The Housemaid(3)

“Of course,” I say.

After we leave the room, we come to a final door at the end of the hallway. Nina pauses, her hand lingering on the doorknob.

“Would this be my room?” I ask.

“Sort of…” She turns the doorknob, which creaks loudly. I can’t help but notice the wood of this door is much thicker than any of the others. Behind the doorway, there’s a dark stairwell. “Your room is upstairs. We have a finished attic as well.”

This dark, narrow staircase is somewhat less glamorous than the rest of the house—and would it kill them to stick a lightbulb in here? But of course, I’m the hired help. I wouldn’t expect her to spend as much money on my room as she would on the home theater.

At the top of the stairs is a little narrow hallway. Unlike on the first floor of the house, the ceiling is dangerously low here. I’m not tall by any means, but I almost feel like I need to stoop down.

“You have your own bathroom.” She nods at a door on the left. “And this would be your room right here.”

She flings open the last door. It’s completely dark inside until she tugs on a string and the room lights up.

The room is tiny. There’s no two ways about it. Not only that, but the ceiling is slanted with the roof of the house. The far side of the ceiling only comes about up to my waist. Instead of the huge king-size bed in the Winchesters’ master bedroom with their armoire and chestnut vanity table, this room contains a small single cot, a half-height bookcase, and a small dresser, lit by two naked bulbs suspended from the ceiling.

This room is modest, but that’s fine with me. If it were too nice, it would be a certainty I have no shot at this job. The fact that this room is kind of crappy means maybe her standards are low enough that I have a teeny, tiny chance.

But there’s something else about this room. Something that’s bothering me.

“Sorry it’s small.” Mrs. Winchester pulls a frown. “But you’ll have a lot of privacy here.”

I walk over to the single window. Like the room, it’s small. Barely larger than my hand. And it overlooks the backyard. There’s a landscaper down there—the same guy I saw out at the front—hacking at one of the hedges with an oversized set of clippers.

“So what do you think, Millie? Do you like it?”

I turn away from the window to look at Mrs. Winchester’s smiling face. I still can’t quite put my finger on what’s bothering me. There’s something about this room that’s making a little ball of dread form in the pit of my stomach.

Maybe it’s the window. It looks out on the back of the house. If I were in trouble and trying to get somebody’s attention, nobody would be able to see me back here. I could scream and yell all I wanted, and nobody would hear.

But who am I kidding? I would be lucky to live in this room. With my own bathroom and an actual bed where I could straighten my legs out all the way. That tiny cot looks so good compared to my car, I could cry.

“It’s perfect,” I say.

Mrs. Winchester seems ecstatic about my answer. She leads me back down the dark stairwell to the second floor of the house, and when I exit that stairwell, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. There was something about that room that was very scary, but if I somehow manage to get this job, I’ll get past it. Easily.

My shoulders finally relax and my lips are forming another question when I hear a voice from behind us:

“Mommy?”

I stop short and turn around to see a little girl standing behind us in the hallway. The girl has the same light blue eyes as Nina Winchester, except a few shades paler, and her hair is so blond that it’s almost white. The girl is wearing a very pale blue dress trimmed in white lace. And she’s staring at me like she can see right through me. Right through my soul.

Do you know those movies about the scary cult of, like, creepy kids who can read minds and worship the devil and live in the cornfields or something? Well, if they were casting for one of those movies, this girl would get the part. They wouldn’t even have to audition her. They would take one look at her and be like, Yes, you are creepy girl number three.

“Cece!” Mrs. Winchester exclaims. “Are you back already from your ballet lesson?”

The girl nods slowly. “Bella’s mom dropped me off.”

Mrs. Winchester wraps her arms around the girl’s skinny shoulders, but the girl’s expression never changes and her pale blue eyes never leave my face. Is there something wrong with me that I am scared this nine-year-old girl is going to murder me?

“This is Millie,” Mrs. Winchester tells her daughter. “Millie, this is my daughter, Cecelia.”

Little Cecelia’s eyes are two little pools of the ocean. “It’s nice to meet you, Millie,” she says politely.

I’d say there’s at least a twenty-five percent chance she’s going to murder me in my sleep if I get this job. But I still want it.

Mrs. Winchester pecks her daughter on the top of her blond head, and then the little girl scurries off to her bedroom. She doubtless has a creepy doll house in there where the dolls come to life at night. Maybe one of the dolls will be the one to kill me.

Okay, I’m being ridiculous. That little girl is probably extremely sweet. It’s not her fault she’s been dressed in a creepy Victorian ghost-child’s outfit. And I love kids, in general. Not that I’ve interacted with them much over the last decade.