Фрида Макфаден – The Housemaide / Горничная. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 7)

“It does,” she agrees.

“Nina is hopeless in the kitchen,” Andrew laughs, throwing an arm around her waist. “We would starve to death if it were all on her shoulders. My mother used to drop by with meals that she or her personal chef made. But since she and my father retired to Florida, we’ve been subsisting mostly on takeout. So you’re a savior, Millie.”

Nina gives a tight smile. He’s just teasing her, but no woman wants to be compared unfavorably to another. He’s an idiot if he doesn’t know that. Then again, plenty of men are idiots.

“Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes,” I say. “Why don’t you go relax in the living room and I’ll call you when it’s ready?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Do you want to join us for dinner, Millie?”

The sound of Nina inhaling sharply fills the kitchen. Before she can say anything, I shake my head vigorously. “No, I’m just going to go up to my room and relax. Thank you for the invitation though.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

Nina swats her husband in the arm. “Andy, she’s been working all day. She doesn’t want to have dinner with her employers. She just wants to go upstairs and text message her friends. Right, Millie?”

“Right,” I say, even though I don’t have any friends. At least, not on the outside.

Andrew doesn’t seem concerned either way. He was just being polite, oblivious to the fact that Nina didn’t want me at the dinner table. And that’s just fine. I don’t want to do anything to make her feel threatened. I just want to keep my head down and do my job.

Chapter 6

I forgot how amazing it is to sleep with my legs straight.

Okay, this cot is nothing special. It’s lumpy and the springs on the bed frame groan every time I move so much as a millimeter. But it is so much better than my car. And even more amazingly, if I need to use the bathroom during the night, it’s right next to me! I don’t have to drive around to find a rest stop and clutch my can of mace in my hand while emptying my bladder. I don’t even need mace anymore.

It feels so good to sleep in a normal bed that within seconds of my head hitting the pillow, I pass out.

When I open my eyes again, it’s still dark. I sit up in a panic, trying to remember where I am. All I know is I’m not in my car. It takes several seconds for the events of the last several days to come back to me. Nina offering me the job here. Moving out of my car. Falling asleep in an honest to goodness bed[24].

Gradually, my breathing slows.

I fumble on the dresser by my bed for the phone Nina bought me. The time is 3:46 in the morning. Not quite time to get up for the day. I shove the itchy covers off my legs and roll off the cot as my eyes adjust to the light from the moon filtering in through the tiny window. I’ll hit the bathroom, then I’ll try to fall back to sleep.

My feet creak against the bare floorboards of my tiny bedroom. I yawn, taking a second to stretch until my fingertips almost reach the lightbulbs on the ceiling. This room makes me feel like a giant.

I get to the door of my room and I grab the knob and… It doesn’t turn.

The panic that had drained from my body when I realized where I was now escalates once again. The door is locked. The Winchesters locked me in this room. Nina locked me in this room. But why? Is this all some kind of sick game? Were they looking for some ex-con[25] to trap in here – someone nobody would miss? My fingers brush against the scratch marks on the door, wondering who the last poor woman trapped in here has been.

I knew this had to be too good to be true. Even with the spectacularly dirty kitchen, this seemed like a dream job. I knew Nina had to have done a background check. She probably locked me in here, thinking nobody would ever miss me.

I flashback to ten years ago, the first night when the door to my cell slammed shut, and I knew this would be my home for a long time to come. I swore to myself that if I ever got out, I would never let myself be trapped in any situation ever again. Yet it’s less than a year after I got out, and here I am.

But I’ve got my phone. I can call 911.

I snatch up my phone from the dresser where I left it. I had a signal earlier today, but now there’s nothing. No bars. No signal.

I’m stuck here. With only one tiny window that doesn’t open, overlooking the backyard.

What am I going to do?

I reach for the doorknob one more time, wondering if I could somehow knock the door down. But this time, when I turn the knob sharply, it twists in my hand.

And the door pops open.

I stumble out into the hallway, breathing quickly. I stand there for a moment, as my heart rate slows to normal. I was never locked in the room after all. Nina didn’t have some crazy plot to trap me in there. The door was just stuck.

But I can’t seem to shake that uneasy feeling. That I should get out of here while I still can.

Chapter 7

When I get downstairs in the morning, Nina is systematically destroying the kitchen.

She has pulled every pot and pan from the cabinet below the counter. She’s ripped half the dishes from above the sink and several of them are lying broken on the kitchen floor. And now she is going through the refrigerator, haphazardly tossing food onto the floor. I watch in amazement as she takes an entire container of milk out of the refrigerator and hurls it onto the floor. Milk immediately started gushing out, forming a white river around the pots and pans and broken dishes.

“Nina?” I say tentatively.

Nina freezes, her hands curled around a bagel. She whips her head around to look at me. “Where is it?”

“Where… where is what?”

“My notes!” She lets out an anguished cry. “I left all my notes for the PTA meeting tonight on the kitchen counter! And now they’re gone! What did you do with them?”

First of all, why would she think her notes were in the refrigerator? Second, I am certain I didn’t throw out her notes. I mean, I’m ninety-nine percent certain. Is there some tiny chance that there was a little crumpled-up piece of paper on the counter that I assumed was garbage and threw away? Yes. I can’t rule out the possibility[26]. But I was pretty careful about not throwing away anything that wasn’t garbage. To be fair, almost everything was garbage.

“I didn’t do anything with them,” I say.

Nina plants her fists on her hips. “So you’re saying my notes just walked away?”

“No, I’m not saying that.” I take a careful step toward her and my sneaker crunches on a broken plate. I make a note to myself to never come into the kitchen barefoot. “But maybe you left them somewhere else?”

“I did not!” she snaps at me. “I left them right here.” She slams her palm on the kitchen counter loud enough that I jump. “Right on this counter. And now – gone! Vanished!”

All the commotion has gotten the attention of Andrew Winchester. He wanders into the kitchen, wearing a dark suit that makes him look even more handsome than he looked yesterday, if that was possible. He is clearly in the process of tying his tie, but his fingers freeze mid-knot when he sees the mess on the floor.

“Nina?”

Nina turns to look at her husband, her eyes brimming with tears. “Millie threw out my notes for the meeting tonight!”

I open my mouth to protest, but it’s pointless. Nina is certain I threw out her notes, and it’s entirely possible I did. I mean, if they were so important, why would she just leave them lying on the kitchen counter? The way the kitchen looked yesterday, it could have been condemned.

“That’s terrible.” Andrew opens his arms and she flies into them. “But don’t you have some of your notes saved on the computer?”

Nina sniffles into his expensive suit. She’s probably getting snot all over it, but Andrew doesn’t seem to mind.

“Some of them. But I’ll have to redo a lot of it.” And then she turns to look at me accusingly.

I’m done trying to assert my innocence. If she is sure that I threw out her notes, the best thing to do is just apologize. “I’m so sorry, Nina,” I say. “If there’s anything I can do…”

Nina’s eyes lower onto the disaster on the kitchen floor. “You can clean up this disgusting mess you left in my kitchen while I fix this problem.”

With those words, she stomps out of the kitchen. Her footsteps disappear up the stairs as I contemplate how I’m going to clean up all these broken dishes, now intermingled with spilled milk and about twenty grapes rolling around the floor. I stepped on one of them, and it’s all over the bottom of my sneaker.

Andrew lingers behind in the kitchen, shaking his head.

Now that Nina has left, I feel like I should say something. “Listen,” I say, “I wasn’t the one who—”

“I know,” he says before I can get out my protest of innocence. “Nina is… high strung[27]. But she has a good heart.”

“Yeah…”

He pulls off his dark jacket and starts rolling up the sleeves of his crisp white dress shirt. “Let me help you get this cleaned up.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’ll be faster if we work together.”

He goes into the closet by the kitchen and pulls out the mop – I’m shocked he knew exactly where it was. Actually, he knows his way around the closet of cleaning supplies very well. And now I get it. Nina has done things like this before. He’s gotten used to cleaning up her messes.