Chap­ter 1: Mil­lie

“Tell me about your­self, Mil­lie.”

Nina Win­ches­ter leans for­ward on her caramel-col­ored leather sofa, her legs crossed to reveal just the slight­est hint of her knees peek­ing out under her silky white skirt. I don’t know much about labels, but it’s obvi­ous every­thing Nina Win­ches­ter is wear­ing is painful­ly expen­sive. Her cream blouse makes me long to reach out to feel the mate­r­i­al, even though a move like that would mean I’d have no chance of get­ting hired.

To be fair, I have no chance of get­ting hired any­way.

“Well…” I begin, choos­ing my words care­ful­ly. Even after all the rejec­tions, I still try. “I grew up in Brook­lyn. I’ve had a lot of jobs doing house­work for peo­ple, as you can see from my resume.” My care­ful­ly doc­tored resume. “And I love chil­dren. And also…” I glance around the room, look­ing for a dog­gy chew toy or a cat lit­ter box. “I love pets as well?”

The online ad for the house­keep­er job didn’t men­tion pets. But bet­ter to be safe. Who doesn’t appre­ci­ate an ani­mal lover?

“Brook­lyn!” Mrs. Win­ches­ter beams at me. “I grew up in Brook­lyn, too. We’re prac­ti­cal­ly neigh­bors!”

“We are!” I con­firm, even though noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. There are plen­ty of cov­et­ed neigh­bor­hoods in Brook­lyn where you’ll fork over an arm and a leg for a tiny town­house. That’s not where I grew up. Nina Win­ches­ter and I couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent, but if she’d like to believe we’re neigh­bors, then I’m only too hap­py to go along with it.

Mrs. Win­ches­ter tucks a strand of shiny, gold­en-blond hair behind her ear. Her hair is chin-length, cut into a fash­ion­able bob that de-empha­sizes her dou­ble chin. She’s in her late thir­ties, and with a dif­fer­ent hair­style and dif­fer­ent cloth­ing, she would be very ordi­nary-look­ing. But she has used her con­sid­er­able wealth to make the most of what she’s got. I can’t say I don’t respect that.

I have gone the exact oppo­site direc­tion with my appear­ance. I may be over ten years younger than the woman sit­ting across from me, but I don’t want her to feel at all threat­ened by me. So for my inter­view, I select­ed a long, chunky wool skirt that I bought at the thrift store and a poly­ester white blouse with puffy sleeves. My dirty-blond hair is pulled back into a severe bun behind my head. I even pur­chased a pair of over­sized and unnec­es­sary tor­toise­shell glass­es that sit perched on my nose. I look pro­fes­sion­al and utter­ly unat­trac­tive.

“So the job,” she says. “It will be most­ly clean­ing and some light cook­ing if you’re up for it. Are you a good cook, Mil­lie?”

“Yes, I am.” My ease in the kitchen is the only thing on my resume that isn’t a lie. “I’m an excel­lent cook.”

Her pale blue eyes light up. “That’s won­der­ful! Hon­est­ly, we almost nev­er have a good home-cooked meal.” She tit­ters. “Who has the time?”

I bite back any kind of judg­men­tal response. Nina Win­ches­ter doesn’t work, she only has one child who’s in school all day, and she’s hir­ing some­body to do all her clean­ing for her. I even saw a man in her enor­mous front yard doing her gar­den­ing for her. How is it pos­si­ble she doesn’t have time to cook a meal for her small fam­i­ly?

I shouldn’t judge her. I don’t know any­thing about what her life is like. Just because she’s rich, it doesn’t mean she’s spoiled.

But if I had to bet a hun­dred bucks either way, I’d bet Nina Win­ches­ter is spoiled rot­ten.

“And we’ll need occa­sion­al help with Cecelia as well,” Mrs. Win­ches­ter says. “Per­haps tak­ing her to her after­noon lessons or play­dates. You have a car, don’t you?”

I almost laugh at her ques­tion. Yes, I do have a car—it’s all I have right now. My ten-year-old Nis­san is stink­ing up the street in front of her house, and it’s where I am cur­rent­ly liv­ing. Every­thing I own is in the trunk of that car. I have spent the last month sleep­ing in the back­seat.

After a month of liv­ing in your car, you real­ize the impor­tance of some of the lit­tle things in life. A toi­let. A sink. Being able to straight­en your legs out while you’re sleep­ing. I miss that last one most of all.

“Yes, I have a car,” I con­firm.

“Excel­lent!” Mrs. Win­ches­ter claps her hands togeth­er. “I’ll pro­vide you with a car seat for Cecelia, of course. She just needs a boost­er seat. She’s not quite at the weight and height lev­el to be with­out the boost­er yet. The Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics rec­om­mends…”

While Nina Win­ches­ter drones on about the exact height and weight require­ments for car seats, I take a moment to glance around the liv­ing room. The fur­nish­ing is all ultra-mod­ern, with the largest flat-screen tele­vi­sion I’ve ever seen, which I’m sure is high def­i­n­i­tion and has sur­round-sound speak­ers built into every nook and cran­ny of the room for opti­mal lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence. In the cor­ner of the room is what appears to be a work­ing fire­place, the man­tle lit­tered with pho­tographs of the Win­ches­ters on trips to every cor­ner of the world. When I glance up, the insane­ly high ceil­ing glows under the light of a sparkling chan­de­lier.

“Don’t you think so, Mil­lie?” Mrs. Win­ches­ter is say­ing.

I blink at her. I attempt to rewind my mem­o­ry and fig­ure out what she had just asked me. But it’s gone. “Yes?” I say.

What­ev­er I agreed to has made her very hap­py. “I’m so pleased you think so too.”

“Absolute­ly,” I say more firm­ly this time.

She uncross­es and re-cross­es her some­what stocky legs. “And of course,” she adds, “there’s the mat­ter of reim­burse­ment for you. You saw the offer in my adver­tise­ment, right? Is that accept­able to you?”

I swal­low. The num­ber in the adver­tise­ment is more than accept­able. If I were a car­toon char­ac­ter, dol­lar signs would have appeared in each of my eye­balls when I read that adver­tise­ment. But the mon­ey almost stopped me from apply­ing for the job. Nobody offer­ing that much mon­ey, liv­ing in a house like this one, would ever con­sid­er hir­ing me.

“Yes,” I choke out. “It’s fine.”

She arch­es an eye­brow. “And you know it’s a live-in posi­tion, right?”

Is she ask­ing me if I’m okay with leav­ing the splen­dor of the back­seat of my Nis­san? “Right. I know.”

“Fab­u­lous!” She tugs at the hem of her skirt and ris­es to her feet. “Would you like the grand tour then? See what you’re get­ting your­self into?”

I stand up as well. In her heels, Mrs. Win­ches­ter is only a few inch­es taller than I am in my flats, but it feels like she’s much taller. “Sounds great!”

She guides me through the house in painstak­ing detail, to the point where I’m wor­ried I got the ad wrong and maybe she’s a real­tor think­ing I’m ready to buy. It is a beau­ti­ful house. If I had four or five mil­lion dol­lars burn­ing a hole in my pock­et, I would snap it up. In addi­tion to the ground lev­el con­tain­ing the gigan­tic liv­ing room and the new­ly ren­o­vat­ed kitchen, the sec­ond floor of the house fea­tures the Win­ches­ters’ mas­ter bed­room, her daugh­ter Cecelia’s room, Mr. Winchester’s home office, and a guest bed­room that could be straight out of the best hotel in Man­hat­tan. She paus­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly in front of the sub­se­quent door.

“And here is…” She flings the door open. “Our home the­ater!”

It’s a legit movie the­ater right inside their home—in addi­tion to the over­sized tele­vi­sion down­stairs. This room has sev­er­al rows of sta­di­um seat­ing, fac­ing a floor-to-ceil­ing mon­i­tor. There’s even a pop­corn machine in the cor­ner of the room.

After a moment, I notice Mrs. Win­ches­ter is look­ing at me, wait­ing for a response.

“Wow!” I say with what I hope is appro­pri­ate enthu­si­asm.

“Isn’t it mar­velous?” She shiv­ers with delight. “And we have a full library of movies to choose from. Of course, we also have all the usu­al chan­nels as well as stream­ing ser­vices.”

“Of course,” I say.

After we leave the room, we come to a final door at the end of the hall­way. Nina paus­es, her hand lin­ger­ing on the door­knob.

“Would this be my room?” I ask.

“Sort of…” She turns the door­knob, which creaks loud­ly. I can’t help but notice the wood of this door is much thick­er than any of the oth­ers. Behind the door­way, there’s a dark stair­well. “Your room is upstairs. We have a fin­ished attic as well.”

This dark, nar­row stair­case is some­what less glam­orous than the rest of the house—and would it kill them to stick a light­bulb in here? But of course, I’m the hired help. I wouldn’t expect her to spend as much mon­ey on my room as she would on the home the­ater.

At the top of the stairs is a lit­tle nar­row hall­way. Unlike on the first floor of the house, the ceil­ing is dan­ger­ous­ly low here. I’m not tall by any means, but I almost feel like I need to stoop down.

“You have your own bath­room.” She nods at a door on the left. “And this would be your room right here.”

She flings open the last door. It’s com­plete­ly dark inside until she tugs on a string and the room lights up.

The room is tiny. There’s no two ways about it. Not only that, but the ceil­ing is slant­ed with the roof of the house. The far side of the ceil­ing only comes about up to my waist. Instead of the huge king-size bed in the Win­ches­ters’ mas­ter bed­room with their armoire and chest­nut van­i­ty table, this room con­tains a small sin­gle cot, a half-height book­case, and a small dress­er, lit by two naked bulbs sus­pend­ed from the ceil­ing.

This room is mod­est, but that’s fine with me. If it were too nice, it would be a cer­tain­ty I have no shot at this job. The fact that this room is kind of crap­py means maybe her stan­dards are low enough that I have a tee­ny, tiny chance.

But there’s some­thing else about this room. Some­thing that’s both­er­ing me.

“Sor­ry it’s small.” Mrs. Win­ches­ter pulls a frown. “But you’ll have a lot of pri­va­cy here.”

I walk over to the sin­gle win­dow. Like the room, it’s small. Bare­ly larg­er than my hand. And it over­looks the back­yard. There’s a land­scap­er down there—the same guy I saw out at the front—hacking at one of the hedges with an over­sized set of clip­pers.

“So what do you think, Mil­lie? Do you like it?”

I turn away from the win­dow to look at Mrs. Winchester’s smil­ing face. I still can’t quite put my fin­ger on what’s both­er­ing me. There’s some­thing about this room that’s mak­ing a lit­tle ball of dread form in the pit of my stom­ach.

Maybe it’s the win­dow. It looks out on the back of the house. If I were in trou­ble and try­ing to get somebody’s atten­tion, nobody would be able to see me back here. I could scream and yell all I want­ed, and nobody would hear.

But who am I kid­ding? I would be lucky to live in this room. With my own bath­room and an actu­al bed where I could straight­en my legs out all the way. That tiny cot looks so good com­pared to my car, I could cry.

“It’s per­fect,” I say.

Mrs. Win­ches­ter seems ecsta­t­ic about my answer. She leads me back down the dark stair­well to the sec­ond floor of the house, and when I exit that stair­well, I let out a breath I didn’t real­ize I was hold­ing. There was some­thing about that room that was very scary, but if I some­how man­age to get this job, I’ll get past it. Eas­i­ly.

My shoul­ders final­ly relax and my lips are form­ing anoth­er ques­tion when I hear a voice from behind us:

“Mom­my?”

I stop short and turn around to see a lit­tle girl stand­ing behind us in the hall­way. The girl has the same light blue eyes as Nina Win­ches­ter, except a few shades paler, and her hair is so blond that it’s almost white. The girl is wear­ing a very pale blue dress trimmed in white lace. And she’s star­ing at me like she can see right through me. Right through my soul.

Do you know those movies about the scary cult of, like, creepy kids who can read minds and wor­ship the dev­il and live in the corn­fields or some­thing? Well, if they were cast­ing for one of those movies, this girl would get the part. They wouldn’t even have to audi­tion her. They would take one look at her and be like, Yes, you are creepy girl num­ber three.

“Cece!” Mrs. Win­ches­ter exclaims. “Are you back already from your bal­let les­son?”

The girl nods slow­ly. “Bella’s mom dropped me off.”

Mrs. Win­ches­ter wraps her arms around the girl’s skin­ny shoul­ders, but the girl’s expres­sion nev­er changes and her pale blue eyes nev­er leave my face. Is there some­thing wrong with me that I am scared this nine-year-old girl is going to mur­der me?

“This is Mil­lie,” Mrs. Win­ches­ter tells her daugh­ter. “Mil­lie, this is my daugh­ter, Cecelia.”

Lit­tle Cecelia’s eyes are two lit­tle pools of the ocean. “It’s nice to meet you, Mil­lie,” she says polite­ly.

I’d say there’s at least a twen­ty-five per­cent chance she’s going to mur­der me in my sleep if I get this job. But I still want it.

Mrs. Win­ches­ter pecks her daugh­ter on the top of her blond head, and then the lit­tle girl scur­ries off to her bed­room. She doubt­less has a creepy doll house in there where the dolls come to life at night. Maybe one of the dolls will be the one to kill me.

Okay, I’m being ridicu­lous. That lit­tle girl is prob­a­bly extreme­ly sweet. It’s not her fault she’s been dressed in a creepy Vic­to­ri­an ghost-child’s out­fit. And I love kids, in gen­er­al. Not that I’ve inter­act­ed with them much over the last decade.

Once we get back down to the first floor, the ten­sion leaves my body. Mrs. Win­ches­ter is nice and nor­mal enough—for a lady this rich—and as she chat­ters about the house and her daugh­ter and the job, I’m only vague­ly lis­ten­ing. All I know is this will be a love­ly place to work. I would give my right arm to get this job.

“Do you have any ques­tions, Mil­lie?” she asks me.

I shake my head. “No, Mrs. Win­ches­ter.”

She clucks her tongue. “Please, call me Nina. If you’re work­ing here, I would feel so sil­ly with you call­ing me Mrs. Win­ches­ter.” She laughs. “Like I’m some sort of rich old lady.”

“Thank you… Nina,” I say.

Her face glows, although that could be the sea­weed or cucum­ber peel or what­ev­er rich peo­ple apply to their faces. Nina Win­ches­ter is the sort of woman who has reg­u­lar spa treat­ments. “I have a good feel­ing about this, Mil­lie. I real­ly do.”

It’s hard not to get caught up in her enthu­si­asm. It’s hard not to feel that glim­mer of hope as she squeezes my rough palm in her baby smooth one. I want to believe that in the next few days, I’ll get a call from Nina Win­ches­ter, offer­ing me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to come work at her house and final­ly vacate Casa Nis­san. I want to believe that so bad­ly.

But what­ev­er else I can say about Nina, she’s no dum­my. She’s not going to hire a woman to work and live in her home and take care of her child with­out doing a sim­ple back­ground check. And once she does…

I swal­low a lump in my throat.

Nina Win­ches­ter bids a warm good­bye to me at the front door. “Thank you so much for com­ing by, Mil­lie.” She reach­es out to clasp my hand in hers one more time. “I promise you’ll be hear­ing from me soon.”

I won’t. This will be the last time I set foot in that mag­nif­i­cent house. I should nev­er have come here in the first place. I should have tried for a job I had a chance of get­ting instead of wast­ing both of our time here. Maybe some­thing in the fast-food indus­try.

The land­scap­er who I saw from the win­dow in the attic is back on the front lawn. He’s still got those giant clip­pers and he’s shap­ing one of the hedges right in front of the house. He’s a big guy, wear­ing a T‑shirt that shows off impres­sive mus­cles and just bare­ly hides the tat­toos on his upper arms. He adjusts his base­ball cap and his dark, dark eyes lift briefly from the clip­pers to meet mine across the lawn.