“Tonight? It’s Sunday.”
Isabel frowned at her wine. Lily could see that her bottom lip was chapped raw, that she’d been chewing at herself. It was jarring to see such an unsightly flaw on Isabel’s face, to see that one part of her hadn’t been buffed and moisturized somewhere behind a closed door before she presented herself to even so inconsequential a part of the outside world as her children’s nanny. Lily bit her own lip, again tasting that flash of Jackson, the skin behind his ears, the soft skin just above his hip bones.
“I’ll be here in the morning,” Isabel said.
“I don’t understand. You’re going to drive in and drive back tonight?”
“I’ve called for a car. I’m going to get Bob. I think . . . don’t you think? That it’s time for him to start sleeping here?”
Lily kept silent. Isabel reached across the span of the table and put her fingers to the crook in Lily’s elbow.
“Oh, Lily, come on. I know you feel you can’t speak your mind right now, with all that’s going on, but if I can’t talk to you, then I can’t talk to anyone.”
This was frankly bullshit, Lily knew, but it didn’t matter. It hit her right where it was meant to.
“Okay,” Lily said. “The kids will be happy to see him. But I’m sure, if he’s stayed this long, there’s work—”
“Well, there’s work here,” Isabel said, something animal coming into her voice. She tightened her grip on Lily’s arm. “There’s work to be done here. They deserve an answer.”
Lily wanted to ask if Isabel had meant to say, or had wanted to say, “We deserve,” but she didn’t think they’d wandered far enough from their normal lives yet.
“Why now?” she asked, and Isabel smiled. “I can imagine you must be concerned, but things are okay here. Won’t he come back in his, you know, on his own schedule?”
“Madison came up to find me on Monday,” Isabel said, pausing to let the image form in Lily’s head. The kids knew they weren’t allowed into the master bedroom uninvited. “As you can imagine, I was caught off guard. And she wouldn’t leave, she had all these questions for me. She wanted answers. And now I’ve gotten a few troubling reports from the security guys. I’m sure you’ve seen the cars. Some kid was driving her around Cos Cob two days ago. And my daughter is, as we both know—how to say this—self-directed.”
“And you’re worried she’ll go in by herself,” Lily said. “To see him.”
“Yes.”
“And you aren’t sure what she’ll find.”
They both put down their wineglasses and Lily knew that if Isabel stared at her, if there was an unadorned silence left to absorb Lily’s rudeness, then this would be the turning point. That would mean things were moving slowly back into place, into the old rhythm.
But Isabel just smiled again, and nodded.
Lily’s stomach contracted. She had always assumed, about Bob, but she had never seen a single sign. She’d been watching, more carefully than they could ever know. But she’d never seen him check the wrong phone at a strange time, or stutter when he had to explain a mysterious, midday errand. He was never one of the ones leering at the rare unattended single woman at one of the parties. Never, ever.
“I’ve called for a car. I won’t be driving. I just need you to stay in the house. You can sleep in Lena’s room downstairs, tonight. Just be somewhere you’ll hear them if they need you.”
Lena’s room, a spare bedroom—not a guest bedroom but the spare, which was different—was wedged unceremoniously down a small corridor that led off from the den. It had never, to Lily’s knowledge, been used by Lena. She couldn’t think what sort of emergency would ever require that the head housekeeper, responsible only for the inanimate residents of the house, would have to spend the night.
Isabel’s afraid, she thought. Not because Madison asked her some pushy questions the other night. She’s never been afraid of Bob before. So, then, what?
“Of course,” she told Isabel. “Of course I will.”
BUT THREE HOURS LATER, as midnight approached, Lily was sitting on the top step of the main staircase. If necessary, she could be holding the boys in her arms in a matter of moments, calling for Madison to come out to meet them. But this was ridiculous logic. This was a contingency plan appropriate for a home invasion, something she felt certain was virtually impossible to pull off for this particular home.
Isabel had mentioned the black cars, she realized now. That had been a missed opportunity; her boss had been sitting across from her, fingering the stem of her wineglass, casually mentioning “security guys,” and Lily hadn’t asked the right questions. Hadn’t even gathered any information. Security guys—did that mean they were watching her?
She felt her back stiffen, her chin punching the air in front of her face. Let them watch her. Let them see the millions of tiny things she did for these kids, every day, without thinking. Putting the fear of God into Mina and her crew the other day, that was the least of it.
The other possibility was that no one cared just yet about Bob’s children, that they wanted a picture of the man himself brought low. Eyes bloodshot, cheeks carpeted with stubble, mouth slack with fear and exhaustion. Which meant that, starting tomorrow, her role as bodyguard might still come into effect.
Even as she considered this, though, she knew that Isabel wouldn’t let this happen. They’d go hide out on Shelter Island, where the local law enforcement would act like Isabel’s own private National Guard if she so much as asked them to do it, before she’d let that happen.
But at what point did hunkering down exclude anyone beyond the children and Isabel? Where was the line between, say, hiring security guards to protect your kids, and hiring a professional security firm to assess the work being done by your employees?
She thought of Madison, that first morning, of how quick she’d been to trace the blade across Lily’s neck, remind her of her own impermanence.