Chapter 7
Eleanor Hawthorne was in the library with the fire lit and a pot of tea on the table. She did not look up when Nadia came in. She poured two cups, set one on the opposite side of the table, and said, “Sit down.”
Nadia stayed by the door. “I’m not supposed to sit in the family rooms, ma’am.”
“I am seventy-three years old and I own this house,” Eleanor said. “Sit down.”
Nadia sat.
Eleanor looked at her for a long moment. “I’ve been in this family for fifty years. I know a frightened lie when I hear one. This afternoon, in the hall, you told me you cut your own hair. You did a poor job of it. And you were afraid.” She pushed the teacup closer. “Now. Again. Who cut your hair?”
Nadia’s hands were shaking. She put them in her lap.
“Mrs. Hawthorne,” she said, “if I tell you, I lose my job. I lose my sister’s medical care. I lose the apartment we live in.”
Eleanor’s face did not change. “And if you don’t tell me?”
Nadia thought of Juny in the pantry. She thought of her mother. She thought of the notebook in her apron pocket, heavy as a stone.
“Clarissa,” she said.
The word hung in the room.
Then Nadia told her everything. The scissors in the orchid house. The two maids holding her shoulders. The study she was forbidden to enter. The dye. The teapot. The folder with Mila’s name on it. The way Clarissa had taken the household accounts and used them like a leash. She spoke for a long time, and Eleanor did not interrupt her once.
When she finished, Eleanor sat back in her chair. The fire popped.
“Why now?” Eleanor asked. “You’ve endured her for months. Why speak today?”
Nadia looked at her hands. “A girl in the kitchen was blamed for something she didn’t do. She asked me what she had done wrong. And I couldn’t answer her, because I knew.” She swallowed. “I was silent once before. Ten years ago. Someone died because of it. I won’t do it again.”
Eleanor’s eyes sharpened. “Who died?”
“My mother. There was a fire in the workshop where she sewed. The back door was bolted. She told me, and I said nothing, because I was seventeen and I thought it wasn’t my place.” Nadia’s voice stayed level, but only just. “She never came home.”
Eleanor was quiet for a long time. Then she reached over and closed her hand around Nadia’s wrist, over the scar.
“All right,” she said. “We will do this properly.”
She rang the bell. Oswald appeared in the doorway, as if he had been waiting.
“Bring my son,” Eleanor said. “And bring his fiancée.”
The confrontation happened in the library, with the fire burning and the rain starting outside. Clarissa came in on Theodore’s arm, still smiling, and when she saw Nadia sitting in the chair, the smile did not falter — it only went cold around the edges.
“Theodore,” she said. “Why is the maid in your mother’s library?”
“Sit down,” Eleanor said.
They sat. Nadia told the story again. Clarissa listened with her hands folded, and when Nadia finished, she laughed — a soft, pitying sound.
“Theodore,” she said. “She’s been stealing from us.”
Theodore frowned. “What?”
“The household accounts. I didn’t want to tell you. I thought I could handle it quietly.” Clarissa reached into her bag and produced a folder. “There are discrepancies. Transfers. I had the accountant go through everything. I was trying to protect you from the embarrassment.” She looked at Nadia with something like sorrow. “I gave her every chance. I even trimmed her hair myself when she said she couldn’t afford a salon. And this is how she repays me.”
Theodore looked at the folder, then at Nadia. “Nadia?”
“I never took anything,” Nadia said.
“Then explain the money,” Clarissa said.
Eleanor set down her teacup with a small, precise click.
“There is a simpler way,” she said. She turned to Oswald, who stood by the door. “You have served this house for forty years. Tell me what you have seen.”
Oswald came forward and placed the leather notebook on the table.
“I have kept a record,” he said. “Every incident. Every date. Every word.”
Clarissa looked at the notebook and smiled. “A butler’s diary. How touching.”
“And there was a witness to the haircut,” Eleanor said.
Clarissa’s smile thinned. “What witness?”
The doorbell rang.
Theodore glanced toward the hall. “That will be Kovac. He’s here about the port division.”
May you like
Eleanor’s eyes did not leave Clarissa’s face.
“Show him in,” she said.
