Chap­ter 12

Even though I had resigned myself to mind­ing my own busi­ness about Nina’s men­tal health his­to­ry, I can’t help but won­der. I work for this woman. I live with this woman.

And there’s some­thing else strange about Nina. Like this morn­ing as I’m clean­ing the mas­ter bath­room, I can’t help but think nobody with good men­tal health could leave the bath­room in this sort of disorder—the tow­els on the floor, the tooth­paste hug­ging the basin of the sink. I know depres­sion can some­times make peo­ple unmo­ti­vat­ed to clean up. But Nina moti­vates her­self enough to get out and about every day, wher­ev­er she goes.

The worst thing was find­ing a used tam­pon on the floor a few days ago. A used, bloody tam­pon. I want­ed to throw up.

While I’m scrub­bing the tooth­paste and the globs of make­up adhered to the sink, my eyes stray to the med­i­cine cab­i­net. If Nina’s actu­al­ly “nuts,” she’s prob­a­bly on med­ica­tion, right? But I can’t look in the med­i­cine cab­i­net. That would be a mas­sive vio­la­tion of trust.

But then again, it’s not like any­one would know if I took a look. Just a quick look.

I look out at the bed­room. Nobody is in there. I peek around the cor­ner just to make absolute­ly sure. I’m alone. I go back into the bath­room and after a moment of hes­i­ta­tion, I nudge the med­i­cine cab­i­net open.

Wow, there are a lot of med­ica­tions in here.

I pick up one of the orange pill bot­tles. The name on it is Nina Win­ches­ter. I read off the name of the med­ica­tion: haloperi­dol. What­ev­er that is.

I start to pick up a sec­ond pill bot­tle when a voice floats down the hall­way: “Mil­lie? Are you in there?”

Oh no.

I hasti­ly stuff the bot­tle back in the cab­i­net and slam it shut. My heart is rac­ing, and a cold sweat breaks out on my palms. I plas­ter a smile on my face just in time for Nina to burst into the bed­room, wear­ing a white sleeve­less blouse and white jeans. She stops short when she sees me in the bath­room.

“What are you doing?” she asks me.

“I’m clean­ing the bath­room.” I’m not look­ing at your med­ica­tions, that’s for sure.

Nina squints at me, and for a moment, I’m cer­tain she’s going to accuse me of going through the med­i­cine cab­i­net. And I’m a hor­ri­ble liar, so she’ll almost cer­tain­ly know the truth. But then her eyes fall on the sink.

“How do you clean the sink?” she asks.

“Um.” I lift the spray bot­tle in my hand. “I use this sink clean­er.”

“Is it organ­ic?”

“I…” I look at the bot­tle I picked up at the gro­cery store last week. “No. It isn’t.”

Nina’s face falls. “I real­ly pre­fer organ­ic clean­ing prod­ucts, Mil­lie. They don’t have as many chem­i­cals. You know what I mean?”

“Right…” I don’t say what I’m think­ing, which is I can’t believe a woman who is tak­ing that many med­ica­tions is con­cerned about a few chem­i­cals in a clean­ing prod­uct. I mean, yes, it’s in her sink, but she’s not ingest­ing it. It’s not going into her blood­stream.

“I just feel like…” She frowns. “You aren’t doing a good job get­ting the sink clean. Can I watch how you’re doing it? I’d like to see what you’re doing wrong.”

She wants to watch me clean her sink? “Okay…”

I spray more of the prod­uct in her sink and scrub at the porce­lain until the tooth­paste residue van­ish­es. I glance over at Nina, who is nod­ding thought­ful­ly.

“That’s fine,” she says. “I guess the real ques­tion is how are you clean­ing the sink when I’m not watch­ing you.”

“Um, the same?”

“Hmm. I high­ly doubt that.” She rolls her eyes. “Any­way, I don’t have time to super­vise your clean­ing all day. Try to make sure to do a thor­ough…”