The Nanny, the Husband, and the Woman They Forgot I Was novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Packed Bag

Margot meets Vivian Chen with Rosie strapped to her chest and learns the nanny is on Kestrel's payroll, then comes home to find Harper packing Rosie's bag.

I read the petition four times before the sun came up.

Then I fed Rosie, changed her, and put on the only pair of real pants that buttoned.

Blake came down at seven with a carry-on and his good watch.

"Austin," he said. "Conference. Back Sunday."

He kissed the top of Rosie's head.

He gave me a distant nod.

Then he was gone, and his car purred out of the driveway.

Harper came into the kitchen five minutes later in cream leggings and a matching top.

Her hair was perfect. It was always perfect.

"Morning, Mar." She held out her arms. "Give her here. Go back to bed. You look wrecked."

I looked at her hands.

They were the same hands that had braided my hair before my wedding.

"I'm taking her out," I said.

"Out where?"

"A mommy-and-me thing in the city."

Harper laughed. "You? You hate those."

"People change."

I clipped Rosie into the carrier on my chest and walked out before my face could do anything.

I drove to San Francisco with both hands on the wheel.

Rosie slept the whole way, her mouth open against my shirt.

Vivian Chen's office was on the thirty-first floor of a building on Montgomery Street.

The receptionist looked at the baby, then at me, then at the baby again.

"She's expecting you," she said.

Vivian was smaller than I remembered.

She had a silver-streaked bob, reading glasses pushed up on her head, and a black suit with no wrinkles anywhere.

There was a bowl of almonds on her desk.

She looked at Rosie for a long second.

"Does it bite?"

"Not yet. No teeth."

"Then it can stay." She pointed at a chair. "Sit. Show me."

I gave her my phone with the clip queued up and a pair of earbuds.

She listened to the whole clip without moving her face once.

Then she took out the earbuds and ate an almond.

"Your husband talks too much," she said.

"He always has."

"Good. Men who talk too much are my favorite kind." She held out a hand. "The petition."

I slid my laptop across the desk.

She read it with her glasses on the end of her nose.

"Unstable," she said. "Based on what?"

"I cry sometimes. I haven't slept more than three hours in a row since December. Some days I don't shower."

"So you're a mother of a newborn." She turned a page. "Any medication? Any hospital?"

"No."

"Do you think you're depressed?"

Nobody had asked me that.

Not Blake. Not Harper. Not my doctor at the six-week checkup, who had looked at my scar and said I was healing nicely.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe."

Vivian nodded.

"Then you'll find out, and you'll get help, and we'll say so first. We don't hide things he can use. We take them off the table." She tapped the screen. "What's this other folder?"

"Bank records. And a payroll export from Kestrel. I haven't gone through it."

"Go through it now."

I sat on her couch with Rosie on my chest and the laptop on my knees.

Vivian took two phone calls and fired someone over speakerphone.

Then I found it.

Kestrel's payroll, the January run.

Bell, Harper. Executive Assistant to the CEO. Sixteen thousand dollars a month.

I read the line twice.

"Vivian."

She came and looked over my shoulder.

"Is she his assistant?" she asked.

"She's my nanny. She lives in my guest room. She changes diapers."

"Since when?"

"Since Rosie came home. December."

Vivian checked the start date on the export.

December fourteenth.

The day after Rosie was born.

"So the company pays his girlfriend to babysit his child and sleep with him," Vivian said. "On a public company's books. In front of shareholders."

"Is that bad?" I asked, very calmly.

She looked at me over her glasses.

"Mrs. Linwood. Did you used to be funny?"

"I used to be a lot of things."

"Keep this one." She went back to her desk. "My retainer is fifty thousand dollars."

"I have savings. My own account. From before."

"Of course you do." She almost smiled. "Rules. Don't tip him off. Don't touch the money. Don't move out of the house, ever, for any reason. If he wants a fight, he comes to us."

"And Harper?"

Vivian ate another almond.

"Harper is a sixteen-thousand-dollar-a-month problem," she said. "For him. Not for you. Go home."

I drove back down the peninsula with the windows cracked.

Rosie woke in Redwood City and complained the rest of the way.

It was three o'clock when I pulled into the driveway.

The front door was unlocked.

I heard Harper humming upstairs.

I climbed the stairs with Rosie on my hip.

The nursery door was open.

Harper was kneeling on the rug with Rosie's diaper bag.

She was packing it.

Six onesies. The sound machine. Four bottles. The bunny Rosie couldn't sleep without.

She looked up and smiled at me.

"Oh, good, you're back," she said. "Blake called. He wants me to take Rosie to his mother's in Woodside for the weekend."

She zipped the bag shut.

"So you can finally rest."

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