Chap­ter 3

I arrive at the Win­ches­ter home the next morn­ing, after Nina has already dropped Cecelia off at school. I park out­side the met­al gate sur­round­ing their prop­er­ty. I’ve nev­er been in a house that was pro­tect­ed by a gate before, much less lived there. But this swanky Long Island neigh­bor­hood seems to be all gat­ed hous­es. Con­sid­er­ing how low the crime rate is around here, it seems like overkill, but who am I to judge? Every­thing else being equal, if I had a choice between a house with a gate and a house with no gate, I’d pick the gate too.

The gate was open when I arrived yes­ter­day, but today it’s closed. Locked, appar­ent­ly. I stand there a moment, my two duf­fel bags at my feet, try­ing to fig­ure out how to get inside. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of door­bell or buzzer. But that land­scap­er is on the prop­er­ty again, crouched in the dirt, a shov­el in his hand.

“Excuse me!” I call out.

The man glances over his shoul­der at me, then goes back to dig­ging. Real nice.

“Excuse me!” I say again, loud enough that he can’t ignore me. This time, he slow­ly, slow­ly gets to his feet. He’s in absolute­ly no hur­ry as he ambles across the giant front lawn to the entrance to the gate. He pulls off his thick rub­ber gloves and rais­es his eye­brows at me.

“Hi!” I say, try­ing to hide my annoy­ance with him. “My name is Mil­lie Cal­loway, and it’s my first day work­ing here. I’m just try­ing to get inside because Mrs. Win­ches­ter is expect­ing me.”

He doesn’t say any­thing. From across the yard, I had only noticed how big he is—at least a head taller than me, with biceps the size of my thighs—but up close, I real­ize he’s actu­al­ly pret­ty hot. He looks to be in his mid-thir­ties with thick jet-black hair damp from exer­tion, olive skin, and rugged good looks. But his most strik­ing fea­ture is his eyes. His eyes are very black—so dark, I can’t dis­tin­guish the pupil from the iris. Some­thing about his gaze makes me take a step back.

“So, um, can you help me?” I ask.

The man final­ly opens his mouth. I expect him to tell me to get lost or to show him some ID, but instead, he lets loose with a string of rapid Ital­ian. At least, I think it’s Ital­ian. I can’t say I know a word of the lan­guage, but I saw an Ital­ian movie with sub­ti­tles once, and it sort of sound­ed like this.

“Oh,” I say when he fin­ish­es his mono­logue. “So, um… no Eng­lish?”

“Eng­lish?” he says in a voice so heav­i­ly accent­ed, it’s clear what the answer is. “No. No Eng­lish.”

Great. I clear my throat, try­ing to fig­ure out the best way to express what I need to tell him. “So I…” I point to my chest. “I am work­ing. For Mrs. Win­ches­ter.” I point to the house. “And I need to get… inside.” Now I point to the lock on the gate. “Inside.”

He just frowns at me. Great.

I’m about ready to dig out my phone and call Nina when he goes off to the side, hits some sort of switch, and the gates swing open, almost in slow motion.

Once the gates are open, I take a moment to gaze up at the house that will be my home for the fore­see­able future. The house is two sto­ries plus the attic, sprawl­ing over what looks like about the length of a city block in Brook­lyn. It’s almost blind­ing­ly white—possibly fresh­ly painted—and the archi­tec­ture looks con­tem­po­rary, but what do I know? I just know it looks like the peo­ple liv­ing here have more mon­ey than they know what to do with.

I start to pick up one of my bags, but before I can, the guy picks up both of them with­out even grunt­ing and car­ries them to the front door for me. Those bags are very heavy—they con­tain lit­er­al­ly every­thing I own aside from my car—so I’m grate­ful he vol­un­teered to do the heavy lift­ing for me.

“Gra­cias,” I say.

He gives me a fun­ny look. Hmm, that might have been Span­ish. Oh well.

I point to my chest. “Mil­lie,” I say.

“Mil­lie.” He nods in under­stand­ing, then points to his own chest. “I am Enzo.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say awk­ward­ly, even though he won’t under­stand me. But God, if he lives here and has a job, he must have picked up a lit­tle Eng­lish.

“Piacere di conoscer­ti,” he says.

I nod word­less­ly. So much for mak­ing friends with the land­scap­ing guy.

“Mil­lie,” he says again in his thick Ital­ian accent. He looks like he has some­thing to say, but he’s strug­gling with the lan­guage. “You…”

He hiss­es a word in Ital­ian, but as soon as we hear the front door start to unlock, Enzo hur­ries back to where he had been crouched in the front yard and makes him­self very busy. I could just bare­ly make out the word he said. Peri­co­lo. What­ev­er that means. Maybe it means he wants a soft drink. Peri cola—now with a twist of lime!

“Mil­lie!” Nina looks delight­ed to see me. So delight­ed that she throws her arms around me and squash­es me in a hug. “I’m so glad you decid­ed to take the job. I just felt like you and I had a con­nec­tion. You know?”

That’s what I thought. She got a “gut feel­ing” about me, so she didn’t both­er to do the research. Now I just have to make sure she nev­er has any rea­son not to trust me. I have to be the per­fect employ­ee. “Yes, I know what you mean. I feel the same way.”

“Well, come in!”

Nina grabs the crook of my elbow and leads me into the house, obliv­i­ous to the fact that I’m strug­gling with my two pieces of lug­gage. Not that I would have expect­ed her to help me. It wouldn’t have even occurred to her.

I can’t help but notice when I walk inside that the house looks very dif­fer­ent from the first time I was here. Very dif­fer­ent. When I came for the inter­view, the Win­ches­ter house was immaculate—I could have eat­en off any sur­face in the room. But now, the place looks like a pigsty. The cof­fee table in front of the sofa has six cups on it with vary­ing amounts of dif­fer­ent sticky liq­uids in them, about a dozen crum­pled news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines, and a dent­ed piz­za box. There’s cloth­ing and garbage strewn all over the liv­ing room and the din­ing table still has the remains of din­ner last night.

“As you can see,” Nina says, “you haven’t arrived a moment too soon!”

So Nina Win­ches­ter is a slob—that’s her secret. It’s going to take me hours to get this place in any decent con­di­tion. Maybe days. But that’s fine—I’ve been itch­ing to do some good hon­est hard work. And I like that she needs me. If I can make myself invalu­able to her, she’s less like­ly to fire me if—or when—she finds out the truth.

“Let me just put my bags away,” I tell her. “And then I’ll get the entire place tidied up.”

Nina lets out a hap­py sigh. “You are a mir­a­cle, Mil­lie. Thank you so much. Also…” She grabs her purse off the kitchen counter and rifles around inside, final­ly pulling out the lat­est iPhone. “I got you this. I couldn’t help but notice you were using a very out­dat­ed phone. If I need to reach you, I’d like you to have a reli­able means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

I hes­i­tant­ly wrap my fin­gers around the brand-new iPhone. “Wow. This is real­ly gen­er­ous of you, but I can’t afford a plan—”

She waves a hand. “I added you to our fam­i­ly plan. It cost almost noth­ing.”

Almost noth­ing? I have a feel­ing her def­i­n­i­tion of those two words is very dif­fer­ent from mine.

Before I can protest fur­ther, the sound of foot­steps echoes on the stairs behind me. I turn around, and a man in a gray busi­ness suit is mak­ing his way down the stair­well. When he sees me stand­ing in the liv­ing room, he stops short at the base of the stairs, as if shocked by my pres­ence. His eyes widen fur­ther when he notices my lug­gage.

“Andy!” Nina calls out. “Come meet Mil­lie!”

This must be Andrew Win­ches­ter. When I was googling the Win­ches­ter fam­i­ly, my eyes popped out a bit when I saw this man’s net worth. After see­ing all those dol­lar signs, the home the­ater and the gate sur­round­ing the prop­er­ty made a bit more sense. He’s a busi­ness­man, who took over his father’s thriv­ing com­pa­ny, and has dou­bled the prof­its since. But it’s obvi­ous from his sur­prised expres­sion that he allows his wife to han­dle most of the house­hold mat­ters, and it’s appar­ent­ly flat out slipped her mind to tell him she’s hired a live-in house­keep­er.

“Hel­lo…” Mr. Win­ches­ter steps into the liv­ing room, his brow fur­rowed. “Mil­lie, is it? I’m sor­ry, I didn’t real­ize…”

“Andy, I told you about her!” She tilts her head to the side. “I said we need­ed to hire some­body to help with clean­ing and cook­ing and Cecelia. I’m sure I told you!”

“Yes, well.” His face final­ly relax­es. “Wel­come, Mil­lie. We could cer­tain­ly use the help.”

Andrew Win­ches­ter holds his hand out for me to shake. It’s hard not to notice he is an incred­i­bly hand­some man. Pierc­ing brown eyes, a full head of hair the col­or of mahogany, and a sexy lit­tle cleft in his chin. It’s also hard not to notice that he is sev­er­al lev­els more attrac­tive than his wife, even with her impec­ca­ble groom­ing, which strikes me as a bit strange. The man is filthy rich, after all. He could have any woman he wants. I respect him for not choos­ing a twen­ty-year-old super­mod­el to be his life part­ner.

I thrust my new phone into my jeans pock­et and reach out to take his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Win­ches­ter.”

“Please.” He smiles warm­ly at me. “Call me Andrew.”

As he says the words, some­thing flick­ers over Nina Winchester’s face. Her lips twitch and her eyes nar­row. I’m not exact­ly sure why though. She her­self offered to let me call her by her first name. And it’s not like Andrew Win­ches­ter is check­ing me out. His eyes are stay­ing respect­ful­ly on mine and not drop­ping below the neck. Not that there’s much to see—even though I didn’t both­er with the fake tor­toise­shell glass­es today, I’m wear­ing a mod­est blouse and com­fort­able blue jeans for my first day of work.

“Any­way,” Nina snips, “don’t you have to get to the office, Andy?”

“Oh yes.” He straight­ens out his gray tie. “I’ve got a meet­ing at nine-thir­ty in the city. I bet­ter hur­ry.”

Andrew gives Nina a lin­ger­ing kiss on the lips and squeezes her shoul­der. As far as I can see, they are quite hap­pi­ly mar­ried. And Andrew seems pret­ty down-to-earth for a man whose net worth has eight fig­ures after the dol­lar sign. It’s sweet how he blows her a kiss from the front door—this is a man who loves his wife.

“Your hus­band seems nice,” I say to Nina as the door slams shut.

The dark, sus­pi­cious look returns to her eyes. “Do you think so?”

“Well, yes,” I stam­mer. “I mean, he seems like… how long have you been mar­ried?”

Nina looks at me thought­ful­ly. But instead of answer­ing my ques­tion, she says, “What hap­pened to your glass­es?”

“What?”

She lifts an eye­brow. “You were wear­ing a pair of glass­es at your inter­view, weren’t you?”

“Oh.” I squirm, reluc­tant to admit that the eye­glass­es were fake—my attempt to look more intel­li­gent and seri­ous, and yes, less attrac­tive and threat­en­ing. “I… uh, I’m wear­ing my con­tacts.”

“Are you?”

I don’t know why I lied. I should’ve just said that I don’t need the glass­es that bad­ly. Instead, I have now dou­bled down and invent­ed con­tacts that I’m not actu­al­ly wear­ing. I can feel Nina scru­ti­niz­ing my pupils, search­ing for the lens­es.

“Is… is that a prob­lem?” I final­ly ask.

A mus­cle twitch­es under her right eye. For a moment, I’m scared she’s going to tell me that I should get out. But then her face relax­es. “Of course not! I just thought those glass­es were so cute on you. Very striking—you should wear them more often.”

“Yes, well…” I grab the han­dle of one of my duf­fel bags with my shak­ing hand. “Maybe I should get my stuff upstairs so I can get start­ed.”

Nina claps her hands togeth­er. “Excel­lent idea!”

Once again, Nina doesn’t offer to take either of my bags as we climb up the two flights of stairs to get to the attic. By halfway through the sec­ond flight, my arms feel like they’re about ready to fall off, but Nina doesn’t seem inter­est­ed in paus­ing to give me a moment to read­just the straps. I gasp with relief when I’m able to drop the bags on the floor of my new room. Nina yanks on the cord to turn on the two light­bulbs that illu­mi­nate my tiny liv­ing space.

“I hope it’s okay,” Nina says. “I fig­ure you’d rather have the pri­va­cy of being up here, as well as your own bath­room.”

Maybe she feels guilty about the fact that their ginor­mous gue­stroom is lying emp­ty while I am liv­ing in a room slight­ly larg­er than a broom clos­et. But that’s fine. Any­thing larg­er than the back­seat of my car is like a palace. I can’t wait to sleep here tonight. I’m obscene­ly grate­ful.

“It’s per­fect,” I say hon­est­ly.

In addi­tion to the bed, dress­er, and book­case, I notice one oth­er thing in the room that I didn’t see the first time around. A lit­tle mini-fridge, about a foot tall. It’s plugged into the wall and hum­ming rhyth­mi­cal­ly. I crouch down and tug it open.

The mini-fridge has two small shelves. And on the top shelf, there are three tiny bot­tles of water.

“Good hydra­tion is very impor­tant,” Nina says earnest­ly.

“Yes…”

When she sees the per­plexed expres­sion on my face, she smiles. “Obvi­ous­ly, it’s your fridge and you can put what­ev­er you want in it. I thought I would give you a head start.”

“Thank you.” It’s not that strange. Some peo­ple leave mints on a pil­low. Nina leaves three tiny bot­tles of water.

“Any­way…” Nina wipes her hands on her thighs, even though her hands are spot­less. “I’ll let you get unpacked and then get start­ed clean­ing the house. I’ll be prepar­ing for my PTA meet­ing tomor­row.”

“PTA?”

“Par­ent Teacher Asso­ci­a­tion.” She beams at me. “I’m the vice pres­i­dent.”

“That’s won­der­ful,” I say, because it’s what she wants to hear. Nina is very easy to please. “I’ll just unpack every­thing quick­ly and get right to work.”

“Thank you so much.” Her fin­gers briefly touch my bare arm—hers are warm and dry. “You’re a life­saver, Mil­lie. I’m so glad you’re here.”

I rest my hand on the door­knob as Nina starts to leave my room. And that’s when I notice it. What’s been both­er­ing me about this room from the moment I first walked in here. A sick feel­ing wash­es over me.

“Nina?”

“Hmm?”

“Why…” I clear my throat. “Why is the lock to this bed­room on the out­side rather than the inside?”

Nina peers down at the door­knob, as if notic­ing it for the first time. “Oh! I’m so sor­ry about that. We used to use this room as a clos­et, so obvi­ous­ly we want­ed it to lock from the out­side. But then I con­vert­ed it to a bed­room for the hired help, and I guess we nev­er switched the lock.”

If some­body want­ed, they could eas­i­ly lock me in here. And there’s only that one win­dow, look­ing out at the back of the house. This room could be a death trap.

But then again, why would any­one want to lock me in here?

“Could I have the key to the room?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I’m not even sure where it is.”

“I’d like a copy.”

Her light blue eyes nar­row at me. “Why? What do you expect to be keep­ing in your room that you don’t want us to know about?”

My mouth falls open. “I…. Noth­ing, but…”

Nina throws her head back and laughs. “I’m just kid­ding. It’s your room, Mil­lie! If you want a key, I’ll get you one. I promise.”

Some­times it feels like Nina has a split per­son­al­i­ty. She flips from hot to cold so rapid­ly. She claims she was jok­ing, but I’m not so sure. It doesn’t mat­ter, though. I have no oth­er prospects and this job is a bless­ing. I’m going to make it work. No mat­ter what. I’m going to make Nina Win­ches­ter love me.

After Nina leaves my room, I close the door behind her. I’d like to lock it, but I can’t. Obvi­ous­ly.

As I shut the door, I notice marks in the wood. Long thin lines run­ning down the length of the door at about the lev­el of my shoul­der. I run my fin­gers over the inden­ta­tions. They almost seem like…

Scratch­es. Like some­body was scrap­ing at the door.

Try­ing to get out.

No, that’s ridicu­lous. I’m being para­noid. Some­times old wood gets scratched up. It doesn’t mean any­thing omi­nous.

The room sud­den­ly feels unbear­ably hot and stuffy. There’s a small fur­nace in the cor­ner of the room, which I’m sure keeps it com­fort­able in the win­ter, but there’s noth­ing to cool it down in the warmer months. I’ll have to buy a fan to prop up in front of the win­dow. Even though it’s way larg­er than my car, it’s still a very small space—I’m not sur­prised they used it as a stor­age clos­et. I look around, open­ing the draw­ers to check their size. There’s a lit­tle clos­et with­in the room, with just bare­ly enough space to hang up my few dress­es. The clos­et is emp­ty except for a cou­ple of hang­ers and a small blue buck­et in the cor­ner.

I attempt to wrench open the small win­dow to get a bit of air. But it doesn’t budge. I squint my eyes to inves­ti­gate more close­ly. I run my fin­ger along the frame of the win­dow. It looks like it’s been paint­ed into place.

Even though I have a win­dow, it doesn’t open.

I could ask Nina about it, but I don’t want it to seem like I’m com­plain­ing when I just start­ed work­ing here today. Maybe next week I could men­tion it. I don’t think it’s too much to hope for, to have one work­ing win­dow.

The land­scap­ing guy, Enzo, is in the back­yard now. He’s run­ning the lawn­mow­er back there. He paus­es for a moment to wipe sweat from his fore­head with his mus­cu­lar fore­arm, and then he looks up. He sees my face through the small win­dow, and he shakes his head, just like he did the first time I met him. I remem­ber the word he hissed at me in Ital­ian before I went into the house. Peri­co­lo.