by Grey, R. S.
She looks almost frigid sitting there in a simple, perfectly starched button-down tunic with the cuffs rolled to her elbows. It’s layered over navy pants and paired with cream flats. Her collar stands up around a heavy beaded necklace, and her wrists are covered in thin bracelets. Her emerald wedding band glitters in the light.
With her perfect posture and watchful gaze, she looks like she’s holding court. Hence why I call her the queen even though I know her name is Cornelia. She introduced herself to me a few weeks ago, and I fumbled in shaking her hand because she held it out to me as if expecting me to kiss it.
“Ah, there’s the child now,” she says when she sees me walk in.
At twenty-three, I wouldn’t say I’m a child, but I don’t dare correct her. She intimidates me into near silence, something not so easily done anymore.
“Come and play for us, won’t you? Annette said you could take a few minutes off, and I’ve traveled a long way to visit my friend,” she says, patting Mrs. Archer’s hand. “Though I’ll admit, I had another selfish motive for visiting Holly Home today, and it was so I could hear you play.”
I blush and nod. “Of course. Yes, I can play for a few minutes.”
There’s no sheet music for me to reference. When I first started working here and inquired about the piano, Mrs. Buchanan told me no one ever bothered to play it. She wanted to get rid of it to make room for more seating, but it was too heavy and too expensive to deal with, so here it sits, slightly out of tune, collecting dust, and completely untouched except by my hands. Mrs. Archer was the person who first encouraged me to play it. We were out in the hall on a short walk, and she was leaning on my arm, asking me about myself. I mentioned that I could play piano—or at least used to be able to—and she demanded we turn and head toward the rec room. That day, I sat down on the wobbly bench with its one leg slightly shorter than the rest so that I’m perpetually rocking back and forth, and I played for the first time in years.
No sheet music means I’m forced to play everything by memory. Even with the practice I’ve had over the last few months, there are only a few songs to draw from, the old melodies that live in my bones.
I choose a piece my dad used to play for me when I was young, something I would never play for near strangers unless I truly believed they would feel it like I do.
Rêverie.
The piece resonates so quickly with a familiar audience that Cornelia sighs.
“Ah, Debussy. What wonderful taste you have.”
I smile as I continue to play, concentrating on the succeeding notes so intently that Mrs. Buchanan has to walk over to the piano and wave her hand in front of my face before I realize she’s been trying to get my attention for the last few moments.
I immediately stop playing.
“I’ve been standing at the door calling your name,” she chides.
“She was playing for us,” Cornelia says, coming to my defense.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Buchanan’s annoyance isn’t lessened by Cornelia’s explanation. She’s made it clear on multiple occasions that the nursing home isn’t paying me to sit on my butt, even if I am playing at the request of one of the residents.
I open my mouth to defend myself. I’m on break; I wasn’t slacking off. I could go sit in the locker room like everyone else does, but I see there’s no point in speaking up. She’s not here to get onto me for playing the piano.
She nods her head toward the door.
“We need to have another chat.”
I’ve been interrogated by police officers before, and my second meeting with Mrs. Buchanan feels a lot like that.
Her words read right out of a bad cop film. Is there anything new I’d like to tell her? Have I told her the whole truth? She wants to help me. She’s on my side.
When I hold my ground and insist on my innocence, she sighs and presents new “evidence”.
Apparently, since last night, two eye witnesses have come forward and claimed to have seen Mrs. Dyer’s ring in my possession.
“I didn’t steal her ring,” I say for what feels like the hundredth time.
And if I did, why would I be so stupid as to keep it in plain sight after the fact?
“So you’re accusing these two individuals of lying?” She emphasizes that crime as if it’s worse than the theft itself.
I shrug. I don’t know what their motive is for implicating me. Maybe they think they saw me with the ring. Maybe they’re covering up for someone else. I should tell her point-blank that they’re lying, but I don’t want to get on anyone’s bad side. I know better.
In response to my silence, she rearranges some papers on her desk then straightens her glasses on the bridge of her thin nose. When she glances back to me, her eyes are narrowed.
“I didn’t want to have to do this, Maren. I know how important this job is to you, but I went out on a limb hiring you…”
I tune out the rest of her spiel, having heard it plenty of times before. Mrs. Buchanan enjoys rearranging the narrative to cast herself as the hero and me as the serf, but I know for a fact Holly Home gets a tax credit from the state for employing me.
Her next words do catch my attention though. In fact, they pierce straight through me.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to contact your group home. They’ll be calling me in a few days anyway for your monthly check-in,” she says, dropping the threat like a grenade and hoping it’ll do the trick.
I come close to giving her what she wants: an emotional response. My lower lip trembles and my stomach clenches tight. I didn’t think I had any hope left in me for people like her, but I was wrong. After all this time, I’m still somehow wounded.
She knows she’s backed me into a corner. My group home is for young adults with criminal records who’ve aged out of the foster care system and need a safe place to go. We have to adhere to certain rules in exchange for the low rent. One of those rules is not breaking any laws.
“But if you confess…” She lets the suggestion hang for a moment before she continues. “Well, I’d be willing to come to some kind of arrangement with you.”
So she’s offering me a plea bargain: confess to a crime I didn’t commit in exchange for a lenient sentence. It’s bullshit, and instead of saying that to her face, I jerk to my feet and walk right out of her office.
I don’t have a moment to spare either. Tears are personal. My pain is my own, and I’m grateful that I make it out into the hall before I start to cry. I give in to one or two moments of soul-crushing anger, and then I inhale deeply, wipe my cheeks, and throw back my shoulders, unwillingly to succumb to the self-pity knocking at my door. I’ll figure out who’s trying to pin this on me. I’ll get an alibi. I’ll ask Mrs. Archer to vouch for my good character. I’ll hunt down Mrs. Dyer’s ring and get it back to her myself! Anything but admit to a crime I didn’t commit. I won’t do it—consequences be damned.
“Oh good, I was hoping to find you before I left.”
I jump when a voice speaks from down the hall, and I realize to my shame that Mrs. Archer’s visitor, Cornelia, has just witnessed my embarrassing breakdown.
Oh god. I wipe aggressively at my face as if trying to force the tears back to where they came from.
If she notices my state, she doesn’t let on. She strolls toward me on quiet feet with a brown leather bag swishing back and forth on her forearm. I recognize the bag. I don’t know the name, but I’ve seen it on the covers of magazines and know it’s worth more money than I’ll ever have in this life or the next.
I’m still staring at her bag, so it takes me a second to realize she’s holding something out for me to take.
“I wanted to give you this before I left.”
I accept the card, holding it in my hand like it’s a delicate photograph I don’t want to smudge with my dirty fingerprints. It’s thick and yet still, somehow, delicate. Gold rimmed and simple. Cornelia Cromwell is printed across the top. Below that, a phone number.
“Wh-what is this?”
&n
bsp; She laughs. “It’s a calling card, dear.”
I stare up at her with my brows furrowed in disbelief. “And why are you giving it to me?”
She smiles then, the first I’ve seen from her, and I immediately feel bad for thinking she looked frigid earlier. She’s not. I see that now.
“Because I have a proposition for you.”
3
Maren
I turn that card over and over in my hand like it’s one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets. I study it on the bus after my shift while squashed against the window because my seatmate has enough meat on his bones to warrant having an entire row to himself. I study it as I wait in line to use the bathroom back at the group home and after, while I heat up a can of soup in the communal kitchen. My wet hair accidentally leaves a drop of water on the edge of Cornelia’s name and I have to hurry to grab a paper towel and wipe it off.
I don’t work up the courage to call her until I suffer through another shift at Holly Home. The stares in the locker room and the whispered defamations in the break room make it clear that everyone on staff, including Mrs. Buchanan, really thinks I took that ring. They’re all so sure of my guilt that I have one brain-bending moment in which I actually ask myself, Did I steal it? Do they know something I don’t?
I barely consider it before sanity sets in. During my break, I head to Mrs. Archer’s room, hoping to borrow her phone. She’s not there when I arrive; the schedule printed on her door says she’s currently in a physical therapy session. Still, I have to go in. This is the last break I have on my shift and there’s not another phone I can use. I wish I had one of my own, but I had to cut off service a few months back so I could use the money to purchase my work uniform and shoes.
I go into rooms when the residents aren’t in them all the time to help clean and replace bed linens, but this feels different. I hesitate for a moment at her door, telling myself I don’t have another option. Whose phone am I going to borrow if I don’t use Mrs. Archer’s? Mrs. Buchanan’s? Ha. I’d ask Leroy—I think he still believes I’m innocent—but he’s not here today.
I turn the handle and hurry inside, my heart racing like I’m doing something wrong. Maybe I am, but there’s no going back now.
I pull Cornelia’s card out of my pocket and hurry to the phone on the bedside table. I dial the number and wait while it rings. Mrs. Archer has the volume turned all the way up so when the call connects and someone speaks, I wince and jerk the phone away from my ear, no doubt having gone completely deaf.
“Cromwell residence. Collins speaking.”
When he repeats the introduction a second time, I scramble to reply.
“Oh, uh…is Mrs. Cornelia there? Er, Mrs. Cromwell, that is.”
He clears his throat like I’ve already annoyed him and then says in a polished tone, “And who might I tell her is calling?”
“Right. Um, you can tell her this is Maren Mitchell. From the nursing home.”
“Maren Mitchell from the nursing home,” he repeats back to me, as if in disbelief, and I turn red from my hair to my toes. “Please give me a moment. I’ll see if Mrs. Cromwell is available to take your call.”
I’m left on hold, staring at the door, willing it to stay shut. If Mrs. Archer’s physical therapy session finishes early or if someone from housekeeping needs to access her room, they’ll find me in here talking on the phone. The tableau would be difficult to explain away. I was just cleaning her receiver!
“Maren Mitchell.”
Cornelia’s voice is a welcome relief a few moments later.
“Hi!” I say the word and then realize I don’t have a single thing to follow it up with. How are you? might be an appropriate question, but I don’t have all day, so instead of sprinkling in niceties, I cut right to the chase. “I’m calling you because I’m curious to hear about your proposition.”
“Direct—good, I like that. Yes, ‘proposition’…is that what I said yesterday? Sounds very ominous, that word.”
I wrap the phone cord around my finger, shifting my weight between my feet, anxious to get to the end of this call, to the part where she tells me she needs me to take extra care of Mrs. Archer or something. Maybe she’d even be willing to pay me a little more on the side.
“I’d like to hire you, Maren, and bring you out to Rosethorn.”
Words.
They mean nothing because I’m pretty sure I’ve heard them wrong.
“I have a job,” is the first lame thing I say. Followed swiftly by, “What’s Rosethorn?”
I can hear her amusement in her reply. “It’s where I live.”
“And what would I do there?”
She chuckles. “It’s difficult to explain over the phone. I think it might be better if you come to me and we can discuss everything over tea. Do you take tea?”
I’ve never had tea a day in my life. My nose scrunches and I almost give in to the impulse to lie. Tea? Love it! All kinds. Black…and…green?
“Um, I’m not sure,” I say instead, opting for the sad truth.
She tuts. “A travesty. I’ll send a car for you tomorrow. Around, say, noon? How’s that? I’ve got to run. I’m having lunch at the club, but I’ll put Collins back on and you can direct him as to where he should send my driver.”
And then before I can confirm whether or not I’m free at that time and willing to take her up on her odd offer, she’s gone, replaced by the prim and proper Collins, who asks for my address.
I give it to him because he has an air of authority that makes it clear he doesn’t like to be questioned. Then he tells me the driver will be there promptly at noon, delivers a curt “Good day,” and hangs up.
I stare down at the phone, not quite sure I understand what just happened.
A job? At Rosethorn?
* * *
I’ve come to expect unfortunate events to derail my life like it’s a universal law as irrefutable as gravity. I view any turn of luck through a lens of skepticism. There’s always a catch. Always. A coworker offers me a ride home from work? It’s because he’s hoping I’ll be an easy score. A girl sits next to me in class, offering friendship? It’s because she wants to cheat off my test. I’ve lived and I’ve learned. Some would call it being jaded. I just call it being smart.
Cornelia’s offer is too good to be true; I know that for a fact. Why would she want to hire me? What skills could I possibly possess that she would be seeking? Is she looking for someone who knows how to perfectly heat a Hot Pocket? Watch ten episodes of Friends in one sitting? Read for an entire day? Not likely.
I have a high school diploma and one semester’s worth of community college credit hours. My resume consists of a string of bad jobs with titles like “deli technician” and “retail consultant”. In reality, I made soggy paninis and folded t-shirts that teenagers left tossed around the Old Navy dressing rooms.
She can’t want me for my exceptional skillset, and she can’t want me for my glowing personality either because I’m not all that personable. At least that’s what people have told me in the past.
“Lighten up, Maren!”
“We’re at a party—have fun!”
My friend Ariana used to constantly call me a bore, and the nickname still stings.
The few encounters I’ve had with Cornelia don’t help me pinpoint her motive either. I’ve only seen her at Holly Home a few times. We’ve never had a long conversation or a meaningful moment. I know she enjoys when I play the piano, but I’ve only done that on occasion, and probably not all that well. In my defense, that beast of an instrument they keep there would make Beethoven sound like an amateur.
So as I stand out on the curb in front of the group home the following day, I waver between feeling hopeful that this might be the first day of a new and exciting path in my life and berating myself for thinking it’ll be anything different than what I’ve experienced in the decade since my parents’ car accident.
Don’t get your hopes up, I tell myself as a black Range Rover turns the corner
and slows to a stop in front of me.
The driver, an older gentleman, puts the SUV in park and opens his door so he can round the hood and walk toward me.
“Maren Mitchell?” he asks, all business.
I nod, taking in his black suit and tie and white gloves. Trimmed salt and pepper hair peeks out from beneath his driver’s cap. He’s dressed fancier than I ever have in my whole life, and all he’s doing is sitting behind the wheel of a car. I’m a little stunned.
He misreads my reaction.
“Is something wrong?”
I shake my head quickly. “No.”
He scans the curb around my feet, frowning when he finds it empty. “Do you have anything you’d like me to load into the trunk?”
I glance down at my red pleather crossbody purse, a bag I scored at a resale shop and that has survived quite a bit of wear and tear. Inside, I have my wallet, an apple, and a book—the essentials.
“Nope, I’m all set.”
He issues a curt nod and then reaches back to open the passenger door for me. I slide onto the seat, immediately aware of the rich leather smell as he shuts the door behind me.
The cupholders hold an unopened bottle of water and a little bag filled with an array of snacks: English biscuits I don’t recognize, a granola bar that looks like it would taste like bark, and some toffee. I don’t touch any of it. I don’t touch anything, in fact, outside of buckling my seatbelt. When that’s done, I place my hands on my thighs and leave them there.
When the driver retakes his seat, he straightens his rearview mirror then glances back at me.
“My name is Frank. I’m one of the drivers employed by the Cromwell family. If you need anything during the drive, I’d be happy to assist you.”
