“Adele Cohen?” I whispered it aloud, and Zoe looked at me curiously. I peered closer at the paper, which obviously belonged in the “lawyer” envelope. I wondered who Adele was—Walker’s sister, his mother? Whoever she was, the numbers that flashed in front of my eyes indicated that she’d had a tremendous amount of money. More money than I could imagine. I’d never liked dipping into people’s private lives, mostly because I’d never wanted anyone to dip into mine. I didn’t like knowing anything about the Cohens’ money or their relatives’ money or anyone’s money at all. It made me squeamish.
I shoved the paperwork into its appropriate folder. I filtered through the rest of it in two minutes flat; suddenly, I wanted to get out of there. I felt dirty, like I’d done something illicit, and I had the urgent need to put as much space as possible between me and the documents. I stared down at the folders in my hands, about to place them back in the box; but at that moment, a car pulled into the driveway. Zoe pushed the brakes on her tricycle, but it was almost too late; the car was pulling toward us fast. At the end of the driveway, just before the garage, it slammed on its brakes.
Libby exited the car and strode toward me, an angry expression on her face.
I buried the folder at the bottom of the box before she reached the inside of the garage, while she was still squinting against the sun. But it didn’t matter; she’d seen me. I only hoped she didn’t think I’d been snooping around on purpose.
CHAPTER
NINE
WALKER WANTED TO FIRE ME; Libby said no.
“This is beyond unprofessional,” he railed. “Anyone else would be fired instantly for this kind of transgression.”
“Walker, really,” Libby scolded, “this isn’t your office. No need for the lofty vocabulary.”
“She rifled through our files, Libby. She’s completely lacking in discretion. The girl isn’t like us! Even you’ve said that. Now I’m saying she can’t be trusted.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Libby said calmly, but with a hint of anger in her voice. “Do you know how many opportunities she’s had to steal from us if she wanted to? And you’re mad because she accidentally knocked over a few files? What reason would she have for snooping through our boxes? Everything she could possibly be tempted by is right in front of her! Do you understand that I literally leave wads of cash out on the countertops, and she doesn’t touch it? Not only that, but she’s amazing with Zoe. Zoe adored her from the start. And god knows I’ve needed help with Zoe.” Libby’s voice faltered a bit at that, as though she was struggling to maintain her composure.
As much as my heart swelled at Libby’s obvious trust for me, Walker’s comments stung. I was listening from the hallway outside my room, not that it could be called eavesdropping. Zoe was long in bed, but Walker wasn’t doing anything to adjust the volume of his voice. I probably could have heard it from inside my room with the door closed. If I’d had a door, that is. Libby still hadn’t been able to locate a repairman whom she trusted with the antique wood.
The girl isn’t like us. How stupid I’d been to think I could fit into their world.
“She found some things she shouldn’t have,” Libby continued in a cool tone. “Some things that shouldn’t have been there at all. I thought you’d gotten rid of Adele’s stuff, Walker!” Her voice was shrill, thick with potential sobs. “How dare you! Do you still love her?” There was a pause that probably only lasted seconds, but to me it may as well have covered the space of an hour. Because in those seconds, something fell into place. Something that, for reasons unknown, drained my entire body. Walker had been married before. The file I’d found—it was his former wife’s. That’s why Libby had reacted so sensitively. I’d unwittingly unearthed something that reminded her of the woman her husband had loved before her. And as for Walker . . . no wonder he wanted to fire me. Who knew how raw his wound still was, how much pain he still felt over his dead wife? Everything was starting to make a lot more sense.
“Of course not!” Walker shouted. “And how could I get rid of the will? We need a record of it.”
“Stop yelling!” she said, crying then. “You’ve woken the baby!” Sure enough, Jackson had begun to cry through his monitor. Walker lowered his voice then, and I heard sounds of his murmuring and her quiet assents. “Sweetheart,” he crooned. “Please. I love you. You’re my life now.” Libby quieted finally, and after a few minutes, Walker declared, “I want her out. I want Annie to pack her bags and go back to wherever she came from. She’s caused enough trouble.”
“Walker. Listen to me.” Libby’s voice was as commanding and steady as ever now, as though she was talking to a child. “Let’s not lose our heads. Annie is the best thing that’s happened to us since we’ve moved here. I will not let you fire her. She is fantastic with Zoe, she’s incredibly mature, and I like her. I know she’s trustworthy. I know that what happened was an accident. I believe her.” She was speaking confidently, louder now. “And what of it? She’s living with us. She’s bound to hear or see things that are personal every now and again. It’s not as if we’ve got any skeletons in our closet. What does it matter if she knows how much money we have or that you were married before? I know you value your privacy, but the worst that can happen is the neighbors know how much money we have, which they’ve all been dying to know for months anyway.” There was a pause, and finally Walker responded, his voice strained.
“You’re right,” he said evenly. “We have nothing to hide. But it’s the principle of the thing. The girl isn’t family, Libby. She’s a sweet kid, but accidentally or not, she’s crossed the line.”
“I’ll speak to her. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Remember what we talked about. We need her here. God, Walker, the baby’s still crying! I have to get him. We can talk about this later.”
As I heard her start up the stairs, I slipped back into my room and curled up in bed with my book. The relief I felt at hearing Libby say they needed me was immeasurable. Because I needed them, too. I loved Zoe. And I’d begun to think of Libby as a sister. But more than that, I was afraid of what would happen if I left. Without their recommendation, I wouldn’t be able to get a job anywhere. If they revealed the truth of my past—and my sister’s death—to another family, I’d be ruined. Who else would take a chance on me the way they had, knowing my past? And for the wages they were paying me? No one. I’d have to quit school, move back home, work a minimum wage job at the diner or grocery store, just like everybody else. The Cohens knew too much about me for me to leave. And, I realized as I snuggled underneath the fluffy down comforter that enveloped my bed, the light from the hallway pouring into the gaping hollow of my doorway, now I knew something about them.
CHAPTER
TEN
THE DOOR STILL WASN���T FIXED. I didn’t even know what was wrong with it in the first place that required an entire week of repair, but I was finding it harder and harder to fall asleep at night. Owen might have had something to do with it; I hadn’t seen him since two days ago. I could see now that I’d overreacted. Maybe it wasn’t his place to judge the Cohens or comment on my job here, but it’s not like he was being rude. Just presumptuous. And then I responded by being . . . well, rude. I had raised myself on Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers and How to Be a Lady. Books I’d coveted, thinking they gave me insight into a world I’d never know. It was not like me at all to be unnecessarily mean.
But I’d been super stressed lately. My initial classes were difficult, and I wasn’t making friends easily on campus. I only had one class with Morgan, who’d looked at me blankly after the night of Dis-O, as if she barely remembered hanging out together (and she probably didn’t). I wanted to please Libby, but she’d been short-tempered, and it seemed like I was always screwing up: putting the wrong baby formula in the bottle; giving the baby a swim diaper instead of a regular one; washing Zoe’s laundry on hot instead of cold, letting the colors run together and all over the whites. It’s not that I couldn’t babysit—I was awes
ome with kids and knew exactly what I was doing—it was that I was so distracted.
“So how did it go? When you went out to talk to that boy, I mean,” Libby asked in a friendly tone. Two days had already passed since the incident with Owen. It was strange that she was bringing it up again, especially after she had expressed disapproval the first time. She was making coffee in the Nespresso machine and I was preparing Zoe’s peaches-and-cream oatmeal while simultaneously feeding the baby bananas from a jar. I patted the corner of the baby’s mouth where a chunk of banana puree had dribbled out.
“It was fine, I guess.” Although it wasn’t fine, not at all. The last thing I wanted to think about was Owen and the Date That Never Was.
“Just fine?” Libby raised an eyebrow.
“I think Zoe had fun with his dog,” I said carefully, uncertain whether she’d approve. I felt my throat constricting a little as I remembered how much fun we’d had joking around. Before the incident on the lawn, when he’d become a judgmental asshole. Or was I projecting? I tried to ignore the little voice in my head.
“Hey,” Libby said, placing her cup gently on the marble surface of the countertop and removing Jackson’s spoon from my hand. “You can tell me anything, remember?” She skillfully maneuvered the bananas into Jackson’s sparrow mouth, wide open and waiting now that Libby was at the spoon’s helm.
“It’s no big deal,” I said. “He’s just not that great. I mean, I guess I kind of hoped we’d be friends.” I shook my head and tried to smile. “It was stupid. I just thought it would be cool to have someone so close by to hang out with.”
“So why can’t you? Did something happen?” she pressed.
I sighed. I didn’t really want to tell Libby what had pissed me off. The last thing I wanted to do was cause tension between them and their neighbors, or to make her feel bad.
“I don’t know, I guess I just decided he was kind of immature,” I admitted, twisting the truth a little. “I mean, who lives with their parents at age twenty? He doesn’t have a job, and he’s not even in school.”
“Walker says he’s running his own tech startup,” Libby said. “Apparently that’s why he skipped out on college. He got some investments and wanted to throw himself into the company. Apparently it has, just in the last six months or so, started to take off. He just does the EMT thing once a week because he likes it,” she continued. “I guess he’s always had an interest in medicine and thought about going to med school for a while. Walk really got a good impression from him.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling guilty as the significance of what she was saying began to hit me. “So he’s running his own business?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I think he wanted to put his savings into the company rather than funneling it all into rent.”
“Oh.”
“So maybe he’s not as immature as you thought.” She smiled knowingly, scraping the last of the baby food from its jar.
“Maybe.” I officially felt terrible. I had judged Owen based on . . . pretty much nothing. And now even if I apologized, it wouldn’t matter, because the damage was already done. He’d think I was apologizing just because I thought his job was “up to my standards” or something. But none of this would have happened at all if he hadn’t mentioned Libby. I normally didn’t even care about stuff like getting a slow start—if anything, I understood it better than most. But he’d never see it that way.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Libby asked, appraising my face.
“Not really,” I said. “Pretty much just that.”
“Did he say something you didn’t like?” Libby’s voice had become graver, more intense. “I thought we had an understanding, Nanny. I thought you understood you were to tell me everything.” I felt confused, lightheaded. She was trying to be supportive, so why did it sound weirdly like a threat? And why was she calling me by my title?
“I—”
“Did you sleep with him?” she asked suddenly.
“What? No, of course not. God!” I couldn’t mask my shock. I hoped desperately that she wouldn’t be offended.
“Are you a virgin, Nanny?” I looked toward Zoe to see if she’d heard, not that she was likely to know what the term meant.
“Mrs. Cohen, I really don’t like when you call me ‘Nanny.’” The words escaped me before I had a second to think about it.
“What?” Libby set her mug down abruptly. It hit the counter so hard that I was afraid it would break. Zoe looked up from her cartoons and stared at us curiously.
“I—I just—”
“No.” Libby cut me off in a stern voice, lifting a hand to silence me. “What’s with this ‘Mrs. Cohen’ thing all of a sudden? And what do you mean, ‘when I call you “Annie”’? What else would I call you?”
“Annie would be great,” I told her. “But you just called me ‘Nanny.’” Suddenly, though, I wasn’t so sure. The look on Libby’s face was a cross between shock and confusion.
“No,” she said slowly. Then in a sharper tone, “Zoe! Go watch your Dora. Mommy’s iPad is right over there. Nanny and I are having a conversation.” There it was again. Nanny where I should have heard Annie. “That’s ridiculous,” she continued, turning to me. “I would never do something like that! I’m insulted that you’d even suggest it. I would never treat you like you’re . . . I don’t know, a servant or something.” She seemed genuinely appalled.
“I don’t know,” I stammered. “I thought maybe I’d done something to make you angry—”
“That’s ridiculous. You probably just heard wrong. ‘Nanny’ and ‘Annie’ aren’t exactly on opposite ends of the spectrum, you know. But I would never call you by anything but your name.”
I nodded. I felt my eyes well up. I was overwhelmed by confusion; I had heard it several times, I was sure of it. But why would she do it? None of it made sense. Libby moved to the stool next to mine and draped one arm around my shoulder. “Listen,” she said. “You’ve had a rough couple of weeks. The stress of school, the thing that happened the other day . . . it’s no wonder you’re giving everything a negative spin. I minored in psychology, you know. And it seems to me like you’re interpreting things wrongly. Hearing what you want to hear.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I felt too weak and confused to argue. Maybe she was right. If there was one thing I believed, it was that the mind could play tricks on you if you let it.
“Now stop trying to change the subject,” she said with a wry laugh. “Are you a virgin or aren’t you?” I didn’t know how to respond. The whole thing felt so weird.
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable talking about that,” I stammered. Libby’s jaw tightened.
“No secrets,” she told me. “I’m asking for a reason, you know.” Thinking back to the garage and how she’d stuck up for me to Walker, I decided she was right. No secrets. Even if I couldn’t possibly imagine what her “reasons” were for wanting to know such a thing.
“I’m not technically a virgin, but I think of myself as one,” I admitted finally. Now Libby’s laugh was more like a bark, loud and raucous.
“Don’t we all,” she said. “Or at least that’s what we try to tell ourselves when we’re your age.”
“It’s just that it was only one time,” I started—but Libby was already thumbing through a magazine, apparently uninterested now that I’d given her my answer.
“There was more,” I admitted finally, grasping for things that might please her.
“More?”
“Owen. He said some other things. He said his mom had tried to reach out to you and you hadn’t been that friendly.”
Libby took this in, her jaw stiffening and then relaxing rhythmically, as though she were clenching it tightly over and over.
“Well,” she said finally. “I guess I’ve been a little distracted, what with trying to build my business out here and having Jackson and all.”
“That’s just what I told him,” I said. “I don’t even know why he mentioned it, it’s ri
diculous. His mom’s probably just a busybody or something.”
“I’m sure she’s perfectly nice. I suppose I’ll have to make more of an effort to reach out to the neighbors.”
“Libby, I—”
“No, no,” she said, silencing me. “There’s probably some truth to what she said. I haven’t made enough time for making friends, and it would probably do me some good. I’ll swing by their place today. Or, I know! I’ll invite them over for dinner. Would you like that?”
“I don’t know. I was pretty rude after he told me that.”
“There’s always time for an apology. And I appreciate you defending me. Remember, we’re on each other’s sides.”
“Thanks.” I smiled up at her. Libby really was amazing, and incredibly kind. A little quirky from time to time, that was all. Besides, who was I to judge what was normal and what wasn’t? I’d never had a reliable barometer for social graces. Maybe asking about my virginity was totally normal and noninvasive in Libby’s world. It really was a whole different culture, this sphere of wealth and good breeding. I was just a visitor, and she had welcomed me. I had no right to be critical. I didn’t deserve her.
“Why don’t you take the day off to rest?” she continued, unaware of what I’d been thinking. “It seems like maybe you’re exhausted. Maybe I’m pushing you too hard.”
“I’m fine,” I protested.
“I insist.”
“But what about Zoe?”
Libby glanced at Zoe in surprise, as though she’d forgotten about her. “Hmm.” She tapped one finger against the countertop, deliberating. “I’ll drop her at her father’s office. It’ll be fine.”
“Oh, I couldn’t let—”
“It’ll be fine,” she cut in, more sharply this time. “He’s her father, after all. Surely he can spend a day looking after her.”
“I’m going to Daddy’s?” Zoe asked, her eyes wide and hopeful.
The Ruining Page 9