I Was Her Servant for Five Years, Now She Begs Me to Stay novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Kneel
At her engagement party Camille orders the servant to kneel and mop wine in front of eighty filming guests. Nolan takes off the apron and leaves, and she says he'll be back by Friday.
Eighty people watched Camille pour a bottle of champagne onto the marble at my feet.
"Oops," she said.
It was her engagement party, and I was carrying a tray of full glasses through her mother's ballroom.
The tray didn't shake. I had five years of practice at that.
The champagne ran across the floor and soaked into my shoes.
"Nolan, you're standing in a puddle," Camille said. "Clean it up."
"Of course, Miss Camille."
I set the tray on a side table.
I took off my white apron, got down on one knee, and started wiping the floor.
Phones came up around the room.
I could hear the little chimes of people starting to film.
"Both knees, buddy," said Preston.
Preston was the man she was marrying.
He wore a black tuxedo and a smile for the cameras, and he had one arm around Camille's waist.
A few of the guests laughed.
A woman near the piano whispered, "Isn't that the one who's been here forever?"
I kept wiping.
Five years ago I put a ring on Camille's finger in a diner on the coast road.
Three hours later our car went off Marsh Road Bridge, and she woke up in the hospital without me in her head.
Her parents told me the doctors said one shock about her past could wipe out what was left.
So I stopped being her fiance and became the hired man.
I had been the hired man for every day since.
I had carried the coats of every man she dated, and I had held the door for each of them.
I had stood there when she threw a vase past my ear because the tea was cold.
Every night I told myself it was one more day closer to her remembering.
"Look at me," Camille said.
I looked up.
Her grey eyes were steady and bored, and there was a spot of champagne on the hem of her gown.
"You missed a bit," she said.
She pointed her toe at it.
Preston turned her face toward him with two fingers under her chin.
He kissed her, slowly, with the whole room watching.
The guests applauded.
I stayed on my knees on the wet marble with the apron in my fist.
A hand touched my arm.
Lucille Ashworth bent down beside me in her pearls, and her face was full of worry.
"Oh, Nolan," she said softly. "She's so much better this month. The doctor is thrilled."
"Mrs. Ashworth."
"Just a little longer," Lucille said. "She's close. You're a saint, you know that? We couldn't do this without you."
She squeezed my forearm, right over the burn scar I got pulling her daughter out of the water.
She had said "a little longer" to me at the end of every month for five years.
I looked at Lucille's kind face.
I looked at Camille, laughing at something Preston had said, with her back half turned to me.
I looked at the phones.
Somebody's screen was right in front of my face, and I could see myself in it, kneeling in a servant's vest.
I could see the wet knees of my trousers and the dark circles under my eyes.
I was twenty-nine years old.
So I stood up.
My knees cracked, and a few people laughed again, but it died fast.
I folded the apron once and laid it on my tray, on top of the full glasses.
"I quit," I said.
Nobody said anything.
Preston raised his eyebrows. "Wait, are you serious?"
"Nolan," Lucille said. "Sweetheart. Don't do this tonight."
"I'm done, Mrs. Ashworth."
I turned toward Camille.
She was still facing Preston. She hadn't moved.
"I'm leaving, Miss Camille," I said. "I won't be back."
I waited.
I thought she might turn around.
I thought there might be one flicker in her face.
There had been one in the first month after the accident, when I brought her tea and she said my name wrong.
She lifted her glass from the tray beside her, took a sip, and said, without looking at me:
"You'll be back by Friday."
She wasn't angry.
She didn't sound surprised.
She said it flatly, as a fact, and went back to her drink.
At the top of the stairs her father, Gerald Ashworth, stood with a glass of water in his hand.
He had watched the whole thing, and he didn't look surprised either.
He gave one small nod to the man beside him, and the man took out a phone.
Someone behind me whispered, "Post it before he's gone."
I walked out through the kitchen, past the cooks, and out the staff door with my coat over my arm.
One of the cooks pressed a foil packet of food into my hand and didn't say a word.
My brother Dean's garage was a twenty-minute walk down the shore road, and that was the only place I had left to go.
I was halfway down the gravel drive when I stopped.
Friday was the anniversary of the crash.
Every year I drove to Marsh Road Bridge by myself and stood at the rail until it got light.
I had never told her.
I had never told anyone in that house.
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