The Maid's Diary(9)

Tomorrow is maid service day. Daisy always leaves the house when the help comes. She can’t handle watching someone clean up under her feet—like she should feel guilty or something when she is paying a top wage and actually providing someone with a job. She prefers to just return home to a sparkling-clean house and believe the house fairies have been there. That’s what her mom always called the cleaning service when Daisy was little. House fairies.

Her phone pings with a response from Vanessa.

Great idea! What time?

Daisy types:

Is noon too early? (I’m hungry all the time these days!)

Vanessa’s reply pops through.

No kidding. Haruto and I have an appointment around noon. How about later—2 pm?

Daisy smiles. Two p.m. is rather long to wait for lunch. She’ll have a snack earlier, though. She enjoys her time with Vanessa, whose baby is due a week after Daisy’s. It feels good to share with someone who actually relates. And Vanessa doesn’t judge. Daisy cannot handle people who tell her she can never complain because she’s “privileged” and she should be thankful for all the things she has in life. Everything is relative—can’t people understand that? Vanessa is not one of those people. She and Haruto live in one of those designer houses across the water—a stunning, shimmering glass structure with an infinity pool to die for. Vanessa attends the Yoga Mom’s prenatal classes near Daisy’s house because Haruto does some work nearby—that class is where Vanessa and Daisy met. Daisy types:

See you then!

Feeling a little more centered, she carries her chamomile tea upstairs, runs a bath, and climbs into the bubbles with a book.

An hour later Daisy is in bed with her novel, reading between dozing on and off. When she checks the clock again, it’s 10:26 p.m. She sits upright. Jon is not home. He should be back by now.

She reaches for her phone, calls her husband. It goes to voice mail again.

Daisy lies back on her pillow, thinking, What if he drank too much and got in an accident? What if he’s in the hospital somewhere?

She waits thirty minutes, then calls again. It flips to voice mail. Daisy begins to wonder if Jon has gone somewhere after the pub. A club or something. This makes her even more anxious.

When she calls yet again, Jon picks up. Relief surges through Daisy.

“Hey, hon,” she says carefully. “Is everything okay? I was worried about you.”

“I’m fine.” She hears noise. Music. A woman’s voice in the background. Jon says, “Let me take this somewhere quieter. Hang on a sec—” Daisy hears the woman’s voice again. Then the phone goes muffled, as though Jon is holding it against his body.

“Jon? Are you there?”

When he comes back on, he clears his throat. “Sorry, love. I should’ve called. Just as Henry left the pub, some of the guys from work came in. They’re all talking about the new development. One of the environmental assessors is with them. I figured I should connect with him, build some contacts. He’s still here. Could be a late one. You okay with that? I can come home now if—”

“No. No—I—it’s fine.” Emotion wells up inside her. She feels lonely, sidelined. “How’d it go with Henry?”

A beat of silence. “Fine. It went fine.”

“What did he want?”

“He had—ah, some interesting info. We can talk tomorrow, okay?”

Daisy’s earlier unease deepens. She feels a sense of something looming. Ticktock goes the clock. She glances at the shuttered blinds. The shadows of the trees move behind them. The wind is increasing. A storm coming.

“You okay, Daize?”

“Yeah. I—I’m good.” She was about to tell Jon about the note on her windshield but decides to hold off. “I’ll see you later.”

“Get some rest, love. I won’t be too long. Don’t wait up.”

She says goodbye, but as she’s about to kill the call, she hears that female voice in the background again. This time Daisy catches a few words: Jon . . . early. Thank . . . lovely evening.

She drops back onto her pillow, clutching her phone upon her belly. She stares at the ceiling and tells herself it’s a busy pub. It’s located downstairs in a popular hotel next to the building where Jon works. The voice could’ve belonged to anyone. A server, even.

Daisy imagines a waitress leaning over Jon’s table, smiling at him, her cleavage in line with his gaze. No, she tells herself. It was probably just some woman walking by in the hotel lobby, calling out to someone. She cannot let this happen again—the mounting suspicion. The paranoia. Seeing things in shadows and bushes. Just because she and Jon were victims of an obsessed stalker in Colorado, that does not mean it will happen again here.

Will it?

What if the woman in Colorado didn’t get the message and followed them all the way to Vancouver?

It’s going to be fine. It was taken care of. She’s no longer a problem.

But as Daisy drifts off into that lucid, elastic time between sleep and being fully awake, she hears the woman’s voice in her dream again, but her mind fills in missing words.

Jon . . . I need to be up early. Thank you for a lovely evening.





MAL


November 1, 2019. Friday.

Natural light floods into the Glass House from all directions, and Mal blinks against the stark brightness of the interior. The downstairs area is open plan. White marble floors, white walls, white furniture, mirrors, and a few slashes of angry, abstract art.