4. Chapter 4
Jade
The first week at Linden Lake is a study in careful distances.
Graham and I orbit the house like two satellites with conflicting flight plans. He has the study and the master suite. I have the kitchen and the carriage house. Iris is the sun in the middle, and we are both pretending we aren't adjusting our paths to stay near her.
On the second morning, I come into the kitchen at six forty-five expecting it to be empty.
It isn't. Graham is at the island in shirtsleeves, suit jacket folded over a chair, reading something on his phone. A mug of black coffee in his hand. A half-empty pot on the counter behind him.
He looks up. He doesn't say good morning.
"Cream?"
"Whatever's in the pot. I'm not picky."
He pours a second cup and slides it down the marble toward me without looking up from his phone. The mug stops exactly within reach.
"Thank you."
He grunts.
I take a sip. Strong enough to dissolve a spoon. I lean against the counter and study him the way I study a weather front. Suit half-on. Jaw already locked. The tie loose around his collar like a leash he's about to tighten.
"You're up early."
"I'm always up this early."
"That explains the executive scowl before sunrise. I was beginning to worry it was personal."
The corner of his mouth almost moves. Not a smile. The skeleton of one.
"It is personal," he says. "Just not at you."
He picks up his coffee and his phone and disappears into the study before Iris's footsteps come down the stairs.
The next morning the second mug is already on the counter when I arrive. Hot. He's already gone.
The morning after that, the same.
I stop counting after that.
Day four, Iris brings me her stuffed owl, Judge, and sets him in my lap without a word. She doesn't ask me to hold him. She just leaves him there while she goes back to her coloring.
A test, or a gift. I don't move Judge. I let him stay until she comes back for him at lunch.
Day five, the storm comes in fast.
We're in the side yard with a rake twice Iris's height and a pile of leaves exactly her size. She's been narrating to Judge what each kind of leaf is called, with a level of confidence not strictly supported by science.
The first crack of thunder lands directly over the lake.
She freezes.
She doesn't cry. She doesn't run. She just stops moving and her hand finds my wrist and locks around it like a small steel bracelet. Her eyes go to the sky and stay there.
"Inside, sweetheart. Right now."
She doesn't let go of my wrist on the way in. I don't ask her to.
We end up on the kitchen floor with our backs against the cabinets, Iris in my lap, Judge under her chin, rain hitting the window in a steady sheet.
I keep my arms loose around her. I tell her about the duck.
I tell her about the time my brother thought a thunderstorm was a giant rolling marbles across the sky.
I tell her boring things in a boring voice until her grip softens by a single degree.
She tips her head back to look at me. Her hair is in her eyes. I smooth it away with my thumb, slow, the way I used to smooth my brother's hair when he couldn't sleep. She doesn't pull away. She watches my mouth for the next boring sentence like a kid who doesn't want to lose track of it.
Down the hall, the study door is cracked open.
Graham's voice carries through it. Clipped. Firm.
"Push the call. Reschedule for Monday."
A pause.
"I don't care what the agenda was, Pierce. Push it."
Another pause.
"Because my daughter needs me. That's why."
The door opens. He comes down the hall in his shirtsleeves, sees us on the floor, and stops in the doorway.
He goes to the cabinet where Iris's hot cocoa lives and pulls down the tin without checking which one.
He knows. He heats the milk on the stove instead of the microwave.
He stirs it counterclockwise because that is, apparently, how Iris has decided cocoa is supposed to be made.
He sets the mug on the floor next to her, low so she can reach it without leaving my lap.
He looks at me over her head. Mouths the words.
Thank you.
He still doesn't say it out loud.
He goes back to the study. Iris drinks her cocoa with both hands. The thunder moves off across the lake. Her grip on my wrist finally lets go.
On the sixth day Graham comes into the kitchen while we're doing a puzzle and sets a box on the table. Old paints. Brushes gone stiff at the tips. A child-sized smock with a faded daisy on the pocket.
"She used to paint," he says.
He leaves before I can ask him anything.
I don't ask Iris about it. I just open the box, lay everything out, and let her decide.
She decides the next afternoon.
By Day 7 the kitchen smells like tempera paint and toast crusts.
Iris has set up at the long end of the table with a sheet of butcher paper that takes up half the surface.
She's painting badly on purpose, the way six-year-olds do when they've discovered that bad on purpose is much more interesting than good by accident.
A yellow smear that might be the sun. A blue smear underneath it that is either the lake or a whale, depending on which way you tilt your head.
I'm at the sink washing brushes when Graham appears in the doorway.
Shirtsleeves again. Tie undone, hanging loose. He doesn't go to the study. He pulls out the chair at the far end of the table and sits down.
He doesn't speak. Neither do I. Iris doesn't even look up.
I can see them both in the reflection of the dark window over the sink. The man at the end of the table with his elbows on the wood. The small girl bent over her paper. The yellow sun spreading across the page.
She lifts the painting after a long time. Holds it up by two corners. Studies it with a frown.
"For you, Daddy."
Graham takes it with both hands. He looks at it. He doesn't say anything for a beat too long.
"I'm going to put this in my office."
"On your computer?"
"On the wall. Above the computer. So I see it first."
She nods like she has approved a major financial transaction and goes back to painting.
I keep washing brushes. I do not turn around.
A minute passes. Iris dips her brush in the water cup and looks up at me with the careful frown she uses when she's solving something.
"Jade."
"Yeah, sweetheart."
"What do other kids call their nannies."
"All sorts of things. Some kids use first names. Some kids use Miss-and-the-name. Some kids make up something."
She thinks about that.
"Miss Jade is too long."
"Agreed."
"Jade is fine."
"Jade is great."
She paints another stroke. Then she stops again.
"Sometimes I might say something else. By accident."
"Okay."
"Is that okay."
"That's okay."
She nods, satisfied, and goes back to her sun. I don't look at Graham. I can feel him at the end of the table, not moving. Whatever just happened, he heard it.
We don't talk about it.
Day eight, he thanks me. Just that. Two words at the end of the hallway before he disappears back into his work. But he means them.
By the ninth night, the carriage house has started to feel like mine.
The cedar smell has settled into something familiar. The hydrangea bushes outside the window catch the wind in a rhythm I'm already beginning to recognize. The mattress is firm in the way I like.
It's also the first place in three years where I don't have to check the mailbox for an eviction notice.
A low, sharp cry cuts through the quiet.
It's coming from the main house. I'm out the door before I can talk myself out of it, bare feet hitting the cold gravel. I don't stop until I'm pulling open the heavy oak door.
Plastic sheets ripple in the draft. I follow the sound up the stairs, past crates of marble and expensive light fixtures.
I find Iris in her room.
She's tiny in the center of a massive canopy bed, thrashing, her stuffed owl clutched to her chest so tight the fabric is straining. She isn't screaming anymore. It's a series of jagged, rhythmic sobs that sound like they're being torn out of her lungs.
"Iris?" I whisper, crossing the room. "Iris, sweetheart, it's Jade. You're okay."
She doesn't wake up. She's caught in that terrible middle-ground of a night terror where the dream is more real than the hands trying to pull you out. I sit on the edge of the mattress and reach out, hesitant to startle her.
Then I see him.
Graham is standing in the doorway.
He isn't the man in the five-thousand-dollar suit right now. He's wearing a grey t-shirt that's seen better days and flannel pants. His hair is a disaster. His eyes are bloodshot, rimmed with a raw, hollow exhaustion that tightens my chest.
He looks like a man who has been dismantled and put back together with the wrong parts.
"She won't wake up." His voice is a wreck. "She's been like this for twenty minutes. I don't know how to stop it."
He takes a step into the room, then stops. Like there's an invisible line he's afraid to cross.
"Move over." I keep my voice low and steady. "Graham, come here."
He looks at me like I've spoken in a dead language. Then, slowly, he sinks onto the other side of the bed. We're separated by Iris's small, shivering body. The air smells of his sleep-warmed skin and renovation dust.
"Put your hand on her shoulder. Just let her feel the weight of you. Don't shake her."
He does it. His hand is massive compared to hers, his knuckles white. I place my hand over his, guiding him. His skin is hot, his pulse thrumming against my palm.
The first time I've touched him without the shield of professional distance. The sensation lands like a physical blow.
He's broad. Too broad for this room. He takes up all the air.
Iris shifts in her sleep. Graham's attention snaps back to her face, and I can see the pulse working in his neck, the locked line of his jaw. He isn't just worried, he's terrified.
"Talk to her," I murmur. "Tell her where she is. Keep it boring. Keep it real."
Graham swallows hard. "We're at the lake, Iris. The dock is still there. The water is cold. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."