Patricia
After dinner, both Kevin and Christina retreated to the basement family room where they were allowed to watch certain shows from the 1950s or 1960s, according to Roland, who’d left me a list of approved viewing. He couldn’t spend more than ten minutes with his kids, but damn if he wasn’t going to control every aspect of their lives.
What a fucked-up family.
I went downstairs with the children and flipped on a show about a talking horse. I stayed just long enough to know that it was boring as shit, and the kids didn’t seem to like it either, and then I went upstairs to clean the kitchen.
Roland, busily preparing the meat that I’d seen marinating in the refrigerator earlier in the day, told me to leave so he could cook. “You can finish in here after the children go to bed.”
The children’s bedtime was eight-thirty for Kevin and nine for Christina. Which meant I’d be cleaning until at least ten and have to rise at six to prepare breakfast, fix the lunches, and get the children dressed.
No wonder no one wanted to stay on the job.
And surprising that no one had killed them already.
I had a moment of regret at not taking the opportunity to poison the meat. Well, another day, another chance.
“Is Mrs. Phillips home?” I made my voice adequately subservient.
“Not yet. Why?” He didn’t even look at me.
“Christina wanted to speak to her.” I wasn’t going to be the one to ask to take Christina to buy some new dresses. That would be up to her.
“Tomorrow morning. Mrs. Phillips always sees the children before school.”
She didn’t even put on a show of motherhood by saying goodnight to her children? I always said goodnight to my Ashley. It didn’t matter how busy I was. If a cow were giving birth—maybe I wouldn’t linger, but I’d give Ashley a hug and a kiss to get her to sleep before spending the night in the barn. After Ashley left for Texas, I’d call her a few times a week and say goodnight. Not every night, not once she was an adult. I didn’t want to be one of those parents who never acknowledged their child as a grown-up. But sometimes. And sometimes she’d call me to say goodnight. It was a little bit of a joke between us.
After her death, I still said goodnight to her, even if she no longer answered.
Brenda had not only killed my daughter, she couldn’t be bothered to say goodnight to her own.
I retreated from the kitchen and took the opportunity, while the talking horse show droned on below, to dust my way into the living room. And then into Brenda’s home office.
I dusted her desk. Then I opened the desk drawers one by one. The top drawer held an array of fountain pens—I recognized Mont Blanc—ink, and an external hard drive. The middle drawer had legal pads, printing paper, file folders. Then I opened the bottom drawer and saw a small notebook with the label passwords. I picked it up and thumbed through it.
It had passwords for her laptop. For her phone. Not what I needed. The passwords for Netflix or for about a dozen other streaming programs, even less so.
And then, on the last page, written in purple ink, probably with one of the Mont Blanc fountain pens, were three numbers. 30-8-42.
A combination. And I’d only seen one safe in the house, the safe in Brenda Phillips’ bedroom, the one at the bottom of her closet.
How very thoughtful of her.
I replaced the notebook in the drawer, exactly as I had found it, and I headed back into the basement just in time for the end of the talking horse show. One show, their father had said. I turned off the television, and Christiana looked at me.
“That was stupid.”
It was. She had taste. But I asked her a question because I know young girls. “Do you like horses?”
“Real ones. Not stupid pretend ones that talk.”
“Do you ride?”
“Once. For my birthday. Daddy took me to someplace where they let me ride in circles.” Her face glowed at the memory. “It was a white horse named Silver. The lady who led Silver around the ring told me that if I took lessons, I could learn to jump in a year.” Then her face darkened. “But Daddy thought it was too dangerous. And Mommy thought it wasn’t ladylike.”
Kevin piped up. “I like horses too. I’d like to be a cowboy.”
Christina shot him a scornful glance. “Do you know that cowboys are men too stupid to get other jobs?”
“No, they’re not.” Kevin raised his chin defiantly. “They’re cool. They love horses, and they sleep under the sky.”
Loving horses was a good sign. Maybe Kevin had promise after all.
I’d always loved horses. I sometimes rode the rescue horse on my farm, even if she was old. And it gave me an idea of something I could do with both children. “Maybe we could go see some horses at a rescue stable. Feed them some carrots and give them some pets.” I knew about a rescue farm outside Austin. Ashley, who also loved horses, had done a feature on it.
My offer generated excitement: the first time that Christina and Kevin had agreed on anything, and that made it easier to cajole them up the stairs and into bed on time.
At nine o’clock, with the children tucked in, I mounted the stairs to my attic room to wait until the kitchen was clear. I found that Roland had placed a Bible on my bed while I was cooking dinner. I checked my suitcase, and found the contents were not as I had packed them. Roland, while delivering a Bible for my spiritual guidance, had searched my luggage. Good thing I wasn’t stupid enough to have anything in there that could reveal either my real identity or my real purpose.
The fact that he hadn’t even bothered to conceal his invasion of my privacy would have pissed me off if I didn’t already have plans for his wife.
I stuck the Bible in a drawer and retrieved a copy of an Agatha Christie mystery from my suitcase. I liked her books. Clever. Amusing. Gave me some ideas on what to do and what not to do in the murder department. And Roland would have considered the book to be harmless entertainment for the subservient, docile housekeeper.
I sat in a shabby but comfortable chair near the window and read until I heard the sound of quarreling from somewhere on the first floor. It was too far away for me to hear the words, but the anger in the raised voices was clear. I wondered if this was a regular occurrence and once against felt sorry for the children. I hoped they were sleeping.
The argument ended and was followed by the sound of a woman’s footsteps in the hall below my bedroom. Roland must have retreated to his own office or to the basement.
I waited until almost eleven, after Roland had also gone to bed, to return to the kitchen and finish the cleanup. As expected, he’d left a mess. Flour on the counter and on the floor. A pan with encrusted burn. A pot where he’d made hollandaise sauce. Plates stacked and unrinsed. It took me an hour to clean it all.
I didn’t like how either of them treated me or their children, but I wanted to keep the job. I wanted to go shopping with Christina and take her and Kevin to see horses. Brenda would have a little longer to ignore and traumatize her children.
Roland, despite being an entitled piece of shit, was not on my list, so he could continue to be a bad father.
If I didn’t change my mind.
On either count.