Chapter 4: Her House That Wasn't Hers
Isabella was waiting when I came back into the hallway.
She hadn't moved far. She stood by the gold mirror with her arms crossed, the burgundy satin catching the chandelier light every time she breathed. Her diamond necklace sat perfectly straight now. She'd fixed it while I was in the pantry with Adrian.
Adrian's voice carried from upstairs, muffled behind his office door. He was on the phone. I heard him say "Mom" once, low and serious, and then the door clicked shut.
Isabella watched me step into the light. She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"This is my house, Elena," she said. "I don't care what he said down there. You will be out of it by eight tomorrow morning. You and your things and that box. Understood?"
I held the box tighter against my ribs. The cardboard had softened where my hands had been sweating.
"This isn't your house," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. I cleared my throat. "The deed is in his name. The checks come from his office. You told me that yourself when you had me file the house insurance."
Her smile thinned. For a second her eyes flicked up toward the office where Adrian was, then back to me. She took two slow steps closer. I could smell her perfume, something sharp and expensive.
"Do you think that matters?" she said, quiet now. "Do you think a title search matters when I'm the woman planning the foundation gala in the ballroom downstairs? When every caterer and every board member calls me Mrs. Cole already? Don't be naive."
She gestured around us, at the marble staircase, at the mirror.
"I run this house. I decide who works here. And I am deciding you don't."
I didn't answer right away. I looked past her at the small hallway that led to my room — the back room by the laundry, with the twin bed and the hot plate and the window that faced the parking pad. It wasn't much, but it was where Lily had slept when she was sick last winter, on that narrow bed with me, because I couldn't afford a sitter and couldn't leave her at daycare with a fever.
"If I leave tonight, I don't have anywhere to go before daycare opens," I said. "Lily is three. It's almost nine. I'm not putting her in a car to sleep in a parking lot because you want the hallway empty."
Isabella tilted her head. Her expression turned almost sympathetic, which was worse.
"Then you should have thought about that before you brought a secret child into your employer's home," she said. "I called your agency an hour ago. I told them you falsified your application. No childcare disclosure. You'll never get a placement in this county again. No reference. No forwarding address."
My stomach dropped. That agency was how I'd gotten every job since Lily was born.
"And if you want to play the worried mother," she went on, her voice dropping another notch, "I can call CPS in the morning and tell them you're housing a toddler in a maid's closet with no window lock and no second exit. They love a welfare check. Especially when the call comes from a foundation address."
She wasn't shouting anymore. That was what made my hands start to shake. When she shouted I could stand behind the noise. When she whispered like that, I had to listen.
"You're threatening me," I said.
"I'm protecting my home," she said. "Eight a.m. Be gone."
She turned then, smoothed the front of her dress with both palms, and walked toward the main foyer like the conversation was finished. Her heels clicked loud on the marble.
I stood there with the box in my arms and listened to Adrian still talking upstairs, his voice too low to make out words. He didn't come down. He didn't hear her.
I had a choice. I could walk out right then, into the dark, call my cousin in Riverside and beg for a couch and wake Lily and carry her from her nap mat at daycare early and tell her we were leaving because a woman didn't like the color of her eyes. Or I could stay under this roof one more night and take whatever Isabella threw at me until morning.
I turned and walked the other way, down the narrow hall to my room. The air got cooler there, away from the chandelier. I pushed my door open with my shoulder.
The room was exactly as I'd left it — bed made, Lily's folded clothes on the chair, her small pink backpack by the door for tomorrow. I set the cardboard box down on the bed and put my hand flat on its top.
May you like
I wasn't staying for Isabella. I wasn't staying because she told me to, or because I thought this was her house. I was staying because my daughter had a cot at daycare that was warm until eight a.m., and I had a door that locked until eight a.m., and I wasn't giving either of those up for a woman who didn't even own the key.
I locked my door. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the clock on the wall. It said 9:17. I had ten hours and forty-three minutes left under this roof.
