Another day passes and I’m thinking the men must be coming home soon—they can’t stay away forever. What will I say to them? Will I be able to confront them? They’ll deny everything, I’m sure. They’ll tell me I’m making it all up in my head.
I look around, my throat choked with tears. Fatigue washes over me again, followed by that now-familiar helpless feeling.
I’m wearing Collette’s clothes. I’m staying with her around the clock. She’s loving that I’m with her.
Despite everything—what I know, what Jonathan warned me about—I’m doing exactly what she wants. What she wanted with the last nanny too.
Without realizing it, I’ve moved in with the Birds.
CHAPTER FORTY
It’s strange, but I find I’m enjoying staying with Collette. I know I should leave, should tear out of here, but I don’t have the energy to move. And it’s comforting being taken care of by someone else. I’m too weary to leave this apartment, because then what? I go back to my tiny apartment, where everything reminds me of Jonathan? The French press he used to make us coffee. The pots and pans with the bright red handles in which he cooked our first dinner together. The extra pillow he used to prop up his head as he checked his phone for emails.
Amelia has texted me I don’t know how many times, asking me if I’m all right, asking to come see me, wondering how I am.
Sarah, please let me know if you’re ok.
We’re all thinking of you. Thinking of Jonathan xx
Two days later: Sarah, are you there?
You don’t have to talk but please text me so I know you’re good.
Another message: Should we be worried?
I’m okay, I text her. Thank you for checking on me.
She immediately messages back.
Where are you? I’ve been to your apartment so many times. Are you still with that family?
Yes.
Do you need anything? Are you okay?
I’m good. They’re taking care of me.
No need to tell her anything else. Like how frightened I am of the moment Mr. Bird will arrive home, or that Collette and Pauline have become my unlikely lifelines right now.
Can I come see you?
I ask Collette.
“My friend,” I tell her. “The one you met at my apartment—Amelia. She wants to visit.”
Collette looks up from her magazine. “Here?”
“Yes, here.”
She reaches for my arm. “Not right now, sweetheart.”
I stare at my phone, then back at Collette. “Only for a few minutes? I think she’s worried about me.”
Collette smiles. “That’s kind.” And she rubs her fingers over my hand. “But Alex will be coming home soon. Let’s not have any visitors.”
She closes her magazine and rises from the couch. But my heart seizes.
“He’s coming home tonight?”
“Soon,” she says.
Icy fear locks inside my chest. Collette doesn’t notice the altered look on my face, the panic I’m swallowing as she continues curling her blond hair around one finger. She sashays toward the kitchen and calls over her shoulder, “I’m making hot chocolate for me and Patty. Want some?”
But I can’t speak. I don’t answer. She says something about bringing me one anyway.
I watch her disappear behind the door. My phone drops to my lap, Amelia’s question left unanswered.
* * *
—
Just as Collette said, Mr. Bird returns that evening from his business trip, Stephen too. Neither of them looks surprised to see me, their sad little houseguest, which means Collette has already told them I’m here.
My heartbeat slows to a crawl as the men set down their bags and greet Collette with a kiss, hug Pauline, and then say something to me about condolences for Jonathan.
I don’t move, the air an arctic blast inside my lungs. I’m unable to take a full breath until they leave the room.
If Mr. Bird had a hand in Jonathan’s death, he doesn’t show it. Neither does Stephen. Both of them, blank faces.
I suppose, in Mr. Bird’s mind, my being here in his home with his family is proof I’m not running to the cops. He must think I’m easy to manipulate. Unable to fight on my own. Letting the enemy take care of me because I have nowhere else to go. Maybe he’s right.
I depend on Collette and Pauline now. They’re the long-lost mother and aunt I’ve been doing without for so long. I’ve missed that kind of support system.
Collette is returning to me, whispering in my ear and telling me everything is going to be all right. She hands me a sketch pad, brand new. A world of possibilities, she says. She encourages me to draw and create and take my mind far away from here.
“Design me a new outfit,” she says. “A line of dresses. Something for Patty too.”
And Mr. Bird is already turning away. His silence is no longer threatening. He’s unbothered, unfazed. Seems surprised when Pauline mentions something to him about heroin in a dark alley.
And I’m starting to wonder if he had nothing to do with Jonathan. Maybe it was someone else.
And I sink against the sofa, my brain in turmoil. The mind games in this place.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I hear her—Patty.
Tinkle-bell laughter of a girl. I hear her as clear as anything, the sound so small and joyful it reverberates off the walls.
A few days later, I see her too. The wisp of her blond hair as she runs around the corner. The small frame of her body as she scampers into another room.
I’m going mad. The girl is dead—she’s dead. I know this. Collette is the one who invents her in her head, not me.
She’s getting to me. Alex being home, his very presence and my paranoia, is seeping into my core.
This whole place has taken over my senses.
I’m grieving. Jonathan’s death is too much to handle. But seeing Patty? I know I’m a wreck, but I can’t be losing my reasoning too, my ability to know real from imaginary.
But there’s no explaining what is happening to me now. I’m seeing things that aren’t there. Patty skipping down the hall. The patter of running feet. Dolls moving around in her playroom. But I’m not the one touching them.
I haven’t been right lately—my head isn’t right. My fiancé is dead. I watched his family bury him in the ground. There is no one left for me to go home to. That’s enough to make anyone go off the deep end, right? I mean, look what happened to Collette.
I just need more rest. I’ll sleep this off until I can’t hear her anymore—can’t see her. I’ll shut my eyes and shut out Patty.
But I wake up, and there she is.
Blond ponytail coming around the corner, the impish grin. The gentle skid as she slides along the floors in her socks. She’s running from one room to the next, her head thrown back with laughter—her mom too—the pair of them cuddled together on the couch watching a movie. I see them. I smell her strawberry bodywash too. The sweet tang of it.
But I’m only imagining things, right? Collette ran the bathwater earlier and dumped a bottle of strawberry bodywash into the tub like she does every time. That’s what I’m smelling, not Patty. The scent lingers down the hall and follows me everywhere.
It’s not Patty. She’s not here—dammit, she’s not.
I shut my eyes, plug my ears, and tell myself she’s not in the room. She’s not asking me to play with her dollhouse. I’m not following her to the playroom. I’m not opening the door. But when I turn around, I’m there. In the playroom. My legs and body have brought me here. My head is in a whirl and everything is foggy, but I’m stepping across the carpet, kneeling at the dollhouse, and lifting the Patty doll as she tells me to.
I’m sitting at the table for a tea party. Listening to Patty tell me about her birthday, the frie
nds she’ll have over, the fun times we’ll have. I’m listening to every word, bringing a teacup to my mouth.
She’s calling me Sissy. She says she’s happy to have a big sister, and I’m nodding and letting her hug me, her strawberry-scented hair pressed against my cheeks until all I want to do is choke and cry, crawl out of the playroom because it doesn’t make any sense—this can’t be happening.
I’m spending hours in the playroom and barely realizing it. The days are flying by. We spend all our time in here now.
Something strange is happening too—something else I don’t understand. I’m no longer cringing when I hold the Patty doll. It no longer frightens me. And before I know it, I’m stroking the doll’s hair without anyone asking me to. Like Collette, I’m clutching her in my hand.
I wake up to find Patty’s lock of hair, the one Collette gave me, next to my pillow. I don’t remember putting it there, but there it is. Every morning. I breathe in the strawberry scent of my own hair too.
After a few more days, I’m hurting. My body is aching and feverish. I can’t explain it—Collette can’t either. I languish in bed and feel sick to my stomach as Collette tucks me under the covers and tells me to get some rest.
Eventually she wonders if we should call for a doctor. “Not the family doctor,” she tells Pauline firmly.
The housekeeper brings a washcloth for my head and then the fever breaks and I’m beginning to feel better. My body doesn’t ache as much. The nausea is subsiding. My need to sleep or sit in a daze for hours on end is dissipating. Collette tells me my grief for Jonathan has weakened my immune system.
I hear Collette whispering to Pauline. She tells her she hopes I haven’t gotten Patty sick and wonders if we should stay apart for a few days to make sure Patty doesn’t fall ill too. But she doesn’t. The little girl doesn’t stay away. Sure enough, Patty finds her way to me.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The moment I step into the kitchen, Freddie minimizes whatever he was looking at on his computer and turns away.
“Are you feeling okay?” he asks, and I halt in my tracks.
The fact that he’s spoken to me, acknowledged my presence, is strange. The last couple of weeks he’s been setting an extra place at the table for me dutifully and without comment, barely looking in my direction, which has been par for the course since I started working here anyway. But now he wants to talk?
I stare at him for a long, steady minute before clearing my throat. “I’m all right,” I tell him.
“Are you sure?”
I clear my throat again, an uneasy feeling blooming inside my chest, and search for the right words. “I’m tired. Grieving. It’s been a really rough time.” Like you care, I want to add.
But he throws me a cautious look. “Do you have other people you can talk to? Another place to stay?”
“You want me to leave?”
“Don’t you want to leave?”
I look down at the floor. “No,” I say, and then look up. “Not right now, I mean.”
“Don’t you want to be with your friends?”
I think about Amelia. She’s texted a few more times, and each time I’ve told her not to worry. She hasn’t been sending as many messages anymore.
“What about staying with your family?” Freddie asks.
“I don’t have any family left.” If he’d bothered to get to know me, he would have known this.
To my surprise, he looks sympathetic. “I’m worried…” he says and stares down at the same bowl he’s been drying for the last couple of minutes, the towel going around in circles. He folds the towel tight in his hands. “Something isn’t right again.”
My eyes flinch. “Again?”
“Something with all this.” He makes a face. “I’ve been watching this family for years and they never think I notice. I stay quiet, do what I’m told, but I notice things—I overhear things.” He gives me a wary look. “I also don’t try to stop any of it, I know, and I could. And for that, I’m sorry.”
I step closer.
“What is there for you to be sorry for? You work in the kitchen. I’m here to be a fake nanny. Your job has nothing to do with me.”
“Oh, but it does. And now look what’s happened. They’ve got you living here too.”
“It’s not permanent,” I say quickly. “Only until I figure out what to do next.”
“And when will that be?” He raises his eyebrows, a warning tone creeping into his voice. “They won’t want you to leave. You can try, you can tell them you’re ready, that you’re feeling better, but they’ll find ways to keep you—it’s what they always do.”
It’s what they always do.
“I’m only here until the birthday party and then my contract is over.”
He stands still.
But something alerts me, something he said earlier. “Why did you ask if I’m feeling okay? Did you mean feeling sad about Jonathan or something else?”
“Something else,” he says. “Besides emotionally, I mean. Have you been feeling sick?”
“You know I’ve been sick,” I snap. “I had a stomach bug. I haven’t been eating much. I’m still…” I hate repeating the word. “I’m still grieving. But I’m getting better. Don’t you think I seem better today?”
Freddie dismisses my question. “What about seeing things? Wanting to sleep all the time? Strange dreams?”
By strange dreams, does he mean sobbing in my sleep, drenching my pillow in tears as I remember my last moment with Jonathan, how he’d left to meet up with friends and I’d stayed home instead. My last words being Don’t stay out too late. But at least I kissed him goodbye. He’d squeezed my hands twice: once for I love you and the second for I’ll be thinking of you.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Thank God we had that moment one more time.
“I’ve been upset,” I tell him. “My fiancé died, remember? They think Jonathan OD’d on heroin—”
“Except you don’t think he did.”
It’s my turn to raise my eyebrows.
“What’s happened in the past, to Anna and Therese, even to Patty, never sat right with me. Never. And now Jonathan.”
A shiver takes hold of my body. “What are you saying?”
He holds my look. “I don’t like how your fiancé died. Something isn’t right and you know it isn’t,” he repeats. “Someone got to him, Sarah. Someone did that to him.” A tremor I’ve never seen before darkens his face. “And I’m afraid if you’re not careful, you’re going to be next.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I can’t shake what Freddie said. What’s happened in the past. His suspicions about what happened to Jonathan, about the fate of everyone else.
Does this family hurt anyone who asks questions, and did they go after Jonathan? Did the same thing happen to Therese? Was she pushed—and by whom?
Not Pauline, that wouldn’t make sense. She wouldn’t kill another member of the household staff. What purpose would that serve?
I think about Collette. Killing her beloved longtime nanny doesn’t make sense either.
Is it possible Mr. Bird paid someone to shove her into oncoming traffic? It couldn’t have been Stephen. He’d been only a teenager at the time. Maybe Alex worried she was done keeping their secret, so he silenced her forever?
And what about the way Patty died? Freddie seems to think that was suspicious too, just like Jonathan had. But I still have my doubts.
Mr. Bird is a monster, Collette is beyond insane, but they wouldn’t kill their own child.
Something strikes me at that moment, and I stop myself just outside the piano room.
Stephen. Just like his dad, he comes off friendly enough, but once he’s tested, once he gets angry, he’s more than capable of—how had he put it?—bringing down the hammer.
Did Stephen kill his own sis
ter?
The thought has never occurred to me until now. But that can’t be right. He was what, twelve years old when she died? He wouldn’t hurt his baby sister. I’ve heard the way he’s talked about Patty. As for his parents, she’d been the light of their lives. He could never do anything to hurt her because then he’d be alone. But he’d also be the remaining child. The one to inherit everything.
Was this his way of getting his father’s attention to himself? And, eventually, all the money?
I lean against the wall, the thoughts making me dizzy.
If Stephen could have pulled off something so heartless at such a young age, I have no doubt he’d be capable of killing to keep his secret. Did Therese catch on to what he was doing, and Stephen made sure she would never tell a soul? All this time, poor Collette and Pauline have been thinking it was a senseless tragedy.
Or did Alex kill his own daughter? I remember what Pauline let slip several weeks ago—that she thought Mr. Bird was having an affair with Ms. Fontaine, the first nanny—the one who ran off in the middle of the night. Did Therese find out and he silenced her because she was trying to blackmail him?
Would he go so far as to kill Jonathan also? Did he pay someone from the office to plant cocaine in his locker? And when that wasn’t enough to scare him off, did he have someone follow my fiancé instead, drag him to that alleyway, and pump him with enough heroin to make his heart stop?
Could they have done this to him?
I blink back the tears, searing pain returning to my chest as I look around at the priceless art and shined-to-the-brink marble floors. This apartment is a glass prison—and I’ve been living in this prison, willingly. Staying in the very home of the people who could be responsible for killing my fiancé.
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