by Helena Maeve
For the second time that morning, I found myself frozen still.
“Good morning.” Mr. Hamilton beamed at me. “You just got in?”
What could I say? I contemplated telling him I’d gone for a run, but my outfit gave away the lie. “Yes” seemed like the safest bet. It was also the truth—which apparently meant that it was supposed to set me free. It didn’t. Who comes up with that stuff?
“Wild night, huh? I remember those.” Mr. Hamilton descended the final step, putting us nearly at eye level. “Ah, youth…”
“I’m sure it wasn’t so long ago,” I hedged. He couldn’t have been much older than Elliot, although I had a hard time picturing him in a fetish club.
The Hamiltons’ framed wedding photographs showed a gawky, reedy groom and a buxom, blue-eyed bride. She was definitely the pretty one in that couple, the kind of woman people say could’ve had anyone she wanted—and she had settled for Patrick Hamilton.
Instinct told me that Mr. Hamilton had been awkward as a young man. He hadn’t changed much since. I supposed that was why I found him more likable than scary. And definitely more likable than his icy wife.
“Ages and ages,” he said, his eyes dancing with mirth. “Don’t worry, Her Magnificence isn’t up yet. If you hurry and get changed, she’ll never know. This can just be our little secret, hmm?”
A shiver of discomfort crept up my spine. I attributed it to the shame I had internalized over one too many brushes with Higher Authority. Mr. Hamilton was just being kind. Given what I’d seen of his marriage on their return from Santa Barbara, it should have come as no surprise that he was aware of his wife’s flaws. I couldn’t blame him for seeking allies wherever he could find them, but I could try to minimize my role in their family drama. Nothing good can come of becoming involved, I told myself, however hard it is to pretend I’m impartial.
“Thanks,” I said and brushed past him on my way up the stairs. I decided to ignore the odd feeling that he was staring after me as I hurried to my room. Mr. Hamilton was one of the good ones. He was a decent guy and a fair boss. I wasn’t proud of him seeing me dressed like this, but better him than his wife.
Better Mr. Awkward than Mrs. Preconceived Notions.
I changed quickly, doffing my getup for a more conservative, baggy dress with a half-moon collar, and went to see to the children. As I peeked down the landing, I noticed that Mrs. Hamilton’s bedroom door was shut tight. Mr. Hamilton’s was not. That was…not unusual—they had the luxury of being forgetful around here—but certainly strange.
Stranger still, as I crept closer on my way to Riley’s room, I noticed that the door to his private bathroom was also open. Instinct or precognition, or some strange mix of the two, told me to mind my own business. It was no use.
I didn’t mean to look, but I couldn’t help myself.
Through a cloud of neon-lit steam, I glimpsed the indistinct, flesh-tinted blur of Mr. Hamilton’s reflection in the fogged-up mirror. He was very much naked.
It’s an invitation, I found myself thinking and balked.
Never, in the six months that I’d known her, had I ever roused Riley with more enthusiasm.
* * * *
As awkward as it was to be found out by one of my employers, it was nothing I couldn’t live with. I spent the rest of the day waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Mrs. Hamilton to tell me she had weaseled out information about my transgressions from her husband and I was to pack my bags post-haste. When it didn’t happen by noontime, I started to relax. I picked Zara up from day care and fixed us both a lunch with all the trimmings—Mrs. Hamilton was very particular about her kids eating vegetables, so I co-opted Zara in helping me cook a healthy chicken wrap with a side dish of sliced cucumbers.
Paolo entertained us both with stories about his childhood. He had an avid audience in Zara and I enjoyed being a spectator for once, rather than the main attraction. I felt a little guilty that my thoughts kept slipping away, back to Elliot and the hotel room I’d vacated in a great rush this morning.
I hoped that Paolo didn’t notice, but it was in vain.
“New man in your life?” he asked as we loaded up the dishwasher together.
I had put Zara down in the living room and I could still see her through the open kitchen door—she was chewing one of her Barbies again and watching TV. I could take a breather, relax for a few minutes. Paolo’s company was usually good for that. Today, not so much. “No,” I lied, “not at all. What makes you say that?”
“You’re daydreaming.”
“I’m just tired.”
Paolo arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t get much sleep last night?” He had a way of making everything sound dirty.
I rolled my eyes with what I hoped was convincing exasperation. “Please, as if I have time for a relationship.” After tomorrow I would be out of free time for the rest of the week.
At best, I could hope that Mrs. Hamilton would give me Saturday night off so I could see Elliot before he left town, but that opened a whole other can of beans. What if seeing him one last time only made things more awkward between us? Maybe it was better to call and tell him I’d had a good time for the past couple of weeks but we weren’t going to work out. I thought about cutting him loose to protect us both—it would be easy enough to do. I could text him. That might minimize the discomfort.
For me. I’d left Elliot wearing the cock cage. He deserved better than a quick message wishing him well and a UPS delivery of the key.
“If you never make time,” Paolo sighed.
“I will. Kids grow up eventually, right?” Riley didn’t need me much, anyway, and her brother was just about to go all teenager on me. That left little Zara, whose attachment was hard to quantify. I liked to think that she’d miss me were I to be replaced, but I couldn’t say for sure.
The ringing of the telephone saved me from digging myself in even deeper. Paolo picked up. He knew all the suppliers, all the delivery boys. The best I could manage was to say that the Hamiltons weren’t home and could I take a message on their behalf. Paolo practically ran this house.
I knew something was wrong when I heard Paolo mention Riley’s name.
“That was the school,” he told me, hanging up. “Riley just ran out of her violin lesson.”
“What? Why?” My heart leaped into my throat. “Where did she go?”
“They don’t know. They think she might have started to make her way home— Miriam!” He couldn’t stop me. I was already grabbing my purse and the car keys to Mr. Hamilton’s BMW, and sliding my feet into the ugly sandals I wore everywhere.
“Watch Zara!” I shouted over my shoulder. The door slammed shut in my wake, a distant concern.
I couldn’t seem to move fast enough. My feet were too slow. The car powered to life at a glacial pace, yet I peeled out of the driveway with a squeal of tires on tarmac. A car honked at me as I emerged into the street, the driver surprised by the sudden turn. I barely even heard it. The sight of Paolo in the rear-view mirror did nothing to slow me down.
The steering wheel was slippery under my sweat-slick palms, but I couldn’t let go long enough to wipe them clean. If Mr. Hamilton hadn’t taken his bike instead of the car, I would’ve been running through the sun-baked streets all the way to the school. I didn’t know what else to do. Riley was my responsibility and if I delegated her safety during school hours, that didn’t mean I could very well leave her to roam the streets unaccompanied. She was only thirteen. She was too sheltered, too innocent.
Something must’ve happened. Riley’s mood swings were legendary, but she wasn’t a bad kid. She wouldn’t skip class, much less run out during her violin lesson. She liked playing that squeaky thing. She was good at it, too.
I tried to peer through the grimy windows of the bus that came rumbling downhill in the other direction. I couldn’t make out anyone wearing the blue and black uniform of Riley’s school. I should have felt relieved, but I didn’t.
Panic gripped me tightly and every m
ile without any sign of her had me more and more worried. What if she had hitched a ride from some psycho with bad intentions? I’d seen enough thrillers to know what happened to girls who trusted in the kindness of strangers.
I was beginning to wonder if I should call her mother when, just on the other side of the street, I saw her. Riley was sitting on the dusty pavement, her back against the school brick fence. I braked abruptly, eliciting a stream of shrill honking from the cars behind me. I didn’t care that I was double-parked.
“Riley!” I called out, leaning across the passenger seat.
Her head darted up, and I saw tear tracks on her cheeks. She looked miserable and distraught, her shoulders hitching up with every sob.
To hell with this. I scrambled out of the BMW as quickly as I could, weaving between parked cars to crouch down in front of her. Passers-by threw us dirty glances for inconveniencing them and a few drivers shouted curses at me for leaving the BMW in the middle of the road.
“What happened? Oh, sweetheart, whatever’s wrong. We can fix it—”
Riley shook her head. “You can’t. I’m so humiliated.” She was a good student. Barring some attitude problems, her teachers liked her well enough.
“Was it a boy?” I pressed. In my experience, teenage girls cried about boys more than anything. “Or—a girl?” Riley didn’t talk to me about such things, but I was sure she had a crush or two going. It was normal, at her age.
“It’s not a boy,” she sniffed. “Why would you think it’s a boy? God…”
“Okay, it’s not. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.” But she was still crying on the sidewalk when she should’ve been practicing her piece for the recital in a month’s time. I reached for her wrists. “Won’t you tell me what’s wrong, sweetie?”
Riley flinched, pulling her hands closer to herself. It took me a moment to realize that she was holding them gingerly, fingers flexed but not quite closed into fists. I felt queasy with suspicion as I reached for her wrists again.
This time, Riley didn’t resist.
“Oh my God…” Her hands were red, deep welts slicing the skin from the thumbs to the heels of her palms. There was blood welling in the cuts and the rosy flesh around them was tender and bruised. “Who did this?”
Riley’s chin trembled. She wouldn’t meet my eyes until I cupped her cheek in a trembling hand. “Riley, look at me. Who did this to you? I just need a name.”
“Mr. Horton. H-he’s substituting for Mr. Beauford…”
I knew all about temperamental Mr. Beauford. I also knew that he had gone on paternity leave once his adoption papers went through. Mr. Horton must’ve taken over as the new music teacher.
“Come with me.”
“No!” Riley’s eyes went wide. “I can’t go back in there. Please, don’t make me go back in there.” She made to reach for me, but stopped as her hands forbade her the attempt. “Please, just— Just take me home?”
I helped her up. It was small penance for something that never should’ve happened. Riley was shaking in my arms as I got her into the car and threw her book-bag onto the back seat. I wanted to respect her wishes, to keep out of it, but then I thought of the call we’d received, of the school pretending this was Riley’s fault.
“Wait here,” I said.
“Miriam!” I heard Riley shouting my name through the open car window, but over the whooshing of my pulse against my eardrums, the sound was faint and easy to ignore.
I had been inside Riley’s middle school often enough. My name was on the list of authorized visitors and the doorman didn’t ask why I was making my way to the music room with such a great sense of purpose.
Even if he heard the door bang open from the other end of the hallway, he still took his sweet time intervening between me and Mr. Horton. And time was all I needed.
* * * *
Half an hour later, I found myself in the headmaster’s office with Mr. Horton and his black eye, waiting on my own punishment. My knuckles were aching something fierce, but I reveled in the pain.
It was earned.
I started as the door opened. This was all bringing back memories of high school that I thought I had put behind me. I kept expecting to see my mother walk in, her lips pinched in dismay as she was confronted with my latest fuck-up.
“—thankful for all your continued support to the school,” Principal Lee was saying as he stepped into view. He was a short, slim man with a very thin mustache. I had no trouble spying Mrs. Hamilton over his sloping shoulders.
Oh, great, I thought bitterly. I’m going to get fired.
Mrs. Hamilton took one glance at me. It was enough for my anger to return full force. I wasn’t going to apologize for what I’d done. If she wanted to tell me I shouldn’t have hit Horton for raising a hand to her daughter, that was her prerogative. Frankly, I thought it was bullshit.
Just keep your mouth shut. You need this job.
I still needed a reference, however soon I left her employment. If I made a scene, I sure as hell wasn’t getting one worthy of finding a job as a cleaning lady.
“It is a sad day,” Principal Lee sighed, “when adults behave more like thoughtless children than our students.” He folded his hands across the desk, lacing gnarled fingers with the look of a man who found himself in this position more often than he might’ve liked.
My sympathy was in short supply. “I agree,” I interjected. “So maybe you shouldn’t employ them.”
“That’s enough from you,” said Mrs. Hamilton icily.
I shut my trap but found myself glaring anyway. She couldn’t prevent that. Nor did her aura of old money do much to stop Horton from having his say.
“She assaulted me!” he cried, waving his icepack like a flare. “I’m pressing charges. She’s not gonna get away with this!” Condensation from the icepack had slicked his gray-blond hair to his skull on one side of the head, giving his face an odd, lopsided quality. I smothered the urge to hit him again, this time just for my getting on my nerves.
Principal Lee cleared his throat. “Mrs. Hamilton has suggested we leave the police out of this…and I am inclined to agree. This is an internal matter, after all. Corporal punishment is strictly forbidden in this establishment, however mouthy a student may be—as is brawling. I think we can all agree that the parties involved both carry some part of the blame—”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Mrs. Hamilton’s scowl had me closing it right back again. I couldn’t believe it. She was actually going to let the son of a bitch get away with hitting her daughter.
“You’re mad if you think I’m going to let Riley within ten feet of him again,” I snarled. “Kind of teacher hits a girl’s hands because she talked in class? We should sue your ass, you son of a—” If not for Mrs. Hamilton being seated between us, I probably would’ve lunged across the seats and wound up putting Horton in hospital.
Principal Lee regarded me with the contempt people usually reserve for savages in the wild. “You won’t have to, Miss Chase. Mr. Horton is about to take a leave of absence. Indefinitely.”
“Like hell I am!” Horton sneered, but no one other than I paid him any mind.
“We’ll put this sorry event behind us,” Mrs. Hamilton agreed as she pulled out her checkbook. I couldn’t see the exact amount she wrote down, but I did count quite a few zeros before she neatly ripped out the paper strip and handed it to Lee. “Thank you for being so understanding.”
“Thank you for your generous donation.”
I wanted to throw up. I was still fuming as Mrs. Hamilton nudged me out of the room with the sharp tip of her manicured fingernails. “You can’t be serious—”
“If you ever pull a stunt like that again, you will be terminated. Do you understand?” She waited for my meek, reluctant nod before pressing forth. “That kind of behavior is unacceptable in my employ. You won’t put me in such a position again, much less abandon my daughter out in the street.”
“You’re out of your fucking minds,” H
orton snorted, “if you think that paying off that old geezer means this is all swept under the carpet! That bitch hit me—”
I watched Mrs. Hamilton round on Riley’s music teacher like a hawk swooping down on its prey. “I think you’re done here, Mr. Horton. Pursue this and I guarantee you will never find work in the state of California again.”
“Who do you think you are, lady?”
“Don’t you know?” Mrs. Hamilton took one step toward him, then another. “I’m the woman whose daughter you mutilated, Mr. Horton. Who ran out of school because you humiliated her in front of her peers… If, however, you need references to understand my character, feel free to ask the police commissioner, the mayor or our dear governor. Mention Bridget Hamilton to them and see how far that takes you.” She stepped toward him until she was close enough to spit in his face.
Horton wisely took a step back.
“Principal Lee will pay you three months’ salary because he is an honest man. But don’t think for a second that means your crime is forgiven. Next time you lift a hand to a student, be assured I will be right there, more than happy to set the record straight. You’ll be lucky to escape prison with the charges I’m prepared to bring against you. Do you understand who I am now?”
Horton scurried away so quickly I thought his heels might catch flame.
“I thought the governor’s wife hates—didn’t like you,” I murmured, the words pouring out before I could think the better of it.
Mrs. Hamilton’s smile was icy. “I’ve also never met the police commissioner. San Francisco is a big city. Still, I only have three people in it I care to protect.” She slid her oversized sunglasses back on as we stepped outside, that brief glimpse of the woman behind the armor quickly concealed.
“You’re not going to sue him? Or the school?” I asked, trying to keep pace.
