Chap­ter 19

The next morn­ing, Nina has mor­phed back into the more pleas­ant ver­sion of her­self, hav­ing seem­ing­ly for­got­ten last night. I would think it was all a ter­ri­fy­ing dream except for the ban­dage wrapped around her right hand. The white gauze is dot­ted with crim­son.

Although she’s not being direct­ly weird with me, Nina is more fraz­zled than usu­al this morn­ing. When she goes to dri­ve Cecelia to school, her tires screech against the pave­ment. When she returns, she just stands in the mid­dle of the liv­ing room for a moment, star­ing at the walls, until I final­ly come out of the kitchen and ask if she’s all right.

“I’m fine.” She tugs at the col­lar of her white blouse, which is wrin­kled even though I am cer­tain I ironed it. “Would you be so kind as to make me some break­fast, Mil­lie? The usu­al?”

“Of course,” I say.

“The usu­al” for Nina is three eggs, scram­bled in a lot of but­ter and Parme­san cheese, four slices of bacon, and an Eng­lish muf­fin, also but­tered. I can’t help but think of the com­ments the oth­er PTA woman made about Nina’s weight while she was in the oth­er room, although I respect that she doesn’t scru­ti­nize every calo­rie that goes in her mouth the way they do. Nina isn’t gluten-free or veg­an. As far as I can tell, she eats what­ev­er she wants and then some. She even has late-night snacks, as evi­denced by the dirty plates she leaves behind on the counter for me to wash in the morn­ing. Not one of those plates has ever made it into the dish­wash­er.

I serve the plate of food to her at the din­ing table with a glass of orange juice on the side. She scru­ti­nizes the food, and I’m wor­ried I’ve got the ver­sion of Nina that’s going to tell me that every­thing on this plate is cooked poor­ly, or else claim that she flat out nev­er asked me for break­fast in the first place. But instead, she smiles sweet­ly at me. “Thank you, Mil­lie.”

“You’re wel­come.” I hes­i­tate, hov­er­ing over her. “By the way, Andrew asked me if I would get you two tick­ets to Show­down on Broad­way.”

Her eyes light up. “He’s so thought­ful. Yes, that would be love­ly.”

“What are some days that work for you?”

She scoops some eggs into her mouth and chews thought­ful­ly. “I’m free a week from Sun­day, if you can swing it.”

“Sure. And I can watch Cecelia, of course.”

She scoops more eggs into her mouth. Some of it miss­es her lips and falls onto her white blouse. She doesn’t seem to even notice it’s there and con­tin­ues shov­el­ing food into her mouth.

“Thank you again, Mil­lie.” She winks at me. “I real­ly don’t know what we would do with­out you.”

She likes to tell me that. Or that she’s going to fire me. One or the oth­er. But I sup­pose it’s not her fault. Nina def­i­nite­ly has emo­tion­al prob­lems like her friends said. I can’t stop think­ing about her alleged stay in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. They don’t lock you up for noth­ing. Some­thing bad must’ve hap­pened, and part of me is dying to know what it is. But it’s not like I could ask her. And my attempts to get the sto­ry out of Enzo have been fruit­less.

Nina has near­ly cleaned her entire plate, hav­ing devoured the eggs, bacon, and Eng­lish muf­fin in less than five min­utes, when Andrew jogs down­stairs. I had been a lit­tle wor­ried about him after last night, even though I heard the water run­ning. Not that it was a like­ly sce­nario, but maybe, I don’t know, Nina had the faucet on some sort of auto­mat­ic timer just to make it seem like he was in the bath­room, alive and well. Like I said, it didn’t seem like­ly, but it also didn’t seem impos­si­ble. In any case, it’s a relief to find him intact. My breath catch­es a bit at the sight of his dark gray suit paired with a light blue dress shirt.

Just before Andrew enters the din­ing room, Nina push­es her plate of food away. She stands up and smooths out her blond hair, which lacks its usu­al shine, and the dark roots are even more vis­i­ble than before.

“Hel­lo, Andy.” She offers him a daz­zling smile. “How are you this morn­ing?”

He starts to answer her, but then his eyes dart down to the bit of egg still cling­ing to her blouse. One side of his lips quirks up. “Nina, you have a lit­tle egg on you.”

“Oh!” Her cheeks turn pink as she dabs at the egg on her blouse. But it’s been sit­ting there sev­er­al min­utes, and a stain still mars the del­i­cate white fab­ric. “Sor­ry about that!”

“It’s okay—you still look beau­ti­ful.” He grabs her shoul­ders and pulls her in for a kiss. I watch her melt against him and ignore the twinge of jeal­ousy in my chest. “I’ve got to run to the office, but I’ll see you tonight.”

“I’ll walk you out, dar­ling.”

Nina is so freak­ing lucky. She’s got every­thing. Yes, she did have a stay at a men­tal insti­tu­tion, but at least she wasn’t in prison. And here she is, with an incred­i­ble house, tons of mon­ey, and a hus­band who is kind, fun­ny, wealthy, con­sid­er­ate, and… well, absolute­ly gor­geous.

I close my eyes for a moment and think about what it would be like to live in Nina’s shoes. To be the woman in charge of this house­hold. To have the expen­sive cloth­ing and the shoes and the fan­cy car. To have a maid I could boss around—force her to cook for me and clean for me and live in a tiny hole in the attic while I had the big bed­room with the king-size bed and zil­lion-count sheets. And most of all, to have a hus­band like Andrew. To have him press his lips against mine the way he did to hers. To feel his body heat against my chest…

Oh my God, I must stop think­ing about this. Now. In my defense, it’s been a real­ly long time for me. I spent ten years in prison, fan­ta­siz­ing about some per­fect guy I would meet when I got out, who would save me from every­thing. And now…

Well, it could hap­pen. It’s pos­si­ble.

I climb the stairs and get to work mak­ing the beds and clean­ing the bed­rooms. I’ve just fin­ished up and am return­ing down­stairs when the door­bell rings. I hur­ry over to answer it, and I’m sur­prised to see Enzo at the door, clutch­ing a giant card­board box in his arms.

“Ciao,” I say, remem­ber­ing the greet­ing he taught me.

Amuse­ment flick­ers over his face. “Ciao. This… for you.”

I under­stand imme­di­ate­ly what must’ve hap­pened. Some­times deliv­ery peo­ple don’t real­ize they can enter through the gate, so they dump heavy pack­ages out­side the gate, and I have to heave them into the house. Enzo must have seen the deliv­ery man leave the pack­age, and now he’s kind­ly car­ried it in for me.

“Gra­zie,” I say.

He rais­es his eye­brows at me. “You want I…”

It takes me a sec­ond to real­ize what he is ask­ing. “Oh… yes, just put it on the din­ing table.”

I point to the din­ing table and he car­ries the pack­age over there. I remem­ber Nina freaked out that time when Enzo came into the house, but she’s not here and that box looks too heavy for me to lift. After he rests it on the table, I glance at the return address: Eve­lyn Win­ches­ter. Prob­a­bly some­body in Andrew’s fam­i­ly.

“Gra­zie,” I say again.

Enzo nods. He’s wear­ing a white T‑shirt and jeans—he looks good. He’s always out some­where in the neigh­bor­hood, work­ing up a sweat in the yard, and a lot of the rich women in this neigh­bor­hood love to ogle him.

Truth­ful­ly, I pre­fer Andrew’s looks, and of course, there’s the lan­guage bar­ri­er. But maybe hav­ing a lit­tle fun with Enzo would be good for me. It would relieve a lit­tle of that pent-up ener­gy, and maybe I would stop hav­ing whol­ly inap­pro­pri­ate fan­tasies about my boss’s hus­band.

I’m not quite sure how to broach the sub­ject, giv­en he doesn’t seem to speak any Eng­lish. But I’m pret­ty sure the lan­guage of love is uni­ver­sal.

“Water?” I offer him, while I’m try­ing to fig­ure out exact­ly how to go about this.

He nods. “Si.”

I run to the kitchen and grab a glass from the cab­i­net. I fill it halfway with water, then I bring it out to him. He takes it grate­ful­ly. “Gra­zie.”

His biceps bulge as he drinks from the glass. He has a real­ly good body. I won­der what he’s like in bed. Prob­a­bly fan­tas­tic.

I wring my hands togeth­er as he drinks from the glass of water. “So, um… are you… busy?”

He low­ers the glass and looks at me blankly. “Eh?”

“Um.” I clear my throat. “Like, do you have much… work?”

“Work.” He nods at a word he under­stands. Seri­ous­ly, I don’t get it. He’s been work­ing here three years, and he real­ly doesn’t under­stand any Eng­lish? “Si. Molto occu­pa­to.”

“Oh.”

This isn’t going well. Maybe I should just get right to the point.