Chap­ter 8

Nina must have thrown half the con­tents of the refrig­er­a­tor on the kitchen floor, so I have to make a run to the gro­cery store today. Since appar­ent­ly, I’m also going to be cook­ing for them, I select some raw meat and sea­son­ing that I can use to throw togeth­er a few meals. Nina loaded her cred­it card onto my phone. Every­thing I buy will be auto­mat­i­cal­ly charged to their account.

In prison, the food options were not too excit­ing. The menu rotat­ed between chick­en, ham­burg­ers, hot­dogs, lasagna, bur­ri­tos, and a mys­te­ri­ous fish pat­ty that always made me gag. There would be veg­eta­bles on the side that would be cooked to the point of dis­in­te­gra­tion. I used to fan­ta­size about what I would eat when I got out, but on my bud­get, the options weren’t much bet­ter. I could only buy what was on sale, and once I was liv­ing in my car, I was even more restrict­ed.

It’s dif­fer­ent shop­ping for the Win­ches­ters. I go straight for the finest cuts of steak—I’ll look up on YouTube how to cook them. I some­times used to cook steak for my father, but that was a long time ago. If I buy expen­sive ingre­di­ents, they’ll come out good no mat­ter what I do.

When I get back to the Win­ches­ter house, I’ve got four over­flow­ing bags of gro­ceries in the trunk of my car. Nina and Andrew’s cars take up the two spots in the garage, and she instruct­ed me not to park in the dri­ve­way, so I have to leave my car on the street. As I’m fum­bling to get the bags out of the trunk, the land­scap­er Enzo emerges from the house next to ours with some sort of scary gar­den­ing device in his right hand.

Enzo notices me strug­gling, and after a moment of hes­i­ta­tion, he jogs over to my car. He frowns at me. “I do it,” he says in his heav­i­ly accent­ed Eng­lish.

I start to take one of the bags, but then he scoops all four of them up in his mas­sive arms, and he car­ries them to the front door. He nods at the door, wait­ing patient­ly for me to unlock it. I do it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, giv­en that he’s car­ry­ing about eighty pounds’ worth of gro­ceries in his arms. He stomps his boots on the wel­come mat, then car­ries the gro­ceries the rest of the way into the kitchen and deposits them on the kitchen counter.

“Gra­cias,” I say.

His lips twitch. “No. Gra­zie.”

“Gra­zie,” I repeat.

He lingers in the kitchen for a moment, his brows knit­ted togeth­er. I notice again that Enzo is hand­some, in a dark and ter­ri­fy­ing sort of way. He’s got tat­toos on his upper arms, par­tial­ly obscured by his T‑shirt—I can make out the name “Anto­nia” inscribed in a heart on his right biceps. Those mus­cu­lar arms could kill me with­out him even break­ing a sweat if he got it in his head to do so. But I don’t get a sense that this man wants to hurt me at all. If any­thing, he seems con­cerned about me.

I remem­ber what he mum­bled to me before Nina inter­rupt­ed us the oth­er day. Peri­co­lo. Dan­ger. What was he try­ing to tell me? Does he think I’m in dan­ger here?

Maybe I should down­load a trans­la­tor app on my phone. He could type in what he wants to tell me and—

A noise from upstairs inter­rupts my thoughts. Enzo sucks in a breath. “I go,” he says, turn­ing on his heel and strid­ing back toward the door.

“But…” I hur­ry after him, but he’s much faster than me. He’s out the front door before I’ve even cleared the kitchen.

I stand in the liv­ing room for a moment, torn between putting away the gro­ceries and going after him. But then the deci­sion is made for me when Nina comes down the stairs to the liv­ing room, wear­ing a white pants suit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear any­thing besides white—it does com­ple­ment her hair, but the effort of keep­ing it clean would dri­ve me crazy. Of course, I’m going to be the one tak­ing care of the laun­dry from now on. I make a note to myself to buy more bleach next time I’m at the gro­cery store.

Nina sees me stand­ing there and her eye­brows shoot up to her hair­line. “Mil­lie?”

I force a smile. “Yes?”

“I heard voic­es down here. Were you hav­ing com­pa­ny?”

“No. Noth­ing like that.”

“You may not invite strangers into our home.” She frowns at me. “If you want to have any guests over, I expect you to ask per­mis­sion and give us at least two days’ notice. And I would ask you to keep them in your room.”

“It was just that land­scap­er guy,” I explain. “He was help­ing me car­ry gro­ceries into the house. That’s all.”

I had expect­ed the expla­na­tion would sat­is­fy Nina, but instead, her eyes dark­en. A mus­cle twitch­es under her right eye. “The land­scap­er? Enzo? He was here?”

“Um.” I rub the back of my neck. “Is that his name? I don’t know. He just car­ried the gro­ceries in.”

Nina stud­ies my face as if try­ing to detect a lie. “I don’t want him inside this house again. He’s filthy from work­ing out­side. I work so hard to keep this house clean.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Enzo wiped his boots off when he came into the house and he didn’t track in any dirt. And noth­ing is com­pa­ra­ble to the mess I saw when I first walked into this house yes­ter­day.

“Do you under­stand me, Mil­lie?” she press­es me.

“Yes,” I say quick­ly. “I under­stand.”

Her eyes flick over me in a way that makes me very uncom­fort­able. I shift between my feet. “By the way, how come you nev­er wear your glass­es?”

My fin­gers fly to my face. Why did I wear those stu­pid glass­es the first day? I should nev­er have worn them, and when she asked me about them yes­ter­day, I shouldn’t have lied. “Um…”

She arch­es an eye­brow. “I was up in the bath­room in the attic and I didn’t see any con­tact lens solu­tion. I didn’t mean to snoop, but if you’re going to be dri­ving around with my child at some point, I expect you to have good vision.”

“Right…” I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans. I should just come clean. “The thing is, I don’t real­ly…” I clear my throat. “I don’t actu­al­ly need glass­es. The ones I was wear­ing at my inter­view were more… sort of, dec­o­ra­tive. You know?”

She licks her lips. “I see. So you lied to me.”

“I wasn’t lying. It was a fash­ion state­ment.”