3. Winnie #2
Beneath all the noise and exhaustion, beneath the children’s shenanigans and their carefully maintained routines, the entire family was suspended in the exact moment their lives had broken apart.
The tour continued upstairs.
“This bathroom was renovated last year,” Mr. Lawrence said as he opened another door. “The hot water takes a minute longer on this side of the house for some reason. I’ve had people look into it, but nobody knows why it happens.”
Billie wandered into what appeared to be a secondary sitting room and pressed her entire face against the window. “It looks haunted outside again.”
“It’s cloudy,” Bianca said for perhaps the fifth time.
Mr. Lawrence sighed with great affection.
There it was again. That strange contradiction in him. He carried exhaustion everywhere, yet whenever one of his children spoke, some part of him softened automatically.
I had known men who loved their children, and I had known men who felt responsible for their children. They weren’t always the same men.
Conrad Lawrence, however, belonged to both categories.
We moved farther down the hallway. Family photographs lined the walls in mismatched silver and dark wood frames. The children at various ages, missing teeth, in school plays, at beach trips and pancake breakfasts, dressed up in Halloween costumes.
The wife appeared often. She was beautiful. Tall, willowy, with pin-straight, near platinum hair and big, blue eyes. Billie was the spitting image of her mother.
In nearly every photograph, she leaned into the frame instead of posing for it. Her arms were around the children, and she always seemed to be laughing mid-movement and looking at her husband instead of the camera.
I slowed near one photograph. The wife stood in a garden holding an infant Billie, while Bianca clung to her leg, and CJ grinned, showing off several missing teeth. Conrad stood behind all of them, wearing that dazed expression new fathers had: tiredness, happiness, and terror all rolled into one.
“You all resemble your mother,” I said quietly.
All three children reacted in three entirely different ways. CJ smiled immediately, pleased. Bianca looked down. Billie asked, “Even my elbows?”
I turned toward her. “Especially your elbows.”
Her entire face lit up, and she started spinning in place.
Mr. Lawrence had gone very still beside me. Before I could say anything further, his phone rang. Every child in the hallway changed instantly, the reactions subtle but immediate. CJ’s shoulders stiffened. Bianca looked at the floor. Billie stopped spinning.
Mr. Lawrence pulled the phone from his pocket and grimaced apologetically. “I’m so sorry. I need to take this.”
“It’s quite all right.”
“It’ll only be a minute,” he promised.
He stepped into a nearby room and closed the door behind him halfway, though not completely. Even from down the hall, I could hear the shift in him as he answered. His voice became firmer, more professional. Whatever softness existed around his children tucked itself away immediately.
The hallway was silent. Then Bianca nudged Billie. The little one looked up at me with sudden excitement. “I have a present for you.”
Alarm crossed CJ’s face.
“Oh?” I crouched slightly to her level. “How generous.”
Billie shoved her clasped hands closer to my face and slowly opened them to reveal a spider.
Ah.
All three children watched me expectantly, probably waiting for me to scream or perform some other theatric like some women would do when confronted with an arachnid. It was the reaction they, no doubt, had received from their previous nannies.
Instead, I leaned closer. “Ah,” I murmured. “Parasteatoda tepidariorum. However, it was previously classified as Achaearanea tepidariorum. Part of the Theridiidae family. American house spider.”
Complete silence.
The spider crawled calmly across Billie’s palm.
“Thank you for showing your pet to me,” I said, extending one gloved finger beneath the tiny creature and allowing it to climb onto my hand.
Billie gasped, and CJ nudged Bianca, who looked genuinely stunned.
The tiny, delicate spider wandered across the black fabric of my glove.
Humans feared spiders so intensely, despite how vulnerable the creatures were.
With their small bodies and fragile legs, they were mostly harmless and simply trying to survive in corners where larger creatures wouldn’t crush them.
After a moment, I returned the spider to Billie’s waiting hands. “There you are.”
Billie stared at me. “Cool,” she whispered.
CJ recovered first. “You know spider taxonomy?”
“I know many things.”
Bianca stepped closer now, her fascination temporarily overriding her suspicion. “How?”
“I read a lot of books.”
“What else do you know?” Billie asked immediately.
“A ridiculous amount of things.”
When she grinned, her entire face changed.
That explained quite a lot about this child. People likely dismissed her constantly because she was loud, reckless, and strange in ways adults found exhausting. Children noticed immediately when someone took their interests seriously instead of merely tolerating them.
Interesting little creature.
The office door opened behind us. Mr. Lawrence stepped back into the hall. “No, move the meeting to Tues?—”
He stopped talking, then swiped his phone screen and stuffed the device into his pocket. All three children had gathered close around me now. CJ looked engaged instead of charming. Bianca looked openly curious. Billie looked moments away from proposing I adopt her.
Their father stared.
Confusion moved across his face, then suspicion, followed closely by disbelief. He cleared his throat. “What happened?” he asked slowly.
Billie lifted the spider proudly. “Winnie knows bug secrets.”
“Oh.” He stared at the spider. “Is that so?”
“She’s not scared of Gerald.”
Mr. Lawrence blinked slowly. “The spider’s name is Gerald?”
“Obviously,” Billie said.
CJ folded his arms, studying me with increasing interest. “She knew his scientific classification.”
I rose smoothly. “Gerald appears to be quite polite.”
Billie looked deeply emotional hearing this. “Most people hate him.”
I patted her shoulder gently. “Most people are shortsighted.”
Mr. Lawrence stared at me for longer than necessary. There was caution in him now, yes, but something else underneath it too. Curiosity perhaps. Maybe confusion over why his children suddenly looked less defensive than they had all morning.
Poor man. He was so accustomed to managing tension that he didn’t seem to know what to do when it disappeared.
“We should continue the tour,” he said eventually.
The children followed us much more closely after that. Billie attached herself directly to my side, occasionally swinging our joined hands even though I’d never actually agreed to hold her hand in the first place.
CJ asked increasingly elaborate questions clearly designed to test me. “If you could only eat one food forever, what would it be?”
“Pomegranates.”
“That’s incredibly random.”
“They’re delicious.”
Bianca narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Pomegranates are nutrient-dense powerhouses, packed with dietary fiber, vitamins, and powerful antioxidants.”
The girl really was a clever one. I liked her immensely.
As we moved through the upper floor, I noticed more pieces of the family.
One bedroom had children’s drawings taped on the wall, while the toys were almost unnaturally neatly organized in baskets beneath the window.
Children who feared making messes when grief was already messes often learned to prioritize cleanliness.
Another room held a half-finished puzzle that had been untouched long enough for dust to gather at the edges.
The wife’s office remained perfectly preserved.
That stopped me briefly. It looked as though she might return and sit behind the desk at any moment.
Pens were neatly aligned beside legal pads, and a cardigan was still draped over the chair.
A framed photograph of the children sat next to the lamp, and there were a few more arranged on the bookshelves.
Mr. Lawrence noticed me noticing and took a protective stance. “I haven’t…” He stopped. “I just haven’t gone through everything yet.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
His shoulders loosened slightly at the lack of judgment.
The children had grown quieter, more subdued. Billie reached for her father’s hand as Bianca stepped closer to him. CJ was pointedly not looking at the room.
Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. The children didn’t merely misbehave when separated from him; they unraveled. Every time he stepped away for a phone call or drifted mentally toward work or adult responsibility, some invisible panic moved through the house.
This was a very lonely family.
We finished in the upstairs playroom where Billie showed me an extremely alarming collection of rocks she’d hidden inside a dollhouse.
“Some are emotional support rocks,” she explained.
“Which emotions?”
“Mostly anger.”
Behind us, Mr. Lawrence leaned briefly against the doorway while watching the children crowd around me.
By the time we returned downstairs, the children had decided I belonged to them.
This was both flattering and concerning.
Billie was holding my hand again, and whenever the silence lasted longer than seconds, CJ would ask me another question. Bianca had stopped pretending to be uninterested entirely and now watched me with active intellectual focus.
Mr. Lawrence noticed all of this. He tried not to, but he was doing a poor job of it. Every few minutes, I caught him looking at the children in disbelief, as if they were wild animals accepting food directly from someone’s hand.