Chap­ter 33

I have Sun­day off, so I spend the day out of the house. It’s a beau­ti­ful sum­mer day—not too hot and not too cool—so I dri­ve over to the local park and sit on a bench and read my book. When you’re in prison, you for­get those sim­ple plea­sures. Just going out­side and read­ing at the park. Some­times you want it so bad, it’s phys­i­cal­ly painful.

I’m nev­er going back there. Nev­er.

I grab a bite to eat at a fast-food dri­ve-through, then I dri­ve back to the house. The Win­ches­ter estate is real­ly beau­ti­ful. Even though I’m start­ing to despise Nina, I can’t hate that house. It’s a beau­ti­ful house.

I park on the street like always and walk up to the front door of the house. The sky has been dark­en­ing dur­ing my entire dri­ve home, and just as I get to the door, the clouds break open and droplets of rain cas­cade out of the sky. I wrench the door open and slip inside before I get drenched.

When I get into the liv­ing room, Nina is sit­ting on the sofa in semi-dark­ness. She’s not doing any­thing there. She’s not read­ing, she’s not watch­ing TV. She’s just sit­ting there. And when I open the door, her eyes snap to atten­tion.

“Nina?” I say. “Every­thing okay?”

“Not real­ly.” She glances over at the oth­er end of the sofa, and now I notice she’s got a stack of cloth­ing next to her. It’s the same cloth­ing that she insist­ed I take from her when I first start­ed work­ing here. “What is my cloth­ing doing in your room?”

I stare at her as a flash of light­ning bright­ens the room. “What? What are you talk­ing about? You gave me those clothes.”

“I gave them to you!” She lets out a bark­ing laugh that echoes through the room, only par­tial­ly drowned out by the crack of thun­der. “Why would I give my maid cloth­ing worth thou­sands of dol­lars?”

“You”—my legs trem­ble beneath me—“you said they were too small on you. You insist­ed that I take them.”

“How could you lie like that?” She takes a step toward me, her blue eyes like ice. “You stole my cloth­ing! You’re a thief!”

“No…” I reach out for some­thing before my legs give out under me. But I grasp only air. “I would nev­er do that.”

“Ha!” She snorts. “That’s what I get for trust­ing a con­vict to work in my home!”

She’s loud enough that Andrew hears the com­mo­tion. He dash­es out of his office and I see his hand­some face at the top of the stairs, lit by anoth­er bolt of light­ning. Oh God, what is he going to think of me? It’s bad enough that he knows about my prison record. I don’t want him to think I stole from his own house.

“Nina?” He takes the stairs down two at a time. “What’s going on here?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on!” she announces tri­umphant­ly. “Mil­lie here has been steal­ing from my clos­et. She stole all this cloth­ing from me. I found it in her clos­et.”

Andrew’s eyes slow­ly grow wide. “She…”

“I didn’t steal any­thing!” Tears prick at my eyes. “I swear to you. Nina gave me those clothes. She said they didn’t fit her.”

“As if we would believe your lies.” She sneers at me. “I should call the police on you. Do you know what this cloth­ing is worth?”

“No, please don’t…”

“Oh, right.” Nina laughs at the expres­sion on my face. “You’re on parole, aren’t you? Some­thing like this would send you right back to prison.”

Andrew is look­ing down at the cloth­ing on the couch, a deep crease between his eye­brows. “Nina…”

“I’m going to call them.” Nina whips her phone out of her purse. “God knows what else she stole from us, right, Andy?”

“Nina.” He lifts his eyes from the stack of cloth­ing. “Mil­lie didn’t steal this cloth­ing. I remem­ber you emp­ty­ing your clos­et. You put it all in trash bags and said you were donat­ing it.” He picks up a tiny white dress. “You haven’t been able to fit into this in years.”

It’s grat­i­fy­ing the way Nina’s cheeks turn pink. “What are you say­ing? That I’m too fat?”

He ignores her remark. “I’m say­ing there’s no way she stole this from you. Why are you doing this to her?”

Her mouth falls open. “Andy…”

Andrew looks over at me, hov­er­ing by the sofa. “Mil­lie.” His voice is gen­tle when he says my name. “Would you go upstairs and give us some pri­va­cy? I need to talk to Nina.”

“Yes, of course,” I agree. Glad­ly.

The two of them stand there in silence while I mount the flight of stairs to the sec­ond floor. When I reach the top, I go over to the door­way to the attic and I open the door. For a moment, I stand there, con­tem­plat­ing my next move. Then I close the door with­out going through.

Much qui­eter this time, I creep over to the head of the stairs. I stand at the edge of the hall­way, just before the stair­well. I can’t see Nina and Andrew, but I can hear their voic­es. It’s wrong to eaves­drop, but I can’t help myself. After all, this con­ver­sa­tion will almost cer­tain­ly involve Nina’s accu­sa­tions about me.

I hope Andrew con­tin­ues to defend me, even when I’m out of the room. Will she con­vince him that I stole her clothes? I am, after all, a con­vict. You make one mis­take in life, and nobody ever trusts you again.

“… didn’t take these dress­es,” Andrew is say­ing. “I know she didn’t.”

“How could you take her side over mine?” Nina shoots back. “The girl was in prison. You can’t trust some­body like that. She’s a liar and a thief, and she prob­a­bly deserves to be back in prison.”

“How could you say some­thing like that? Mil­lie has been won­der­ful.”

“Yes, I’m sure you think so.”

“When did you become so cru­el, Nina?” His voice trem­bles. “You’ve changed. You’re a dif­fer­ent per­son now.”

“Every­one changes,” she spits at him.

“No.” His voice low­ers so that I have to strain to hear it over the sound of rain­drops falling out­side and hit­ting the pave­ment. “Not like you. I don’t even rec­og­nize you any­more. You’re not the same per­son I fell in love with.”

There’s a long silence, bro­ken by a bolt of thun­der that cracks loud enough to shake the foun­da­tions of the house. Once it’s fad­ed, I hear Nina’s next words loud and clear.

“What are you say­ing, Andy?”

“I’m say­ing… I don’t think I’m in love with you any­more, Nina. I think we should sep­a­rate.”

“You’re not in love with me any­more?” she bursts out. “How can you say that?”

“I’m sor­ry. I was just going along with things, liv­ing our lives, and I didn’t even real­ize how unhap­py I was.”

Nina is qui­et for a long time as she absorbs his words. “Does this have to do with Mil­lie?”

I hold my breath wait­ing to hear his answer. There was some­thing between us that night in New York, but I’m not going to kid myself that he’s leav­ing Nina because of me.

“This isn’t about Mil­lie,” he final­ly says.

“Real­ly? So are you going to lie to my face and pre­tend noth­ing ever hap­pened between you and her?”

Damn. She knows. Or at least, she thinks she knows.

“I have feel­ings for Mil­lie,” he says in a voice so qui­et, I’m sure I must’ve imag­ined it. How could this rich, hand­some, mar­ried man have feel­ings for me? “But that’s not what this is about. This is about you and me. I don’t love you any­more.”

“This is bull­shit!” The pitch of Nina’s voice is going up to the point where soon only dogs will be able to hear her. “You’re leav­ing me for our maid! This is the most ridicu­lous thing I’ve ever heard. This is an embar­rass­ment to you. You’re bet­ter than this, Andrew.”

“Nina.” His tone is firm. “It’s over. I’m sor­ry.”

“Sor­ry?” Anoth­er crack of thun­der shakes the floor­boards. “Oh, you don’t know what sor­ry is…”

There’s a pause. “Excuse me?”

“If you try to go through with this,” she growls at him, “I will destroy you in court. I will make sure you are left pen­ni­less and home­less.”

“Home­less? This is my home, Nina. I bought it before we even knew each oth­er. I allow you to stay here. We have a prenup, as you recall, and after our mar­riage ends, it will be mine again.” He paus­es again. “And now I’d like you to leave.”

I haz­ard a look around the stair­well. If I crouch, I can make out Nina stand­ing in the cen­ter of the liv­ing room, her face pale. Her mouth opens and clos­es like a fish. “You can’t be seri­ous about this, Andy,” she sput­ters.

“I am very seri­ous.”

“But…” She clutch­es her chest. “What about Cece?”

“Cece is your daugh­ter. You nev­er want­ed me to adopt her.”

It sounds like she’s speak­ing through grit­ted teeth. “Oh, I see what this is about. It’s because I can’t have anoth­er baby. You want some­body younger, who can give you a child. I’m not good enough any­more.”

“That’s not what this is about,” he says. Although on some lev­el, maybe it is. Andrew does want anoth­er child. And he can’t have that with Nina.

Her voice trem­bles. “Andy, please don’t do this to me… Don’t humil­i­ate me this way. Please.”

“I’d like you to leave, Nina. Right now.”

“But it’s rain­ing!”

Andrew’s voice doesn’t waver. “Pack a bag and get out.”

I can almost hear her weigh­ing her options. What­ev­er else I can say about Nina Win­ches­ter, she’s not stu­pid. Final­ly, her shoul­ders sag. “Fine. I’ll leave.”

Nina’s foot­steps thud in the direc­tion of the stairs. It occurs to me a sec­ond too late that I need to move out of sight. Nina lifts her eyes and sees me stand­ing at the top of the stairs. Her eyes burn with anger like noth­ing I’ve ever seen. I should run back to my room, but my legs feel frozen as her heels bite into the steps one by one.

The light­ning flash­es one last time when she reach­es the top of the stairs, and the glow on her face makes her look like she’s stand­ing at the gates of hell.

“Do…” My lips feel numb, it’s almost hard to form the words. “Do you need help pack­ing?”

There’s such ven­om in her eyes, I’m afraid she’s going to reach into my chest and yank my heart out with her bare hands. “Do I need help pack­ing? No, I believe I can man­age.”

Nina goes into her bed­room, slam­ming the door behind her. I am not sure what to do. I could go up to the attic, but then I look down­stairs where Andrew is still in the liv­ing room. He’s look­ing up at me, so I descend the stairs to talk to him.

“I’m so sor­ry!” My words come out in a rush. “I didn’t mean to…”

“Don’t you dare blame your­self,” he says. “This was a long time com­ing.”

I glance at the win­dow, which is drenched with rain. “Do you want me to… go?”

“No,” he says. “I want you to stay.”

He touch­es my arm and a tin­gle goes through me. All I can think is that I want him to kiss me, but he can’t do it right now. Not with Nina right upstairs.

But soon she’ll be gone.

About ten min­utes lat­er, Nina comes down the stairs, strug­gling with a bag on each shoul­der. Yes­ter­day, she would have made me car­ry those and laughed at how weak I was. Now she has to do it her­self. When I look up at her, her eyes are puffy and her hair is disheveled. She looks ter­ri­ble. I don’t think I real­ized exact­ly how old she was until this moment.

“Please don’t do this, Andy,” she begs him. “Please.”

A mus­cle twitch­es in his jaw. The thun­der cracks again, but it’s soft­er than it was before. The storm is mov­ing away. “I’ll help you put your bags in the car.”

She chokes back a sob. “Don’t both­er.”

She trudges over to the door to the garage that’s just off the side of the liv­ing room, strug­gling with her heavy bags. Andrew tries to reach out to help her, but she shrugs him away. She fum­bles to get the door open to the garage. Instead of putting her bags down, she’s try­ing to jug­gle them both and get the door open. It takes her sev­er­al min­utes, and I final­ly can’t stand it any­more. I sprint over to the door, and before she can stop me, I turn the knob and throw it open for her.

“Gee,” she says. “Thanks so much.”

I don’t know how to respond. I just stand there as she push­es past me with her bags. Just before she goes through the door, she leans in close to me—so close that I can feel her hot breath on my neck.

“I will nev­er for­get this, Mil­lie,” she hiss­es in my ear.

My heart flut­ters in my chest. Her words echo in my ears as she toss­es her bags into the back of her white Lexus, and then zooms out of the garage.

She left the garage door open. I can see the rain pour­ing down onto the dri­ve­way as a gust of wind whips me in the face. I stand there for a moment, unsure what to do next.