Collette is crying in the hall, a ghostly sound. It echoes off the walls and travels mournfully down the corridor. Her sobs pause before picking up again. A hollow wail. She sounds like a wounded creature.
I poke my head out from behind the door. I’ve been in Patty’s bedroom arranging the books as Collette requested. She wants them in alphabetical order. “That way,” Collette told me, “when Patty asks for a book, I’ll know exactly where to find it.”
Pauline and Collette had been in the living room cutting up pieces of craft paper for Patty’s birthday party. The image of Collette wielding another pair of scissors is something I could do without, and I’m glad to be in another room. But today something has gone wrong.
Her cries send a tingle down the back of my neck.
I step cautiously out into the hall.
Collette is no longer in her jeans and blouse; she’s wearing a white nightgown.
The silk material is so thin I can see her ribs sticking out, the small roundness of her breasts, and the oblong nipples pressed against the fabric. She’s barefoot, her hair swinging past her shoulders, her face bare and wiped clean since I saw her less than an hour ago. Her eyelashes, naked and blond-white, disappear against her eyelids. She’s cried the makeup straight off her face.
The cut marks on her body are healing. Several of the longer, zigzagged slashes down her arms are turning pink. I can’t see her belly, but I’m confident there are slash marks there too.
Someone walks up behind her, and I think at first that it’s Pauline, here to shush Collette and escort her to bed. But it’s not the housekeeper. The long, quick strides belong to a man.
“Collette,” Mr. Bird says and he spins her around. “You must get ahold of yourself.”
But Collette’s voice only drips with accusation. “You…” she says, pointing a manicured finger in his face. “Why won’t you spend time with Patty?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You never play with her. You’re always working. And now look at you.” She beats her small fists against his chest as he stands still. “You’re home from work for once and you won’t even visit the playroom. She wants to show you the party decorations.” More sobs erupt. “She’s so excited, Alex.”
He pulls away. “I have to get going.”
“But she’s so excited,” Collette repeats, wiping her tears. “Why won’t you give her five minutes—just five minutes, that’s all. You used to give her so much time…” Her voice begins to fade. “Remember that, Alex? After she was born. Remember those days?”
But Mr. Bird sounds weary. A tenderness takes hold in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Collette. I’ve got to go.”
She stares at him, then laughs, heartbreak and tears mixed in with the sound. “Why bother? You’ve broken my heart, Patty’s too. She’s hiding in her playroom now, crying. See what you’ve done?”
Mr. Bird turns his back and leaves her in the hall.
She looks pitiful—lost and alone in this massive apartment. My heart tugs and I step out from behind the door.
She turns to me, tears falling down her cheeks and running to her neck, a drop seeping against her gown and spreading a quarter-size stain above her breast, a wet mark against the white. She reaches her arms for me.
“Oh, Sarah,” she says. “Thank goodness you’re here.”
“Do you think someone pushed Therese?”
My eyes whip around to Jonathan. He’s tossing his keys on the side table, the door closing behind him.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he insists. “Something’s not adding up right.”
I can’t stop wondering about it too, but I’m thinking we should just drop it. I don’t have that much longer with this job and we should get through it the easiest way possible, instead of digging into the past. We’ve already had enough problems with the Birds.
“We don’t know if that’s what happened.”
“What? Just like we don’t think they put coke in my locker?”
My face startles.
“And something else that bugs me, the way their daughter died.”
“It was a tragedy, Jonathan. Nothing more.”
“I’ve talked to a few of their neighbors,” he says.
My heart freezes.
“You went to their apartment?”
“I wanted to find someone who knew Patty when she was alive.”
“Why?” I ask. “That was twenty years ago. They’ll say yes, there was a girl, and yes, she died. We already know this.”
“But what if she died under mysterious circumstances?”
I’m losing my patience. “She had some sort of disease, an infection. It was horribly scarring. It was a long time ago and they didn’t know how to cure it back then.”
“What kind of disease could that be? Something that scarred her face and body to the point they refused to let her be seen? Closed casket and everything? No wonder the woman went crazy.”
“There were skin blisters,” I tell him. “I looked it up after Pauline told me.”
“What kind of skin blisters kill a kid?”
“Open sores that can lead to sepsis, loss of bodily fluids. The child can stop eating and breathing.”
Jonathan scratches at his neck and chin. “I don’t know, it just doesn’t—”
“What are you trying to say? That’s not how she really died?”
“No.” He’s pacing. “Yes…maybe…I don’t know.” He sits down with me, his eyes darting from one side of the room to the other, his brain churning. “It just seems weird.”
“Everything about these people is weird.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened to Patty?”
“No one killed her,” I tell him sternly. “They loved her too much.” I meet his eyes. “Let’s think about this for a second, okay? Why kill a girl and then spend the next twenty years pretending she’s still alive?” I shake my head. “That’s not what happened.”
“Well you can’t ignore what might have happened to Therese. There’s something wrong there, I know it, and you know it. And the other nanny quitting on them like that…”
I rub the bridge of my nose. “I told you. Pauline helped get her out of that contract because the family promised she would be the last nanny.”
“But she wasn’t, right? They didn’t stop.”
I sigh. Jonathan’s eyes won’t leave my face.
“No, they didn’t,” I tell him.