The Housemaid(71)

My heart speeds up. “So I need money…”

“I have some saved up I can give you,” he says.

“Enzo, I couldn’t possibly—”

He waves off my protest. “It is not enough though. You will need more. Can you get it?”

I’ll have to find a way.





A few days later, I drive Cecelia to school like I do almost every day. She’s got her yellow hair in flawless twin braids behind her head and she’s wearing one of her pale frilly dresses that make her stand out among her classmates. I’m scared other kids make fun of her because of those dresses, and she can’t play in them like she wants to. But if she doesn’t wear them, Andy punishes me for it.

Cece taps her fingers on the glass pane of the back window absently as I turn onto the street for the Windsor Academy. She never gives me a hard time about going to school, but I don’t think she enjoys it. I wish she had more friends. I put her in so many activities to distract her and help her meet people, but it doesn’t help.

But it doesn’t matter anymore. Soon everything will change.

Very soon.

When I get to the school drop-off area, Cece lingers in the back of the car, her blond eyebrows knitted together. “You’re picking me up, right? Not Dad?”

Andy is the only father she’s ever known. And she doesn’t know what he does to me, but she knows that sometimes when she does something he doesn’t like, I disappear for days at a time. And when I do, he’s the one who picks her up. It scares her. She won’t say the words out loud, but she hates him.

“I’ll pick you up,” I say.

Her small face relaxes. I want to blurt out the words out loud: Don’t worry, honey. We will be out of here soon. And he won’t be able to hurt us ever again. But I can’t yet. I can’t take that chance. Not until the day I pick her up and we go straight to the airport.

After Cecelia gets out of the car, I turn around and drive home. I have one week left here. One week before I pack a bag, then make the ninety-minute drive to where my safe-deposit box is waiting with my new passport, my new driver’s license, and a big wad of cash. I’ll purchase the tickets at the airport using cash, because the last time I bought a ticket in advance, Andy was waiting for me at the gate. Enzo has helped me plan this in a way to minimize the chances of Andy figuring out what I’m doing. So far, he’s still in the dark.

Or so I believe until I walk into my living room. To find Andy sitting at the dining table. Waiting for me.

“Andy,” I gasp. “Um, hi.”

“Hello, Nina.”

That’s when I see the three piles laid out in front of him. The passport, the driver’s license, and the stack of cash.

Oh no.

“So what were you planning to do with this…” He looks down and reads off the name on the driver’s license. “Tracy Eaton.”

I feel like I’m choking. My legs tremble beneath me and I have to hold onto the wall to keep from collapsing. “How did you get that?”

Andy rises from his seat. “Haven’t you figured out yet that you can’t keep any secrets from me?”

I take a step back. “Andy…”

“Nina,” he says. “It’s time to go upstairs.”

No. I’m not going. I’m not breaking my promise to my daughter that I would pick her up today. I’m not allowing myself to be locked up there for days when I thought I would be on my way to freedom soon. I won’t. I can’t do this anymore.

Before Andy can come any closer, I dash out the front door and back into my car. I speed out of the driveway so fast I nearly bash into the gate on the way out.

I have no idea where I’m going. Part of me wants to go straight to Cecelia’s school and grab her. Then just start driving until I hit the Canadian border. But it’s going to be hard to evade him without that passport or driver’s license. I’m sure he’s calling the police right now and feeding them a story about how his crazy wife is having a relapse.

There’s only one positive in this situation. He only found one of the two safety deposit boxes. The two separate boxes were Enzo’s idea. He found the one with the passport and the driver’s license. But there’s still a second stack of cash he doesn’t know about.

I keep driving until I get to Enzo’s neighborhood. I park two blocks away from his apartment and then I walk the rest of the way. He’s just climbing into his truck when I sprint over to him. “Enzo!”

He jerks his head up at the sound of my voice. His face drops when he sees the look on mine. “What happened?”

“He found one of the safe deposit boxes.” I pause to catch my breath. “It… it’s over. I can’t leave.”

My face crumbles. Before I started talking to Enzo, I had accepted that this would be my life. At least until Cecelia turned eighteen. But now I don’t think I can do it. I can’t live like this. I can’t.

“Nina….”

“What am I going to do?” I whimper.

He holds out his arms and I fall into them. We should be more careful. Somebody could see us. What if Andy thought I was having an affair with Enzo?

We are not having an affair, by the way. Not even a little bit. He thinks of me like Antonia—his sister he couldn’t save. He hasn’t touched me in a way that is anything other than brotherly. It’s the absolute last thing either of us is thinking about. Right now, all I can think of is the future I thought I might have had being flushed down the toilet. Another decade living with that monster.