she goes home tonight." Carrington put the glass down on the island.
Lucy hadn't unbuttoned her coat. Carrington stayed where she was, with the island between them. Four steps would have covered it. Lucy counted them from the door but stayed rooted in the same spot.
"She thinks she did it," Lucy said. "The caseworker asked Grace who puts her to bed at night and she gave the true answer, which is both of us, and two days later I was gone. She's been up there putting those two things together ever since. She blames herself."
Carrington said nothing.
"She asked me outright if she caused this.
I told her no. I told her the lady asked us both a question, that you and I gave different answers, and that I was let go over it.
" Lucy had both hands on the door frame now.
"I didn't tell her what the question was.
That part is yours to address, if you want to.
But I refused to tell her nobody asked anything, and I won't apologize for that.
She's seven and she's been carrying this weight all on her own. No child deserves that."
"No," Carrington said. "You shouldn't apologize."
"She talked to me tonight."
Carrington didn't move at all. She looked at the floor then back up at Lucy. "Out loud?"
"Yes."
"What did she say?"
"Some of it's hers to keep and decide who to share it with," Lucy said. "I'm not going to betray her trust. She'll tell you herself or she won't."
Carrington's hand slid an inch along the marble and stopped. She didn't ask again. "Was it hard for her? Getting it out."
"I could tell she had a lot of it ready," Lucy said. "It wasn't hard for her to speak it. But it was hard for me to hear it."
It would have been so easy to tell her what Grace had said. Weeks of it in that house with a child who wouldn't speak; she could only imagine how difficult that must have been for Carrington. Lucy swallowed the words because it was Grace’s decision to share, not hers.
Carrington nodded once without looking directly at her.
“I want to offer you something, but I haven’t figured out how to ask it.
I’ll just go ahead and try anyway.” Carrington leaned her weight forward onto her hands, which were planted on the island.
“Bettina can drive Grace into town every other Saturday to come see you, and you can have her for the afternoon. I won’t be anywhere near you both.
It will just be the two of you. The trust can pay you at the same rate. ”
She stopped. Lucy waited for more, but Carrington stood behind her island with her mouth shut. In all the time Lucy had known Carrington, she had never once watched her catch herself halfway through a thought.
"Will you see her again?" Carrington said. "That's what I really want to know. The rest of it was me getting out of asking it."
Lucy looked at the fruit bowl instead of looking at Carrington. "I don't know," she said.
"That's fair."
"It isn't fair. It's just true." Lucy made herself look up and meet Carrington’s eyes.
"She asked me the same thing the morning I left and I gave her the same answer.
I've had two weeks to come up with a better one.
I haven't. If I start showing up every other Saturday and then I take a live-in job in another town, I’d have abandoned her twice.
She would survive it and she shouldn't have to. "
"No," Carrington said.
"So I'm not going to stand here and say yes to you because it's the easier word."
Carrington took that standing still.
"You'll tell me either way," she said, and she didn't put extra pressure on her.
"I'll make sure of it."
"Thank you." Carrington pushed both hands into her pockets and left them there.
"I wrote your reference letter already," she said.
"Diane has it and she'll put it in the mail tomorrow.
You should know I included the reason I dismissed you.
It would look worse if I had left it out, and you would get a lot of questions about that.
I don't want you to have to deal with that on top of job searching and interviews.
I recommend that you read it before you hand it to anybody. "
"All right."
"You'll want it for Ashworth."
"I already put my name back in," Lucy said. "The week before last."
"Then the letter is late. I'm sorry," Carrington said.
"It is."
"Thank you for coming out here," Carrington said.
"I came for Grace."
"I know you did."
Lucy turned the handle behind her and pushed the door half open with her back, then paused.
"I spent a week telling myself you'd have taken the check if I'd written a bigger number on it," Carrington said.
The cold came in around her legs. Lucy had four or five answers to that and she gave none of them. Lucy knew that Carrington knew, deep down, that it was never about the money.
Carrington picked the glass up off the marble and carried it to the sink, the wine mostly untouched, and she stood over it with her back to Lucy.
Outside, the low path lights were on down both sides of the gravel. Bettina had the car in the same place with the engine still idling and the headlights off.
Lucy walked down over the stones and out onto the gravel. Nobody came out after her.
Grace's lamp faintly glowed behind the curtain on the courtyard side, and the kitchen was still lit underneath it.
Bettina leaned across and pushed the passenger door open from the inside. The light came on on the roof.
Lucy put her hand on the top of the door and hooked her fingers over the frame.
The rabbit's ears were sticking up out of her pocket.
Then she turned around in the gravel and looked back up at the house instead of getting in.
She stayed like that, with the door standing open and the little light on over her head.
Bettina left the engine running and said nothing to her about it.