Chapter 6
The name stayed with Nadia all night.
She had heard it before, of course. The servants said it in lowered voices. Theodore said it with a kind of reverence. The man who had saved the family from the port extortionists, who had made a problem disappear after a single conversation. The man whose name the city spoke only in whispers.
She did not know how to reach him. Men like that did not have telephone numbers in the book. They did not answer doors.
On Saturday, the house was in a fever. Eleanor Hawthorne would arrive the next day. Clarissa moved through the rooms like a general, ordering flowers replaced, silver re-polished, carpets beaten. The staff worked in silence. Everyone knew that one mistake would be remembered.
In the middle of it, Juny Prell was called upstairs.
Nadia was in the kitchen when the girl came back down. Her face was white. She stood in the doorway with her hands hanging at her sides, and then she turned and walked out to the pantry, and Nadia followed.
Juny was on the floor between the shelves, her arms around her knees, crying in a way that had no air in it.
“What happened?” Nadia knelt beside her.
“The cosmetics.” Juny’s voice was raw. “The new line. Dozens of them. The packaging was ruined, bottles cracked. She said I did it. She said she saw me near the shelves. She said I have to pay for all of it or leave, and she’ll make sure no one hires me.”
“Did you touch them?”
“I’ve never even been in that room.” Juny looked up. “I work in the kitchen. I don’t know anything about cosmetics. What did I do wrong, Nadia? I only wanted to study and work honestly.”
The question went through Nadia like a bell.
She thought of a girl of seventeen standing outside a burning workshop, holding a door that would not open. She thought of her mother’s tired voice saying the exit was bolted, and her own silence, and the years of telling herself that keeping her head down was the same as keeping safe.
She looked at Juny, and she saw the cost of that lie.
“Nothing,” she said. “You did nothing wrong.”
She helped the girl to her feet. Then she went to find Oswald.
“I’m going to speak to Mr. Hawthorne tomorrow,” she said. “After Mrs. Hawthorne arrives. In front of everyone. I’m going to tell them everything.”
Oswald’s old eyes rested on her. “You understand what that will cost.”
“I’ve been paying the cost for ten years,” Nadia said. “I’m tired of paying it for nothing.”
He nodded slowly. Then he took the notebook from under the counter and put it in her hands.
“Then take this,” he said. “And remember: a notebook is not a witness. You are.”
Sunday came.
Eleanor Hawthorne arrived at four o’clock in a black car, a woman over seventy with silver hair and eyes that seemed to see through walls. The staff lined up in the main hall. Clarissa stood at Theodore’s side in pale blue, her smile perfect, her hands folded like a girl in a portrait.
Eleanor walked down the line. She stopped in front of Nadia.
Nadia felt the old woman’s gaze move over her face, her uniform, the scarf she had forgotten to take off.
“Who cut your hair?” Eleanor asked.
The hall went silent.
Nadia’s mouth opened. She saw Clarissa watching her from the end of the line, and she thought of the folder in the drawer, and the clinic, and Mila’s face when she heard the word *indefinitely*.
“I did, ma’am,” she said.
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. She looked at Nadia for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then she moved on without another word.
May you like
That night, after the dinner dishes were cleared, Eleanor’s maid came to the kitchen.
“Mrs. Hawthorne wants to see you,” she said. “Now.”
