The Maid's Diary(2)

“They’re coming right at us,” the woman says.

“There’s nowhere to go, no alternate exit,” he says. “We’re sitting ducks.”

The cars come even closer.

“What in the hell?” The woman quickly relocates to the driver’s seat and struggles to tug up her torn pantyhose and pull on her pumps. He yanks up his zipper.

“Wait, wait—they’re stopping,” he says.

The couple go still. In hidden silence they watch as the driver’s-side door of the hatchback swings open and a tall figure climbs out. They see a logo on the side of the door. Another figure exits the larger sedan. Shorter. Stouter. Both drivers are dressed in black gear that shines in the rain. One wears a hat. The other a hood. The drivers leave the headlights on and the engines of both cars running. Exhaust fumes puff white clouds into the darkness.

Mist thickens and swirls around the two drivers as they open the rear door of the sedan. They struggle to tug something large and heavy out of the back seat. It appears to be a big roll of carpet. It drops to the ground with obvious weight.

“What’re they doing?” the woman asks.

“They’ve got something rolled up in that rug,” the man says. “Something heavy.”

Neither wants to admit what they think it might be.

The two drivers heft and drag their cargo toward the water. At the edge of the abandoned dock, using feet and hands, they push and roll it over the edge. The object disappears. A second later it comes back into sight—a flash of white swirling toward the bridge in the tidal current. It spins in the water, then begins to sink. A moment later it’s gone.

The woman swallows.

The interior of the Mercedes turns ice cold.

The man can’t breathe.

Both are terrified by what they’ve witnessed. The chill of it crawls deep into their bones. The tall driver hurries back to the hatchback. He leans into the driver’s side and fiddles with something beneath the steering wheel. The two drivers watch as the hatchback moves toward the water, as if of its own volition.

“Oh my God, they’ve jammed down the accelerator! We need to get out of here.” The woman reaches for the ignition.

“Stop.” The man clamps his hand over her forearm. “Do not move a single muscle until they’re gone. They could kill us for what we’ve just seen.”

They stare in mounting horror as the hatchback seems to hesitate, then tilts over the edge of the dock. As it plunges over, it catches refracted light from the bridge traffic. It’s a yellow car, the woman thinks. A Subaru Crosstrek like the one she and her husband bought their son for his eighteenth birthday. The logo on the door seems familiar. She’s seen it before but can’t think where. The water closes over the car, leaving a luminous froth of foam that travels with the current toward the bridge. It disappears. There’s nothing left—no indication that anything went off the dock. Just black water muscling with the tide.

The two drivers hasten to the waiting sedan. The tall one climbs into the driver’s side, the shorter one into the passenger side. The doors slam shut. The sedan lurches at speed along the muddy track. Brake lights flare, and it crosses the tracks, then turns and trundles across the deserted silo yard. It vanishes into fog.

Neither of the Mercedes’s occupants speaks. Tension hangs thick between them. They should call 911.

Both know they won’t.

Neither will breathe a word of this to a single solitary soul, because if anyone learns they were here, together, at this abandoned place beneath the bridge in the dark and very early hours of what is now Friday morning, they will lose everything.





THE MAID’S DIARY

Just start, my therapist said. Put words down, even if it’s stream of consciousness, even if it’s only to record something very ordinary you did in your day. If you find it difficult, try noting something that worries you. Just one thing. Or pick a thing that makes you happy. Or enraged. Or something that terrifies you. Write things you’ll never let anyone read. Then for every insight, ask yourself why. Why do you think this? What are the stakes of losing that illusion? Ask why, write why, until you want to scream. Until you cannot stare at the words any longer, or until you drop through a trapdoor into something new. Then step away. Be physical. Walk, run, hike, swim, dance. Keep doing that until you’re ready to return to the page. The key is just to start. Keep it simple. And I promise you, it will begin to flow.

So here I am, Dear Diary—my Dear Therapist-by-proxy—just putting it down. Starting simple. My name is Kit. Kit Darling. I’m thirty-four. Single. Vegan. Love animals. Feed birds.

I’m a maid.

My passion is amateur theater.

My superpower is being invisible.

Yes, you read that right. I have been bestowed with the gift of invisibility. I move through people’s houses unseen—a ghost—quietly dusting off the daily debris of their lives, restoring order to their outwardly “perfect” little microcosms. I wash and tidy and fold and sift through the privacy of elitist enclaves, touching, sniffing, envying, and at times trying on belongings. And here’s a thing I’ve learned: Perfection is deception. An illusion. It’s a carefully curated but false narrative. The golden family you think you know from the luxury home down the street—they’re not who you believe they are. They have faults, secrets. Sometimes dark and terrible ones. Oddly, as a house cleaner, a processor of garbage and dirt, I am entrusted with the secrets inside these houses. Perhaps it’s because I’m seen as irrelevant. Benign. Not worthy of deeper consideration. Just the hired help.