Maid for My Nemesis novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

Hattie writes her own rules on a laundromat receipt and takes the maid job, then finds the Whitcombe house empty and echoing.

I stepped out onto the landing and pulled the door shut behind me.

The laundromat dryers rumbled under our feet, and the whole stairwell smelled like warm lint.

"You took my job," I said. "Now you want to hire me to scrub your toilets."

"Yes."

"Is this a joke for your friends?"

"No."

"Is Presley hiding on the stairs with her phone?"

"No one knows I'm here," he said. "That's the point."

I studied him for a long moment.

His glasses were fogged from the cold, and he had not bothered to wipe them.

Rich boys with something to prove do not usually forget to wipe their glasses.

"Why me?" I said.

"You're the only person I know who says what she thinks."

"That's not a reason. That's a compliment."

"It's the only reason I have."

I should have shut the door in his face.

I knew that, standing there in my socks.

But the envelope in his hand was thick, and my mother was cooking dinner on a stove that clicked three times before it lit.

And I wanted, more than I wanted the money, to know why he had taken my office.

So I held out my hand.

"Give me a pen," I said.

He pulled one from his coat, and I looked around for paper.

The only thing in my pocket was a receipt from the laundromat, for two dollars of quarters.

I flattened it against the wall and wrote on the back.

1. No uniform. I wear my own clothes.

2. You never call me "the help" or "the maid" in front of anybody. Ever.

3. I can quit any day, and you pay me for the days I worked.

4. If I find out you're laughing at me, I leave and I tell everyone.

I handed it to him.

He read it twice with his lips pressed together, and then he did something I did not expect.

He nodded.

"Fine," he said. "All four."

"Number five," I said, and I wrote it in. "You tell me why."

"Not yet."

"Then I'll find out myself."

"I know," he said, and for a second the corner of his mouth moved.

It was not a smile, but it was near one.

He handed me the envelope and told me to come Saturday at nine.

The address was on a card inside, written in tidy block letters.

I closed the door on him, and I heard his footsteps go down the stairs, slow and a little uneven.

My mother met me in the hallway with her arms folded.

"Who was that?"

"The boy who got my job."

"And what did he want?"

"To give me another one," I said.

She looked at the envelope, then at my face.

"I don't like it, Hattie."

"I don't either," I said. "But it's two hundred fifty a week."

She pressed her lips together the exact same way he had.

"Then you call me from the house every single time you get there," she said. "And every time you leave."

"Deal."

"And if he looks at you wrong, you hit him with something heavy."

"There's a lot of heavy things in a mansion, Mom."

She laughed once, a short, tired laugh, and went back to the stove.

On Saturday I took two buses to the north end of town.

The Whitcombe house stood at the top of a long gravel drive, behind a stone wall with an iron gate.

The gate was open, and the grass on both sides needed cutting.

The house itself was huge, built of gray stone, with a slate roof and tall windows.

Every window was dark.

I stood on the front step and rang the bell, and I heard it echo inside.

Julian opened the door in a gray sweater and jeans, with a dust rag over one shoulder.

I had never seen him in anything but a uniform.

It made him look younger, and a little lost.

"You came," he said.

"You paid me in advance. I don't take money and run."

He stepped back to let me in.

The front hall was enormous, with a black and white floor and a staircase that curved up.

There was nothing else in it.

No table, no mirror, no rugs, and no pictures on the walls, only pale squares where pictures had hung.

My footsteps echoed all the way to the ceiling.

"Where's your furniture?" I said.

"The east wing is being renovated."

"For how long?"

"A while."

I looked through the arched doorway to my left.

There was a long room with tall windows, and in the middle of it stood a single shape under a white sheet.

It could have been a piano, or a ghost.

I went through the hall and looked into the next room, and the one after that.

Dust sheets, bare floors, and nothing else.

The house was twenty rooms big, and I did not see a single chair.

"Where is everyone?" I said. "The cook, the gardener, the people who run a house like this?"

"They're on leave."

"All of them?"

"All of them," he said, and he did not meet my eyes.

He led me down a corridor to the kitchen, which was the only room that was lit.

It was big and clean, with a steel range and a long wooden table.

I opened a drawer, looking for a dustpan.

Inside lay one spoon.

One spoon, one fork, one knife, and nothing else.

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