11. Nora
— ? —
Nora
The party was Brielle’s idea.
“We need to show everyone we’re fine,” she announced at breakfast three days ago. “All this moping around is giving people the wrong impression.”
Adrian didn’t argue. He never argues with Brielle anymore - just nods and goes where he’s pointed, a hollow man in a well-cut suit.
Tonight, the house is full of people I used to know. Adrian’s mother, Eleanor, who never approved of Brielle and has never bothered to hide it. His business partners. His college friends. The neighbors who used to come to our dinner parties, back when I was the one pouring the wine.
I’m supposed to be invisible. Just the nanny, circulating with trays, keeping Lily occupied until bedtime. But Theo is here, and his hand keeps finding the small of my back, and people are starting to notice.
His thumb moves once against my spine, one small stroke through fabric, and I forget which tray I’m holding.
A room full of people, my husband performing for the fireplace crowd, and my entire body has narrowed to one square inch of borrowed heat.
Not with her counting the seconds, I tell myself.
Not tonight. Not with Adrian close enough to see.
His hand stays.
So does the heat.
“Is that the nanny?” I hear one woman whisper to another. “I could have sworn she was plainer. Amazing what a room full of watching men does for a woman.”
“And very cozy with Theo Hartley, apparently.”
“Isn’t that the one Brielle slapped? At the school, in front of everyone?”
“Mmm. And yet here she still is. Makes you wonder who decided she stays.”
“Wasn’t he in love with the first wife? I always thought there was something there.”
I smile to myself and keep moving.
Eleanor intercepts me near the bar.
“You’re new,” she says. It’s not a question.
“Yes, Mrs. Walker. I started two months ago.”
“And you’re taking care of my granddaughter?”
“I am.”
She studies me with eyes that see too much - the same dark eyes she passed to her son, the same ones that look out at me from Lily’s face.
“Where are you from?”
“Here and there.”
“That’s a route, not an answer.”
“I grew up in-” Millbrook. Two streets from the church. You sent flowers when my mother died. You stood in my kitchen and told me I was the best decision your son ever made. “-a small town. You wouldn’t know it.”
“Try me. I know every small town in three counties.”
“Mrs. Walker, your glass is nearly empty. Can I-”
“My glass is fine, and you’re changing the subject.
” But there’s something almost like approval in it.
She steps closer, and lowers her voice, and the party falls away.
“You remind me of someone. I’ve been standing here trying to decide who, and it’s going to keep me up tonight.
” Her eyes hold mine a beat too long. “I can’t decide if that’s a compliment. ”
“When you decide,” I manage, “I hope you’ll tell me.”
“Oh, I will.” She pats my arm once: brisk, warm, devastating. “In the meantime, whoever taught you to hold your chin like that when you’re being interrogated - give her my regards.”
She taught me herself. Thanksgiving. Year one. “Chin up when they come at you, dear. This family eats the ones who look down.”
“Lily seems happier lately. More settled.” She sips her champagne. “I saw her laughing in the garden yesterday, and I realized I haven’t heard that sound in two years.”
“She’s a wonderful child.”
“She is.” Eleanor’s voice softens. “She was her mother’s whole world, you know. Nora - my first daughter-in-law - she loved that child more than anything. More than herself, certainly. More than my son deserved.”
“You didn’t approve of the marriage?”
“I adored Nora.” Her eyes flash. “I adored her, and then she died, and my son had moved on before the grave had even settled. Do you know what that tells you about a man?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“It tells you everything.” She sets down her glass. “Keep taking care of Lily. She needs someone in this house who actually sees her.”
She walks away, leaving me with the strange, vertiginous feeling of being mourned by my own mother-in-law.
Theo finds me in the butler’s pantry with a tray of empty flutes.
“We have to stop meeting in pantries.” He pulls the door half closed behind him, blocking out the noise from the party.
“You keep following me into them.”
“You keep being in them.”
His hand finds my hip in the dark. My whole body forgets it’s holding glassware. There’s a whole party on the other side of that door. My husband. His wife. My mother-in-law three rooms away, halfway to figuring out my face.
Not here, I tell myself. Not in this house.
“One minute.” His voice is low against my temple, like he’s bargaining with himself as much as with me. “Give me one minute of not pretending.”
I give him ninety seconds.
This is how it ends, the careful voice warns. Ninety seconds of appetite with one hinge between you and ruin - his guests on one side of that door, his best friend’s mouth on your neck on the other. Then let the hinge decide, I answer, and tip my head back.
His mouth on my neck. My fingers curling into his collar. The tray abandoned on the shelf where I used to hide the good champagne back when this was my house, my pantry, my life.
Then I straighten his tie. He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. We walk out separately, ten seconds apart, like two people who weren’t just stealing time in a dead woman’s pantry.
Brielle’s eyes find me the moment I reenter the dining room.
Then they find him.
She’s counting the seconds between our entrances. I can see her doing the math, her gaze flicking back and forth, calculating.
I pick up another tray and keep moving.
***
The disaster happens at eight o’clock.
Lily has been brought down to say goodnight - Brielle’s idea, a chance to show off the happy family to the assembled guests. She’s wearing a dress I don’t recognize, her hair done up in elaborate braids that she clearly hates.
“Say goodnight to everyone, sweetheart,” Brielle instructs.
Lily makes the rounds dutifully. Goodnight to Mrs. Ashford. Goodnight to Mr. Parker and goodnight to Grandmother Eleanor.
Then she comes to me.
“Goodnight, Miss Eve,” she says. And then, before I can stop her, she lifts her arms.
Asking to be picked up.
The room goes quiet. Lily hasn’t asked her father for a hug all evening - hasn’t even looked at him - and here she is, reaching for the help.
I hesitate for just a second. Then I bend down and lift her into my arms, feeling her small body settle against my hip with the familiar weight of every time I held her before.
“Goodnight, sweetheart,” I murmur against her hair. “Sleep well.”
“Will you come read to me?”
“I’m supposed to work the party tonight.”
“Please?” Her arms tighten around my neck. “You’re the only one who does the voices right.”
Across the room, Adrian makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be something else entirely. When I look up, his face is twisted with something I can’t name.
And then he snaps.
“That’s enough.” His voice is too loud for the room, too sharp for the moment. “Put her down. Now.”
The guests freeze. Brielle’s hand goes to her mouth.
“Adrian-” I start.
“I said put her down!” He’s moving toward me now, his glass sloshing whiskey onto the floor. “You’re the nanny. You’re nothing. You don’t get to stand in my house holding my daughter like you - like you-”
“Adrian.” Theo’s voice cuts through the chaos. He’s suddenly between us, his back to me, his posture protective. “You need to stop.”
“Don’t tell me what I need.” Adrian’s face is red. “Don’t stand there defending her when you don’t even know - when you can’t possibly understand-”
“Understand what?”
Adrian opens his mouth. Closes it. His whole body is shaking.
And Eleanor sets down her glass with a sharp click.
“I think I’ve seen enough,” she says. The room goes silent.
“Adrian. I’ve watched you for two years, trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Trying to believe that grief made you foolish, that loneliness made you hasty.
But this - screaming at the help in front of your guests, while your daughter cries in the corner - this is who you’ve become. And I don’t recognize my son anymore.”
“Mother-”
“I’m leaving.” She picks up her coat. “I’d take Lily with me if I could, but the law doesn’t work that way. So instead, I’m going to hope - for her sake - that you wake up before you destroy everything that’s left.”
She walks out without looking back.
The room holds its breath. One by one, the other guests begin to follow - murmured excuses, coats collected, cars starting in the driveway.
Brielle hasn’t moved. She’s standing by the window, watching the exodus, and when she finally speaks, her voice is quiet.
“You just cost us every friend we have.”
“They weren’t friends.” Adrian’s voice is hollow. “They were witnesses. To whatever this life is supposed to be.”
“And whose fault is that?”
They stare at each other across the wreckage of the party. I hold Lily tighter, feeling her trembling against my chest.
“I’ll take her upstairs,” I say quietly.
Neither of them responds.
But as I carry Lily out of the room, I catch Brielle’s eye.
She’s not watching Adrian.
She’s watching me. And Theo. And the way he stepped between us without hesitation.
She’s putting things together.
And she’s not going to stop until she figures out what they add up to.
Upstairs, I close Lily’s door against the noise and set her down on the bed, and her arms don’t want to let go of my neck.
“Come here.” I sit beside her and start working the pins out of those elaborate braids, one by one, unwinding Brielle’s idea of a happy family strand by strand. “Let’s get rid of these. They look like they hurt.”
“They do hurt.” Her voice is small. Below us, right on cue, the voices rise through the floorboards - you humiliated me in front of everyone and I humiliated YOU? - and something glass meets something hard. Lily flinches under my hands.
“They’re fighting again.” Her voice is tiny. “They fight every night now. It’s my fault.”
“Look at me.” I take her face in both hands. “It is not your fault. Not one word of it. Grown-up fights are about grown-up things, and none of those things are you. Do you hear me?”
“Then why do they always say my name?”
The question lands like a fist. Downstairs, right on cue, Brielle’s voice spikes through the floor - and what about LILY, did you think about LILY - and my daughter flinches again in my hands.
Because you’re the only thing left in that marriage worth fighting over. Because you’re the prize in a war you didn’t start. Because everyone in this house is using your name as a weapon except the woman they buried.
“Because they both love you,” I say instead, “and people are at their stupidest about the things they love.”
A wet hiccup of a laugh. “That’s not a nice word.”
“I’m not a nice lady. Don’t tell anyone.” I pull back her blanket. “Scoot over.”
“You’ll stay?”
“Until you’re asleep.”
“Do the dragon voice.”
“The dragon is asleep. This is his snoring.” I do the snore.
She giggles - one real giggle, cracking through the tears - and burrows into my side, and downstairs the marriage goes on tearing itself apart, and up here in the dark I hold my daughter and hum the lullaby under the noise until her breathing goes slow and even.
“You hum it right,” she mumbles at the very edge of sleep, so quietly I almost miss it. “Nobody hums it right.”
I keep humming. It’s the only thing that stops me from answering.
Fight, I think at the floorboards, stroking her hair. Scream the house down. Break every goddamn thing you stole.
I’ll be up here. Holding the only thing that was ever worth anything in it.