The Woman in Our House

by Andrew Hart

  “She already does . . .”

  “She wants to be more than just an employee,” said Anna.

  Josh frowned at that.

  “But that’s what she is, Anna. You know that, right? We pay her, and she works for us.”

  Anna blushed, then met his eyes and smiled.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  She turned and gave him a hard look.

  “Yeah,” she echoed.

  The front door opened, and Oaklynn came in, loaded down under a stack of boxes, the contents of which included a sealed six-pack of green olives.

  “You got a couple of gallons of gin to go with these?” Josh quipped.

  Anna’s glance held no shared mirth now.

  “Good with cheese,” said Oaklynn, oblivious.

  “Which is arriving on a flatbed truck?” said Josh.

  “Gosh, you’re such a tease!” said Oaklynn, unoffended. “Isn’t he a tease?”

  “He is,” said Anna, her gaze on him level and fixed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Edward Flanders parked outside Children’s Mercy hospital in Kansas City and shaped his beard in the rearview mirror. It needed trimming. Maybe tonight. It would make a change from the motel’s cable TV offerings.

  He showed his badge in the entry foyer and got a nod to the pediatrics wing from the officious-looking woman at the front desk. He took the elevator to the third floor. The staff recognized the woman in his photograph right away.

  “Charlene!” said a young man with immaculately close-cropped hair and an earring with a shiny blue stone. “Aw, I miss her.”

  “Me, too!” said his colleague, a broad-shouldered black woman who might have been sitting in that chair all her adult life. “Where is she now?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m trying to determine, ma’am,” said Flanders.

  “She’s missing?” said the guy, like a startled parakeet.

  “She left Mercy in March?” said Flanders.

  “That’s right,” said the woman. “Beginning of the month.”

  “And did she say where she was headed?”

  “West,” said the guy, like he was answering a question on a TV game show and was about to win a prize. “She said she’d never been out west and wanted to see what it was like.”

  “Anything more specific?” said Flanders, taking out his notebook and pen.

  The male nurse made a sour face and shook his head.

  “Did she say why she was leaving?” Flanders tried. “Trouble at work or something?”

  They both fought to contradict that.

  “Nothing like that. She was our best orderly. Everyone loved her.”

  “Then why did she leave?”

  “She seemed restless, you know?” said the black woman. Angela, according to her name tag. “Never quite settled. Always looking over her shoulder. I saw her with some of the battered women, you know, the abuse victims, and I thought there was kind of a connection there. You know? Like she understood. I asked her about it, and she sort of shrugged it off, said it was all in the past, but if you ask me, it wasn’t that far in the past, and she wasn’t over it. When she stopped coming in, I figured it was something like that. That she’d decided to move on . . . or maybe go back to the guy, you know? Sometimes they do that.”

  “Or maybe she was trying to make it harder for him to find her?” said her colleague, giving her a significant look.

  “You know,” Angela said, “you might be right at that. Maybe so. She said something once about how you never really know men, like she had learned the hard way. Somebody in her past who had turned out to be, you know, bad. Something like that.”

  “Oh my God!” said the male nurse, slapping his hands to his forehead in a theatrical How dumb am I? way. “One time we saw some news coverage of some rally, and she said she knew a guy who turned out to be a Nazi! You know, a white-supremacist type! Klansman or something. For real. Said she didn’t even suspect it till she was living with him. Had books and hidden tattoos and all kinds of scary stuff. Can you believe that?”

  “No!” said Angela.

  “Swear to God.”

  “Well,” she replied, folding her arms defiantly, “if this was something to do with that guy, I hope she got well away.”

  They exchanged significant looks.

  “And other than west,” said Flanders, “you’ve no idea where she might have gone?”

  “You should talk to HR,” said the guy, boiling over with excitement again. “She must have filed termination paperwork. They may have a forwarding address for her or a new place of employment.”

  “I’ll look in on my way out,” said Flanders. “Thanks. Though she may not have known where she was heading yet.” He considered the notes he had made on his clipboard and chewed his pen thoughtfully.

  “You know,” said Angela, “I have a cousin out in Utah. I told Charlene once. Showed her some pictures. I didn’t think much of it, but a week or so later, she started asking me about it.”

  “About your cousin?” asked the other nurse, who was now at least as invested in the case as Flanders.

  “About Utah. What it was like out there. Weather. Cost of living. Stuff like that.”

  “Really?” said the male nurse, making a face. “Utah?”

  “Anywhere in particular?” said Flanders.

  “My cousin’s in Salt Lake City. I think we talked about that, but I don’t really remember.”

  “Any particular job she expressed interest in?”

  The black woman shook her head and shrugged.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s no problem,” said Flanders. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  “Whatever it is she’s doing, I bet it involves kids,” said Angela. “She loved kids. Loved being around them. I’ll bet that’s what she’s doing.”

  The male nurse nodded enthusiastically, but there was something else in his face, a hesitance that Flanders was used to seeing when people were on the verge of confiding something they weren’t entirely happy about. He eyed the young man, leaning in just a fraction so that his bulk seemed to fill the space between them.

  “Anything else you think might be helpful?” he asked genially.

  The male nurse frowned and gave a half glance at his colleague, as if wishing he didn’t have to say what was on his mind in front of her.

  “Well, it probably doesn’t matter,” he said. “And I don’t have any good reason for thinking it . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, that thing about the Nazi boyfriend . . .”

  The nurse’s voice faltered, but Flanders said nothing, waiting him out.

  “I don’t really know or anything,” said the nurse, “not really, but I kind of thought she had made it up.”

  The other nurse looked like a parody of shock, her mouth falling into a wide O and staying there.

  “How do you mean?” asked Flanders.

  “Well, you know Charlene,” said the other man, addressing his colleague as much as Flanders, his tone confiding and a little defensive. “She liked drama. And sometimes she kind of . . . what’s the word? Embroidered stories, you know? Like her life wasn’t that interesting, and she wanted to seem more fun, more exciting, you know?”

  “Sure,” said Flanders, nodding.

  “So yeah,” said the male nurse, more sure of himself now. “When she told me about the Nazi boyfriend, I was like, huh? Charlene? I mean, she didn’t seem the type.”

  “What’s the type?” asked his colleague, a fraction cooler than she had been.

  The male nurse flushed.

  “The type to have a boyfriend,” he clarified.

  “But you don’t really know either way,” said the other nurse.

  “No,” he said, backpedaling but still trying to save face. “It was just a feeling.”

  “What is this about, anyway?” said the other nurse, returning her gaze to Flanders. Her colleague’s remark had clearl
y annoyed her.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I really can’t say. We have some questions about some incidents in her past, that’s all.”

  “Some incidents?” said the woman.

  “I appreciate your help,” said Flanders. “Both of you.”

  Flanders left the hospital and went to a McDonald’s drive-through, where he got a Double Quarter Pounder with cheese, large fries, and a Coke that was too big for the cupholder. He sat in the parking lot, munching away, staring at nothing.

  He scowled at the map propped on the steering wheel. She had taken a bus from Saint Louis to Kansas City and set up shop here for a time, then moved on without warning or a clear reason. She’d not been close to anyone, hadn’t shared her plans or dreams with any friends, but then, he wouldn’t expect her to. Nadine—Charlene, as she had been here—was a perpetual outsider. She could fool people for a time, but it always showed through in the end. She could be anywhere now, living under a new name in a big, open state . . .

  But then, maybe she hadn’t stayed in Missouri at all. If she’d taken a Greyhound this far, maybe she’d kept going west, staying on Interstate 70 all the way through Kansas and into Colorado and Utah. The black nurse’s story wasn’t really a lead at all, but it was better than nothing.

  Utah.

  The name of the place in connection to Nadine rang a distant bell. And what had that nurse said?

  “She loved kids. Loved being around them. I’ll bet that’s what she’s doing.”

  He thought so, too. Pulling out his phone, he tried a few random searches involving the name of the state and anything to do with children: Utah pediatrics. Utah child welfare. Utah childhood disease. Utah child care.

  And there it was. A few more refinements to the search, a Newsweek article, and half a dozen agency websites later, he felt a swelling sense of optimism. Flanders finished his burger as he joined the dots and weighed the strength of the lead. Utah, it seemed, was the center of a billion-dollar nanny industry. Charlene/Nadine could get herself hired, switch her identity using a few simple tricks with which she had proved herself familiar, and go anywhere in the country. A new life, a new start . . .

  “Oh, Nadine, you clever little psychopath,” Edward Flanders said to the picture as he turned the engine over. “You do keep me on my toes.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  ANNA

  I had reread the sample from Ben Lodging’s Hell Is Empty, making sure it was as strong as I had thought it was before I requested the whole manuscript, or as much as his idiosyncratic writing style permitted. Sometimes a little time away from a manuscript reveals the stylistic flaws and plot holes that your enthusiasm masked on the initial read, but in this case, my first impression still felt right. The story and its central character were both taut and strange, recognizably human and specific but also oddly, unsettlingly remote, as if you were watching a scientist conducting an intriguing experiment that may or may not result in someone’s death. It was impossible to say how it would end, but I felt that special pull of the well-crafted mystery that makes the reader desperate to know what happens.

  It was, I decided with a thrill of excitement, more than enough.

  Dear Mr. Lodging, I typed. I have read the synopsis and sample of your novel, Hell Is Empty, with interest and would like to see the rest of the manuscript, or at least (given your intrigueingly unorthodox writing process) as much of it as you can send at this time. Please email it to me as an attachment, and I will respond as soon as possible—no more than two weeks. During this time, I would like you to consider the submission exclusive to me. If I haven’t responded in that time, you should feel free to send the book out more widely.

  Sincerely yours, et cetera.

  I reread it, fixed a typo—I had misspelled intriguingly—and hit “Send.” The sense of satisfaction in doing so was immense, and not for the first time, I reminded myself that I wouldn’t have been able to work like this without Oaklynn.

  Around here, it’s common to hear people say how blessed they are. Must be a southern thing, I guess. I generally smile and say nothing, though Josh and I will often exchange the closest thing to an eye roll that we dare under the circumstances. I’ve never understood the concept of a God who looks down and chooses to bless some but not others, and though I know it’s unfair of me to judge what may be little more than a figure of speech, the phrase always seems to me just a little sanctimonious. So you can imagine just how amazed I was to hear myself say it later that day when, pleased with my morning’s work, I rewarded myself with a quick visit to Mary Beth’s and a chat over a glass of Chablis. Mary Beth stared at me, her sharp face not bothering to conceal her disbelief, but I couldn’t take it back. I didn’t even want to.

  Because that was how those first September weeks felt. Through no great achievement of my own, I had stumbled into a life with Oaklynn, and it felt like a blessing. She was all we could possibly have hoped for and more: unflappable, nurturing, generous, and always, always ready and willing. Her capacity to supply whatever I needed whenever I needed it bordered on the uncanny. I could work, cook, clean, and look after the girls as and when I wanted, always knowing that she was there to step in with at least as much care and attention as I could muster at any moment. Grace and Veronica adored her, but rather than this making me feel insecure, guilty, or jealous, I felt a curious sense of magnanimity, as if I had learned from Oaklynn to be kinder and more loving. Nor was my contentedness confined to our professional relationship. For all our differences in background and outlook, I genuinely liked her and found myself spending more and more time in her company. We discovered odd coincidences in our lives and tastes that brought us closer still, until we had an almost sisterly bond, something that—as only children—neither of us had experienced before. We liked the same music, the same kids’ shows, the same thin-sliced turkey pastrami. Contrary to my—slightly patronizing—assumptions about her background, she turned out to be bright with surprisingly educated tastes, which she had, apparently, discovered largely on her own. Having grown up in a not-very-bookish household, I could relate, though it made our discovery that we shared a passion for Dickens all the more extraordinary. Late in the month, we stumbled into several long late-evening conversations about our shared frustration and outrage at the odious Mr. Skimpole in Bleak House. It should have seemed bizarre but felt oddly natural, as if such a curious alignment in personality came with the territory. As I said, I felt blessed.

  Josh was, in his usual way, quietly amazed. I think a part of him had feared the whole situation would unravel after a few weeks, but the faultless way in which Oaklynn had slotted into our lives, moved into their very center, was undeniable. Sometimes when we were alone, he would shake his head in wonder at the way she had anticipated our needs—ensuring that the girls were properly looked after so that we could have an unrequested date night on our anniversary, say, or using her free time to shop for the picture book Veronica had been eyeing at the little independent store on Park Road.

  “Amazing,” he muttered almost to himself. He was dressing in the mirror, tying the lavender-and-silver tie I had bought him for last Christmas. He was wearing his blue suit with the tan shoes he’d bought at JoS. A. Bank early in the summer and looked, as he always did when heading out to the office, like something out of GQ, sharp but somehow both edgy and casual. “All of it,” he added absently. “Amazing. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”

  “Right?” I said. “I can’t believe our luck.”

  “She gave me a tip for your Christmas present today,” he said musingly, tightening the Windsor knot and sliding it into place. “A good one. She processes everything you say, everything you seem to notice. That should be weird, but it’s not because it’s just so her, you know? She just wants us to be happy.”

  “I know,” I said. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but apart from all the work stuff her being here lets me do, I think she is actually making me a better person!”

  “Impossible,” he
replied, grinning.

  “I mean it.”

  “She’s making you happier. Maybe that’s the same thing.”

  “Maybe it is,” I said. “But I do feel a bit different. I mean, take Mary Beth, for instance. I told her how good things were with Oaklynn, with work, and she seems sort of baffled and a bit resentful, like she thinks I’ve pushed her away or something. Which I really haven’t. Anyway, by the time I’d been there a half hour, her snide remarks were getting on my nerves. I know it’s just her sense of humor . . .”

  “Her bitchiness, you mean,” said Josh.

  “Well, she can be pretty caustic, and I don’t want her tearing Oaklynn down, you know? Even if it’s just to me.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Anyway, yes, I do think I’m happier with Oaklynn here. What about you?”

  He hesitated, then turned from the mirror to face me.

  “What about me?” he said. He sounded casual, almost flippant but deliberately so, and it was impossible not to think he was being very slightly guarded.

  “Are you happy with Oaklynn?” I said.

  “Sure. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You seem a little . . . I don’t know. Quiet.” I was careful not to say distant, but that was what I meant. “Like, I don’t know . . . like you feel a bit left out.”

  “What? No!” he said, and it sounded so completely natural—even amused—that I thought I had misjudged the previous moment. “I mean, it’s great that you guys have bonded.”

  “Yeah?” I said, trying not to sound too attentive. “And things at work are OK?”

  “Fine,” he said, smiling. “Busy is all.”

  The hesitation before he had spoken was so slight that anyone in the world but me would have missed it.

  I didn’t.

  I watched him pull out of the drive ten minutes later after insisting on kissing the girls. He was a good father. A perfect husband. I had always thought so.

  “You got lucky there,” said Oaklynn, sidling up to me in the kitchen. I turned suddenly, sure I was blushing at being caught watching him, thinking about him. Oaklynn had a way of looking at you and seeming to know what was going through your head. It was one of her many gifts, but the only one that sometimes made me feel self-conscious.