The Maid(49)

He closes his door without so much as a mannered “You too.”

I go to my own entrance and turn the key. I step across the threshold and lock the door behind me. Our home. My home. Exactly as I left it this morning. Neat. Orderly. Unnervingly quiet, despite Gran’s voice in my head.

There are times in life when we must do things we don’t want to. But do them we must.

Normally, I feel a wave of relief flow through me the instant I close the door behind me. Here, I’m safe. No expressions to interpret. No conversations to decode. No requests. No demands.

I take off my shoes, wipe them down, and place them neatly in the closet. I pat Gran’s serenity pillow on the chair by the door. I take a seat on the sofa in the living room to collect my thoughts. I am all a muddle, even here, in the peace of my own home. I know I must consider my next steps—should I call Giselle? Or maybe Rodney, for support and advice? Mr. Snow, to apologize for my absence this afternoon, for leaving my rooms without completing my daily quota?—but I find myself overwhelmed by the very thought of it all.

I feel out of sorts in a way I haven’t felt in a while, not since Wilbur and the Fabergé, not since the day Gran died.

In that too-bright station room today, Detective Stark laid blame on me, treating me like some sort of common criminal when I’m nothing of the sort. All I want is to turn my head and find Gran sitting on the sofa beside me, saying, Dear girl. Do not fret yourself into a tizzy. Life has a way of sorting itself out.

I head to the kitchen and put the kettle on. My hands are shaky. I open the fridge and find it mostly bare—just a couple of crumpets left, which I should save for tomorrow’s breakfast. I find a few biscuits in the cupboard and arrange them neatly on a plate. When the water has boiled, I make my tea, adding two sugars to compensate for the lack of milk. I mean to savor each bite of the biscuits, but instead I find myself devouring them greedily and washing them down with big gulps of tea right at the kitchen counter. My cup is empty before I even know it. Instantly, I feel the tea working. Warm energy flows through me again.

When all else fails, tidy up.

It’s a good idea. Nothing raises my spirits more than a good tidy. I wash out my teacup, dry it, and put it away. Gran’s curio cabinet in the living room could use a bit of attention. I carefully open the glass doors and remove all of her precious treasures—a menagerie of Swarovski crystal animals, each one paid for with backbreaking overtime hours at the Coldwells’ mansion. There are spoons, too, silver mostly, collected from thrift shops over the years. And the photos—Gran and me baking, Gran and me in front of a water fountain in a park, Gran and me at the Olive Garden, glasses of Chardonnay raised. And the one photo that is not of us but of my mother when she was young.

I pick it up. My hands still aren’t entirely steady. I have to concentrate as I dust and polish the glass frame. If my fingers slip, the frame will fall to the floor, the glass will shatter into hundreds of deadly shards. I get down on my knees to be closer to the ground. It’s safer this way. I’m holding the frame in both hands, studying my mother’s image. I’m surrounded by all of Gran’s lovely things.

Another memory surfaces, not a recent one, one I haven’t thought about in a long time. I was about thirteen years old when I walked through the door after school one day to find Gran kneeling on the floor much like I’m doing now. It was Thursday—dust we must—and she’d started the chore, her collection strewn about her, a polishing cloth and this photo of my mother in her hands. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I knew something wasn’t quite right. Gran was disheveled. Her hair, which was usually perfectly curled and coiffed, was in disarray. There were stains on her cheeks and her eyes were puffy.

“Gran?” I asked, before even wiping down the bottoms of my shoes. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer. She just stared at me with a glassy, faraway look in her eyes. Then she said, “Dear girl, I’m simply going to tell it to you as it is. Your mother. She’s dead.”

I found myself glued to the spot where I stood. I knew that my mother was out there in the world somewhere, but to me, she was as abstract a figure as the queen. To me, it was as if she’d died long ago. But to Gran, she meant so much, and this is what had me worried.

Every year as Mother’s Day drew near, Gran would begin her thrice-daily peregrinations to our mailbox. She was hoping there’d be a card from my mother. In the early years, cards appeared, signed in shaky scrawl. Gran would be so happy.

“She’s still in there somewhere, my little girl,” she’d say.

But for years on end, Mother’s Day after Mother’s Day, no cards arrived and Gran would be glum for the rest of the month. I compensated by splurging on the biggest, cheeriest card I could find, adding a “Gran” before “Mother,” filling the inside with evenly spaced x’s and o’s, and red and pink hearts that I’d color in, careful not to stray outside the lines.

When Gran told me my mother was dead, it wasn’t my own pain that I felt. It was hers.

She cried and cried and cried, which was so unlike her that it unsettled me to my core.

I hurried to her side and placed a hand on her back.

“What you need is a good cup of tea,” I said. “There’s almost nothing that a good cup of tea can’t cure.”

I rushed to the kitchen and put the kettle on, my hands shaking. I could hear Gran sobbing on the sitting-room floor. Once the water had boiled, I made two perfect cups and brought them to the living room on Gran’s silver tray.