The Woman in Our House

by Andrew Hart

  Deciduous, he thought, liking the word.

  The front door was atop a half dozen stone steps, and there was more stonework around the door, though the sides of the house were finished in beige stucco. Randall considered the house as if it were about to give evidence, then rang the bell, stepping back from the window beside it so that the owner would get the full impression of his uniform. The residents of Myers Park weren’t always fond of black men showing up at their doors. He put on his serious face and listened to the hurried footsteps inside.

  Anna Klein was dressed in slim jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. She was surely a rarity in this Waspy neighborhood and cute in a harried, high-maintenance way, though he was careful to keep both thoughts out of his face.

  “Mrs. Klein?” he said, showing his badge unnecessarily. “I’m Officer Randall, Charlotte PD. We met in the hospital after the incident with the slide? I wonder if you had a moment to discuss the charges you made at the hospital earlier today against one”—he paused to check his notes—“Oaklynn Durst.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Thanks. Come in.”

  She had no accent he could detect, though he’d reassess that after they chatted a bit. Randall was proud of his ability to pinpoint accents.

  Anna Klein led him into a sitting room, where he took a place on a leather couch across a glass-topped coffee table from her after she ushered the elder daughter out, asking her to play upstairs for a while. The girl had been drawing clumsily with crayons, and she looked at him wonderingly, heading on up with obvious reluctance only when her mother’s voice got taut as she repeated the request.

  It wasn’t just her voice that seemed tight, stretched to a breaking point. Mrs. Klein had her hair pulled back and kept rubbing her forehead as if in pain, and she sat stiffly, arms and legs braced like she was poised to rocket out of the chair. In spite of her casual clothes, she looked severe and stressed-out. Randall decided to take it easy.

  “Nice neighborhood,” he remarked. “You have a lovely home.”

  “Thanks,” she said, not meeting his eyes.

  “How’s your daughter feeling?”

  “Not too bad, considering.”

  She had no interest in small talk.

  OK, then . . .

  “So you reported your former housekeeper . . .”

  “Nanny.”

  “Right,” he said. Knowing no one who had either, he wasn’t sure of the difference. “Oaklynn Durst.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you also fired her.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think she willfully set out to hurt your daughter.”

  “Yes. Several times. Most recently, she cut through the link on the swing set. I’ll show you.”

  “That would be great,” said Randall. “But before we do that, why don’t you tell me about this person? Oaklynn. Unusual name.”

  “She’s from Utah,” said Mrs. Klein, as if that meant something. “Mormon. They have unusual names sometimes.”

  “OK,” said Randall. “I didn’t know that.”

  She gave him a quick, hard look, as if what he’d said made him stupid.

  “I have her file here,” she said, the look melting away so that he thought he might have misread it. He didn’t like interrogating good-looking women. It made him self-conscious. She opened a laptop on the chair beside her, clicked a couple of things, then turned it around and put it on the table, facing him.

  “Her file?” said Randall, leaning forward to examine it.

  “From when I hired her. I got her through an agency in Salt Lake City called Nurture. This is her profile.”

  Randall scrolled through it in silence.

  “Can you email this to me?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  He fished in his pocket for a card and pushed it across the table toward her, like he was dealing blackjack.

  “And you have no idea where she might have gone now?”

  “No. She had no friends or family in the area. But when we got back from the hospital this afternoon, all her stuff was gone. She must have packed very fast.”

  “Did she have a vehicle?”

  “No. She had talked about getting one, but she used my car.”

  “And she’d been with you . . . ?”

  “Since August.”

  “And in that time, you had reason to think she wanted to hurt your children?”

  The question seemed to disarm her. For a second, her hard, businesslike exterior buckled, and she looked fragile and unsure of herself.

  “I’m not sure what her motivation was,” she said. “Most of the time, she seemed to really like the girls . . .”

  “You have two?”

  “Veronica, who you saw, and Grace. She just turned one.”

  “And the first incidents concerned Grace, yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  She told him of the hospital visits, the unexplained fevers, and the GI issues, and though he already had all that from the hospital report and the report she’d made to the duty cop there, he let her tell him all again, alert for nuance, for the emotional content of her story, and for any sign that she might be making it up. Spite against former employees was not unknown. Sometimes it was about wages the employer didn’t feel like paying. Sometimes it was personal. Based on the pictures of this Oaklynn Durst, he doubted she posed much of a threat to the lithe Asian woman in front of him where the interests of her husband were concerned, but what the hell did he know? It took all sorts, and Randall had seen enough on the job to know that there was no rhyme or reason where sex was concerned. In fact, he suspected, it would be simpler than that. The precinct got daily calls from Myers Park—some old money, some new—reporting their Mexican cleaners for stealing earrings and going through purses. They screamed bloody murder right up to the time the missing shit was found, set down in the wrong drawer or locked away in a safe by the indignant homeowner who, more than half the time, still fired the cleaner.

  So Randall listened and took notes with a bland, sympathetic look on his face, even as he weighed his own cautious doubts. When she was done outlining her own experience with the Durst woman, she started recounting incidents involving the nanny in her previous places of employment with other families.

  “I’m sorry,” he cut in. “You knew about these events before you hired her?”

  “No. I just found out.”

  “How?”

  “I called them.”

  “You called the families who had employed Ms. Durst before?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I was starting to feel like something was off with her. I wanted to know if there had been incidents with her previous employers.”

  “These people listed as her references?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there were?”

  “Yes. One involved a kid almost drowning in the bath.”

  “These people thought their children’s lives were in danger from Ms. Durst, but they still wrote her letters of recommendation?”

  She hesitated.

  “They didn’t realize she was responsible,” she said.

  “But you did. Even though you weren’t there, and some of these events took place years ago.”

  He tried to sound neutral when he said it, but it was impossible not to sound skeptical.

  “They couldn’t see the pattern I was seeing,” she said. She knew it sounded weak and looked away. “I know it sounds crazy. They still liked her. But that was Oaklynn. She made people like her, but she was hiding who she really was. The woman whose daughter nearly drowned thought Oaklynn was a hero who had saved her child. It just didn’t occur to her that maybe Oaklynn engineered the event in order to play the hero. That’s what she gets off on: gratitude, praise, everyone saying how wonderful she is. Especially nurses. Doctors. EMTs. Probably cops as well.”

  Randall considered this last, wondering if it was supposed to
be an accusation, then nodded, still carefully nonjudgmental.

  “That’s very helpful,” he said. “Thanks. Now, how about we take a look at that swing set?”

  “Sure,” she said, taking up the baby monitor that had been blinking on an end table by the couch. “Let me just tell Veronica that I’ll be outside.”

  “You know,” said Randall, glad of the opportunity, “I can find it myself. Let me go take a look, and I’ll be right back.”

  “OK,” she said, uncertain. “You can get out through the basement. I’ll show you.”

  She led him down a stairwell that ran through the heart of the house to a complex of rooms.

  “This was where Miss Durst lived?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Go ahead.”

  She nodded to the left but made no move to come with him, folding her arms across her chest defensively. Randall went into the bedroom. It was blue, a guest suite left ready for its next visitor. The adjoining bathroom had little hand towels and a basket of untouched toiletries like some Wilmington guesthouse. The only thing even hinting at recent occupancy was a faint odor, part sweet and floral like perfume or soap, and another part fainter still, sour and animal.

  “She had a pet?”

  “A cat. Mr. Quietly.”

  Randall gave her a look.

  “Sorry,” she added. “I should have said.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “And the cat went with her?”

  “I assume so. We haven’t seen it since she left. The door down to the backyard is through there. If you don’t mind, I’m going to check on the girls.”

  He told her that was fine and picked his way through the gloomy sitting room with its flat-screen TV to where a screen door led out onto a cedar wood deck and a flight of a dozen steps down into the yard. It was a cold day, and he felt the wind bite as he stepped outside. The garden was lower than the street level at the front and sloped down to a fence and then the creek and the tangle of underbrush and trees on the far side. With his back to the house, Randall felt like he was in the woods.

  The swing set was a fairly simple affair to the left side of the yard as he faced the brown, sluggish waters of the creek. There were two swings side by side attached by plastic-sheathed chain to a heavy timber crossbeam atop a pair of A-frame uprights. It abutted a little wooden tower with a ladder and a plastic slide. As a kid, Randall would have thought it pretty cool.

  He looked it over, tugging on the chains, climbing up onto the tower to examine the housings at the top and the bolts that held them in place. He had just about finished when he heard footsteps on the deck and turned to find Anna Klein descending to meet him.

  “You see the saw marks?” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Right where the seat is disconnected.”

  “I’m sorry, where is that?”

  Randall stepped aside so she could see properly, her face clouding with confusion as she got closer. Both swings were perfectly fine. There was no sign of damage, and they looked perfectly usable, if a little stained with mildew.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, rushing over and tugging experimentally at the chains. “This was broken right here. Cut away. The seat was hanging down.”

  “It seems OK now.”

  “It can’t be. Someone has . . . I don’t understand.”

  “Miss Klein, is it possible that Veronica simply fell off the swing?” said Randall, taking hold of the chains of the swing in question and, after yanking hard on them, settling into the saddle till it bore his entire weight. “That she just, you know, slipped out of the seat? Then maybe in the confusion, you thought there was something structurally wrong with . . .”

  “No!” she shot back, her face suddenly contorted with outrage. “No. I saw it! It was cut. She did it on purpose. She did it!”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  ANNA

  It made no sense. Oaklynn had barely had time to pack and get out before I had gotten home from the hospital. She couldn’t also have repaired the swing.

  Surely?

  And even if she’d had time, why bother? She must have known it wouldn’t change my sense of what had happened.

  But it would change how many people believed you.

  That gave me pause. She was covering her back, preparing for the inevitable investigation that would follow. It was her word against mine.

  Not that it mattered much either way. She was gone. Vanished into thin air. But I doubted the cops would take anything I said about the woman seriously. By the time the police officer—Randall—had left my house, it was clear he wasn’t going to push the issue. He thought I was a crazy person: just another entitled Myers Park housewife with too much time on her hands and a conviction that the world should revolve around her.

  I called Nurture, not because I thought they could do anything or that they would have a current location for her, but because I needed to yell at someone who had no option but to listen. And I wanted them to know that they had sent me a psychopath and that their screening methods were garbage. So I laid out what had happened to a receptionist called Britney, then to a manager called Alice, who spoke in calm, measured, and carefully sympathetic tones that said she understood all my concerns but promised nothing and took no responsibility for anything. For my part, speaking out of frustration and a mad desire to crack their professional placidity, I told her they should expect to hear from my lawyer.

  I didn’t have a lawyer, but they didn’t know that. And maybe I’d get one just for this. Oaklynn was gone, but someone ought to pay for what had happened and for what might have happened had it been allowed to go on.

  How far would the escalation have gone? Just how much would Oaklynn have risked to satisfy whatever sick urge she was feeding?

  It was too terrible to think about.

  Oaklynn’s key still sat on the floor of the hall where it had fallen when she, presumably, had pushed it through the letter box. I didn’t know if she had taken a cab or walked to the bus, dragging her suitcases after her, and I didn’t know where she had gone. I also didn’t care. She was gone, and that was all that mattered.

  I picked up the key, telling Veronica I would get her a cup of juice as soon as I had gotten Grace changed, and stood for a moment, absorbing the silence of the house. Our house. Oaklynn was gone, and it was just us again. The experiment, if that was what it had been, was over.

  “We could try another nanny,” said Josh. He had left work early as soon as he got my call recounting what had happened.

  “No,” I said, flat and final. “I don’t want another person in my house.”

  He watched me thoughtfully, and I knew he was wondering whether to say something about rethinking the matter when the dust had settled, when I wasn’t quite so emotional, but he knew better than to say it. Even so, I give him a long look and waited till he nodded and looked sheepishly away. I didn’t like playing for points with my husband the way some couples do, but it was going to be a while before he questioned my judgment about anything to do with the girls.

  “What do you want for dinner?” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to think about it.”

  “Of course,” he said quickly. “As long as it’s not Tuscan chicken, I don’t care.”

  I bridled, then gave him a bleak smile.

  “You sure you’re going to be OK this week?” he said.

  I shrugged and made a face, half-dismissive, half-baffled, then realized what he was talking about.

  “You’re away again?” I said. He winced at the exasperated annoyance in my tone, but I couldn’t help it.

  “From Wednesday,” he said. “I told you last week, remember?”

  “No,” I snapped. “Yes. I guess. It slipped my mind what with—”

  “I can cancel,” he said.

  “No. You can’t.”

  He hung his head. He was in the doghouse as much at work as he was with me, and there was no point in pretending
otherwise.

  “Not really,” he agreed.

  “It’s fine. I’ll be fine. Give me a chance to be with the girls by ourselves. Calm down. Get used to this . . . new normal.”

  Life without Oaklynn. Nightmare though she had turned out to be, day-to-day functioning was going to be harder without her.

  “What about your work?” asked Josh.

  “Let me worry about my work,” I said. Again, I saw the tightness in his face at my tone and relented. “Sorry. It’s just going to be hard for a while, but talking about it won’t make it any easier.”

  “Could have been worse.”

  “Yeah, Josh, it really could, but thinking about that doesn’t make me feel any better either.”

  “OK.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I said OK,” he replied. “How about we order pizza or something? I think we’ve earned an easy night.”

  “OK,” I said.

  But the night wasn’t easy. A little before three in the morning, I woke to a familiar, haunting chorus that came cycling through my dreams of Oaklynn like some ancient alarm.

  The wolf-voiced coyotes were back.

  For a second, I was too stricken with dread, with an ominous sense of terrible things about to happen, and then I was tugging at Josh, dragging him out of unconsciousness so that he woke sputtering and irritated.

  “What?” he demanded, but then he heard them, too, and his eyes widened.

  He got up quickly, decisively, and went to the closet, emerging a moment later with something large and ungainly in his hands. It took me a second to realize that it was the crossbow. My mind was too full of the yipping howls that had broken out all around the house.

  “My God, they sound so close!” Josh breathed, stepping into the bathroom so he could look down through the window into the backyard. I resisted the urge to follow him, going instead into the hallway and down to the door of Vronny’s room. I put my hand gently on the handle and listened.

  Nothing at first, then another momentary round of yapping barks from the coyotes and a single looping howl that sounded much farther away. It rose like a ball thrown high and long, then fell as it tailed away into nothing.