“And this is Lindsey Farrell. She lives over on Queen Street in the yellow Victorian.”
She shook my hand and looked me in the eye. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Trenholm. My mom says you probably won’t remember her, but she went to USC with you. You were in the same art history class, I think.”
“What was her maiden name?”
“Veronica Hall. You did a project together on early American painters your senior year.”
I thought for a moment, only having a vague memory of the name and that project. “I don’t think I remember her, but I still have my yearbooks, so I’ll look her up. But tell her I said hello.”
“I will.” She smiled and I saw how striking she was. She had an almost elfin face surrounded by a cloud of black hair, and dark brown eyes that appeared black. But it was her smile that transformed her face from merely pretty to beautiful. It did nothing to disguise the aura of sadness that seemed to permeate the air around her. I looked away, not wanting to see more than what I was prepared to.
“Hi, Meghan!” Nola shouted. Meghan looked up and waved back. Nola was fascinated with the older girl’s passion for her chosen field of study, and hadn’t even yawned during a lengthy explanation of the history of cisterns—both their construction and usage. I’d seen her sit at the edge of the hole in perfect silence while watching Meghan work, then taking an inordinate amount of time studying each small artifact that was placed on the sheet. I didn’t understand the fascination, seeing it as the equivalent of watching grass grow, but as long as Nola’s interest didn’t slow down the excavation, I left them alone.
“Mrs. Houlihan baked brownies,” I said. “Flourless for you, and then regular ones with taste for the rest of us. They’re on the stove if you and your friends want a snack.”
“Maybe I should try a flourless one,” Alston said as she swayed with a content JJ, his chubby fingers wrapped around strands of her long blond hair.
“Unless you’re trying to punish yourself, I wouldn’t,” I suggested.
She giggled, then carefully put JJ back in his swing. He began snorting his disappointment until Nola gave him a push on the swing and he was back to his burbling self.
“We have an algebra test tomorrow, so we’ll bring our snack up to my room to help us study. Try not to disturb us, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “The new nanny will be here soon. Will you have a few minutes to say hi?”
“Sure. Just text me and I’ll come down.”
She and the girls said good-bye and left before I could ask if I could just knock on the bedroom door. As Lindsey turned to follow the other two girls into the house, I noticed something long and rectangular, like a narrow box, sticking out of her backpack. It looked like a board game, but the bottom was facing me so I couldn’t see what it was. Nola wasn’t into board games, as I was sure she and most of her generation were more into Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. I thought it was nice she and her friends were going a little retro.
JJ began to squeal and kick his feet while his hands opened and closed again in what Jack referred to as his crab imitation. I turned around to see Jayne coming from the side garden.
“Hi,” she said. “I took a guess that you’d be back here with the children taking advantage of this gorgeous weather.”
“Good guess,” I said.
She approached the children with a broad smile as if she really was happy to see them. But when her gaze settled on the hole behind us, she faltered. “What’s all that?”
“Nothing you need to worry about—just keep the dogs and children away. It’s an old cistern that was buried for a long time, and with all the rain we’ve had the earth sort of caved in. Sophie is sending some of her students to excavate it to see if there’s anything of historical significance in it before I tell my guy to bury it again.”
“Oh,” she said, her forehead creased. “What are they expecting to find?” She definitely sounded worried, and I wondered if she’d read up on me and the house and its propensity to hide buried bodies.
“Just junk. Our construction guy says the ground is stable around the perimeter of the cistern, but if being out here makes you uncomfortable, we can go inside. I want to give you the tour and show you your room and the nursery and the children’s spreadsheets. I purchased a small MacBook for you so that it’s easy for us to keep track of their care. We can just send updated spreadsheets back and forth to track their outfits, food consumed, vocabulary word of the day, diapers changed and their contents—that sort of thing. I’ve also set up a Google calendar for their social lives—which includes birthday parties, trips to the beach, and museum visits.”