Chap­ter 15

This Sat­ur­day after­noon, Nina is throw­ing a small PTA gath­er­ing in her back­yard. They’re meet­ing up to plan some­thing called “field day” in which the kids play in a field for a few hours, and some­how it takes months of plan­ning to pre­pare for it. Nina has been talk­ing about it non­stop late­ly. And she has texted me no less than a dozen times to remind me to pick up the hors d’oeuvres.

I’m start­ing to get stressed because, as usu­al, the entire house was a mess when I woke up this morn­ing. I don’t know how this house gets so messy. Is Nina’s med­ica­tion treat­ing some sort of dis­or­der where she gets up in the mid­dle of the night and makes a mess in the house? Is that a thing? I don’t know how the bath­rooms get so bad overnight, for exam­ple.

When I come into her bath­room to clean in the morn­ing, there are usu­al­ly at least three or four tow­els strewn on the floor, sop­ping wet. There’s usu­al­ly tooth­paste caked into the sink that I have to scrub to get free. Nina has some sort of aver­sion to throw­ing her clothes in the laun­dry bas­ket, so it takes me a good ten min­utes to gath­er her bra, under­wear, pants, panty­hose, etc. Thank God Andrew is bet­ter at get­ting his cloth­ing in the laun­dry bas­ket.

Then there’s the stuff that needs to be dry cleaned, of which there is a lot. Nina doesn’t dis­tin­guish between the two, and God for­bid I make the wrong deci­sion about what goes in the laun­dry machine and what needs to be run to the dry clean­er. That would be a hang­ing offense.

The oth­er thing is the food wrap­pers. I find can­dy wrap­pers stuffed into near­ly every crevice in her bed­room and bath­room. I sup­pose that explains why Nina is fifty pounds heav­ier than she was in the pho­tographs of when she and Andrew first met.

By the time I have cleaned the house top to bot­tom, dropped off the dry clean­ing, and com­plet­ed the laun­dry and the iron­ing, I’m run­ning very short on time. The women are going to arrive with­in the hour, and I’m still not done with all the tasks Nina assigned me, includ­ing pick­ing up the hors d’oeuvres. She’s not going to under­stand if I try to explain that to her.

Con­sid­er­ing she near­ly fired me last week when she caught me watch­ing Fam­i­ly Feud with Andrew, I can’t afford to make any mis­takes. I’ve got to make sure this after­noon is per­fect.

Then I get to the back­yard. The Win­ches­ters’ back­yard is one of the most beau­ti­ful sights in the neigh­bor­hood. Enzo has done his job well—the hedges are trimmed so pre­cise­ly, it’s like he used a ruler. Flow­ers dot the edges of the yard, adding a pop of col­or. And the grass is so lush and green, I’m half tempt­ed to lie down in it, wav­ing my arms around to make grass angels.

But appar­ent­ly, they don’t spend much time out here, because all the patio fur­ni­ture has a thick lay­er of dust on it. Every­thing has a thick lay­er of dust on it.

Oh God, I do not have time to get every­thing done.

“Mil­lie? Are you okay?”

Andrew is stand­ing behind me, dressed casu­al­ly for a change, in a blue polo shirt and kha­ki slacks. Some­how, he looks even bet­ter than he does in an expen­sive suit.

“I’m fine,” I mum­ble. I shouldn’t even be talk­ing to him.

“You look like you’re about to cry,” he points out.

I wipe my eyes self-con­scious­ly with the back of my hand. “I’m fine. There’s just a lot to do for this PTA meet­ing.”

“Aw, that’s not worth cry­ing over.” His brow crin­kles. “These PTA women are nev­er going to be sat­is­fied no mat­ter what you do. They’re all awful.”

That does not make me feel any bet­ter.

“Look, maybe I have a…” He digs around in his pock­et and pulls out a crum­pled tis­sue. “I can’t believe I have a tis­sue in my pock­et, but here.”

I man­age a smile as I accept the tis­sue. As I dab my nose, I catch a whiff of Andrew’s after­shave.

“Now,” he says, “what can I do to help?”

I shake my head. “It’s fine. I can han­dle it.”

“You’re cry­ing.” He props one of his feet up on the dirty chair. “Seri­ous­ly, I’m not com­plete­ly use­less. Just tell me what you need me to do.” When I hes­i­tate, he adds, “Look, we both want to make Nina hap­py, right? This is how you make her hap­py. She’s not going to be hap­py if I let you screw this up.”

“Fine,” I grum­ble. “It would be incred­i­bly help­ful if you could pick up the hors d’oeuvres.”

“Done.”

It feels like a giant weight has been lift­ed from my shoul­ders. It was going to take me twen­ty min­utes to get to the store to pick up the hors d’oeuvres and twen­ty min­utes to get back. That would’ve left me only fif­teen min­utes to clean this filthy patio fur­ni­ture. Could you imag­ine that Nina sat in one of these chairs in one of her white out­fits?

“Thank you,” I say. “I real­ly, real­ly appre­ci­ate it. Real­ly.”

He grins at me. “Real­ly?”

“Real­ly, real­ly.”

Cecelia bursts into the back­yard that moment, wear­ing a light pink dress with white trim. Like her moth­er, she doesn’t have so much as a hair out of place. “Dad­dy,” she says.

He turns his gaze on Cecelia. “What’s up, Cece?”

“The com­put­er isn’t work­ing,” she says. “I can’t do my home­work. Can you fix it?”

“I absolute­ly can.” He rests a hand on her shoul­der. “But first we are going on a lit­tle road trip and it’s going to be super fun.”

She looks at him dubi­ous­ly.

He ignores her skep­ti­cism. “Go put on your shoes.”

It would have tak­en me half the day to con­vince Cecelia to put on her shoes, but she obe­di­ent­ly goes back into the house to do what he says.

Cecelia is nice enough, as long as I’m not in charge of her.

“You’re good with her,” I com­ment.

“Thanks.”

“She looks a lot like you.”

Andrew shakes his head. “Not real­ly. She looks like Nina.”

“She does,” I insist. “She has Nina’s col­or­ing and hair, but she has your nose.”

He toys with the hem of his polo shirt. “Cecelia isn’t my bio­log­i­cal daugh­ter. So any resem­blance between the two of us is, you know…”