The Housemaid(53)

Andrew said he wanted this to become permanent. So now, this is my home too.

I head for the stairs, taking them two at a time. I keep going until I get up to the stuffy room in the attic—my bedroom. Except it won’t be my bedroom after tonight. I’m packing everything up and moving downstairs. This will be my last time in this claustrophobic little room with the weird lock on the outside of the door.

I grab one of my pieces of luggage out of the closet. I start throwing clothing inside, not bothering to be too careful, given that I’m just carrying it down one flight of stairs. Of course, I’ll have to ask Andrew’s permission before I clean out a drawer downstairs. But he can’t expect me to live up here anymore. It’s inhuman. This room is like some sort of torture chamber.

“Millie? What are you doing?”

The voice from behind me nearly gives me a heart attack. I clutch my chest and turn around. “Andrew. I didn’t hear you come in.”

His gaze darts over my luggage. “What are you doing?”

I shove the handful of bras I was holding into the luggage. “Well, I thought I might move downstairs.”

“Oh.”

“Is… is that okay?” I feel suddenly awkward. I had assumed Andrew would be fine with it, but maybe I shouldn’t have made that assumption.

He takes a step toward me. I bite down on my lip until it hurts. “Of course it’s okay. I was going to suggest it myself. But I wasn’t sure if you would want to.”

My shoulders sag. “I definitely want to. I… I had kind of a rough day.”

“What have you been up to? I saw some of my books on the coffee table. Have you been reading?”

I wish that’s all I had been doing today. “Honestly, I don’t want to talk about it.”

He takes another step closer and reaches out to trace my jaw with the tip of his finger. “Maybe I could make you forget about it…”

I shiver at his touch. “I bet you could…”

And he does.





THIRTY-SEVEN





Despite how incredibly uncomfortable my cot is compared with the incredible mattress in the guestroom, I pass out soon after Andrew and I make love up there, wrapped tightly in his arms. I never thought I would be having sex in this room. Especially since Nina was so strict about letting me have any guests over.

That rule certainly didn’t work out too well for her.

I wake up again at around three in the morning. The first sensation I become aware of is my bladder—full and slightly uncomfortable. I’ve got to hit the bathroom. Usually, I go right before bed, but Andrew wore me out and I fell asleep before I could muster up the energy.

And that’s the other sensation I become aware of. A sense of emptiness. Andrew isn’t in the cot anymore.

I suspect after I fell asleep, he decided to relocate to his own bed. I can’t blame him. This cot is hardly comfortable for one person, much less two, and the room is so claustrophobic. Maybe he tried to tough it out, but after tossing and turning, he migrated downstairs. Andrew is more than ten years older than me, and my back can barely make it through the night with this mattress, so I can hardly blame him.

I’m so glad this is the last night I’ll be sleeping here. Maybe after I use the bathroom, I’ll go join Andrew downstairs.

I rise to my feet, the floorboards groaning under my weight. I make my way to the door and turn the doorknob. As usual, it sticks. So I turn it more firmly.

It still doesn’t turn.

Panic mounts in my chest. I press myself against the door, the scratch marks in the wood splintering into my shoulder, and place my right hand squarely on the knob. I try once again to turn it clockwise. But it doesn’t budge. Not even a millimeter. And that’s when I realize what’s going on.

The door isn’t stuck.

It’s locked.





PART II





THIRTY-EIGHT





NINA





If a few months ago, someone had told me I would be spending tonight in a hotel room while Andy was at my house with another woman—the maid!—I wouldn’t have believed it.

But here I am. Dressed in a terry cloth bathrobe I found in the closet, stretched out in the queen-size hotel bed. The television is on, but I’m barely aware of it. I’ve got my phone out and I click on the app I have been using for the last several months. Find my friends. I wait for it to tell me the location of Wilhelmina “Millie” Calloway.

But under her name, it says: location not found. The same as it has since the afternoon.

She must’ve figured out I was tracking her and disabled the app. Smart girl.

But not smart enough.

I pick up my purse from where I put it down on the nightstand. I dig around inside until I find the one paper photograph I have of Andy. It’s a few years old—a copy of the photographs he had professionally taken for the company website, and he gave me one of them. I stare into his deep brown eyes on the shiny piece of paper, his perfect mahogany hair, the hint of a cleft in his strong chin. Andy is the most handsome man I’ve ever known in real life. I fell half in love with him the first moment I saw him.

And then I find one other object inside my purse and drop it into the pocket of my robe.