Chap­ter 4 fol­lows Mil­lie as she embarks on a dif­fi­cult clean­ing spree at Nina’s house, deter­mined to make order out of the chaos she finds her­self sur­round­ed by. After a long sev­en hours of hard work, she tack­les var­i­ous areas of the house, start­ing with the liv­ing room, which is the first of many chal­lenges. The piz­za box stuck to the cof­fee table, caused by a sticky spill, becomes a frus­trat­ing obsta­cle that takes more time to clean than she antic­i­pat­ed. As she moves from room to room, the kitchen proves to be the most daunt­ing space to han­dle. Over­flow­ing garbage bags, a dish­wash­er packed with dirty dish­es, and pans coat­ed with what seems like days-old food form a tru­ly over­whelm­ing sight. Mil­lie, how­ev­er, refus­es to give up and spends hours restor­ing some order to the kitchen. As exhaust­ing as the process is, she feels a sense of accom­plish­ment when she final­ly man­ages to get the kitchen back in a some­what pre­sentable state, despite the mas­sive effort it took.

How­ev­er, Millie’s sense of sat­is­fac­tion is short-lived when she has an unex­pect­ed encounter with Cecelia, Nina’s daugh­ter. Cecelia sur­pris­es Mil­lie with her silent, almost eerie pres­ence, and the inten­si­ty of her pale blue eyes only adds to the sense of dis­com­fort that Mil­lie feels. The first inter­ac­tion between them is tense, as Mil­lie, try­ing to bridge the gap, offers to pre­pare a snack for the girl, but Cecelia’s cryp­tic respons­es make it dif­fi­cult for them to con­nect. Mil­lie, feel­ing some­what awk­ward, decides to pre­pare a snack of peanut but­ter and banana on crack­ers, think­ing it would be a sim­ple and well-received ges­ture. How­ev­er, to her hor­ror, she dis­cov­ers that Cecelia is aller­gic to peanut but­ter, a detail Mil­lie had no knowl­edge of. The sit­u­a­tion esca­lates rapid­ly when Cecelia, alarmed and upset, accus­es Mil­lie of try­ing to harm her, which results in Mil­lie feel­ing pan­icked and guilty. The ten­sion peaks as Nina rush­es into the room, her con­cern for Cecelia’s well­be­ing appar­ent, but the entire sce­nario leaves Mil­lie feel­ing over­whelmed.

Caught in a whirl­wind of mis­un­der­stand­ing, Mil­lie attempts to explain her­self, only to be rebuked by Nina, who chas­tis­es her for neglect­ing to con­sid­er Cecelia’s peanut aller­gy. Nina’s anger is sharp, and Mil­lie, still in shock, silent­ly endures the scold­ing, feel­ing both embar­rassed and frus­trat­ed. She had no idea about Cecelia’s aller­gy, and the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion about such an impor­tant detail weighs heav­i­ly on her. Despite her attempt to clar­i­fy, Nina’s anger does not sub­side quick­ly, though she even­tu­al­ly calms down and issues a stern warn­ing, insist­ing that Mil­lie must be more mind­ful in the future. Mil­lie, irri­tat­ed by the sit­u­a­tion but too cau­tious to chal­lenge Nina direct­ly, accepts the rebuke with­out a word. The chap­ter con­cludes with Mil­lie feel­ing unset­tled, con­fused by Nina’s harsh­ness and ques­tion­ing the fair­ness of the sit­u­a­tion. She is left to pre­pare din­ner, a task that now feels like anoth­er bur­den in her already strained and unpre­dictable role in the house­hold.

This chap­ter serves as a piv­otal moment in Millie’s jour­ney, high­light­ing both the chal­lenges she faces in adjust­ing to her new life and the com­plex rela­tion­ships she must nav­i­gate with­in Nina’s fam­i­ly. The mis­un­der­stand­ing with Cecelia under­scores the dif­fi­cul­ties of try­ing to inte­grate into a fam­i­ly where impor­tant details, like aller­gies, are not com­mu­ni­cat­ed. Millie’s frus­tra­tion is evi­dent as she tries to bal­ance her desire to do the right thing with the frus­tra­tion of being blamed for some­thing she couldn’t have known. The chap­ter also delves deep­er into Nina’s con­trol and her ten­den­cy to place blame quick­ly, which adds to the pres­sure Mil­lie feels in try­ing to keep every­thing in order. What was meant to be a sim­ple ges­ture of kind­ness quick­ly turns into a les­son in nav­i­gat­ing the intri­ca­cies of fam­i­ly dynam­ics and the weight of respon­si­bil­i­ty that comes with her posi­tion. As Mil­lie faces the unpre­dictable nature of her new job, her inter­nal con­flict con­tin­ues to grow, as she’s torn between try­ing to prove her worth and strug­gling with the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and under­stand­ing in the house­hold. The emo­tion­al toll of these mis­un­der­stand­ings fore­shad­ows the many hur­dles Mil­lie will have to face as she con­tin­ues to nav­i­gate her role with­in the fam­i­ly.