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Rose grabbed her cell and called her financial planner. She had a financial planner these days after beingthe kind of woman who’d worked herself to the bone to get where she was. She’d never received a handout.
“Good afternoon, Becca,” Rose said with an uncertain smile. “I have a proposition. It’s up to you to tell me if I’m crazy or not.”
“Uh-oh,” Becca said. She was accustomed to Rose’s crazy ideas. She was accustomed to advising her to slow down and think.“Let’s hear it.”
“I want to buy an old and historic house in Siasconset,” Rose said. “I want to buy it and flip it and transform it into an iconic bed-and-breakfast or hotel.” She grimaced. “Tell me I’m insane.”
Becca laughed. “I’ll run the numbers and call you back. Send the details?”
“It’s the old Grayson Estate,” Rose said, her voice shaking. “Five hundred and fifty thousand asking price.”
Becca let out another bark of laughter. Rose wondered if she saw right through her. Or had Becca told her financial adviser too much about her past?
“There’s never a dull moment with you, Rose,” Becca said. “I’ll call you back soon.”
They hung up. Rose stood alone at the edge of a property that still seemed to whisperI know all about you.It terrified Rose. But it terrified her so much that she felt she had to shut it up once and for all. And the only way to do that was through ownership. It was suddenly and tremendously clear.
Chapter Three
June 1993
Rose soon discovered that babysitting for a wealthy family like the Waldens was akin to isolating yourself from the outside world.
That first night, after the children went to bed, Rose sat by the window of her bedroom and gazed through the darkness, trying to make out some semblance of smoke from the other side of the forest. But the helicopter had come and gone; the fire had been put out. All the chaos of the early evening had faded. Even the floors in the Walden mansion beneath her were quiet, presumably with Mr. and Mrs. Walden hidden away somewhere, enjoying very expensive cocktails and preparing for bed.Did they still love each other?Rose wondered. Had they ever loved each other? It was sometimes hard for Rose to imagine that very wealthy people loved anything but the money they currently had and the money they planned to one day earn.
Rose had more or less concluded she would neverhave money. The only wealthy lifestyle she would ever enjoy was like this—as a babysitter or a maid or some other assistant to a wealthy person. She would always be wealthy-adjacent or just plain poor on her own.
But that was okay. Especially now as she slid herself beneath the comforter of the gorgeous double bed upon sheets thicker and lusher than anything she’d ever slept on. She remembered an expression she’d heard once. Five hundred-count sheets? One thousand-count sheets? She didn’t know what any of it meant, but she assumed that was what she dealt with now. A status of sleep that the poor were never allowed to understand.
She drifted off to sleep immediately and woke up at three thirty. Evie was at her door complaining of nightmares, and then Evie was in her bed, sprawling across her, rotating back and forth.
It amazed Rose that Evie had already trusted her enough to get into bed with her for comfort. Then again, Rose assumed that Evie had always known not to bother her parents with anything like that.
But what had Evie done before Rose got there? Had she forced herself through her fears alone—at the age of four?
Rose had known not to bother her parents with that kind of thing, too.. The little ones weren’t welcome in bed with Mom and Dad; they took refuge with Rose. But Rose had never taken refuge in anyone.
Rose wasn’t even sure if her parents really loved her. Maybe there wasn’t enough love to go around when you had so many children and so little money.
It was easy to make excuses for her parents. Maybe that meant she loved them. Perhaps it meant she was foolish.
Sometimes she believed that having so many childrenand so little money was selfish. But that was a topic for another day.
The first full day at the Walden Estate meant throwing herself through the set schedules of the four children and trying—and usually failing—to keep up. Evie was quite needy and sleepy; Hogarth was braggadocious and eager to regale her with the facts he’d learned from his various tutors; Kate wanted to do her makeup and paint her fingernails; and Hamilton just wanted to run, run, run as far down the beach as he could. Rose struggled to keep up with him yet respected his frantic energy, deciding that he was an eight-year-old in the way of all eight-year-olds. It didn’t matter that he was wealthy. He wanted to get dirty. He wanted to be wild and get into scrapes.
But that first night left Rose exhausted and homesick. After a shower, she sat in her bedroom and tried to write in her diary. That was when she realized she hadn’t asked about her phone privileges. When would she have a chance to ask Mrs. Walden about calling home? She hardly saw her. It seemed clear that invading her and Mr. Walden’s personal space was a no-go. This was based only on her hunch and the facial expression of Zachary, who’d caught her spying that first night and decided not to tell.
Why?Rose was left to wonder. Were the Waldens so notoriously cruel that it was better not to open a can of worms when they were around?
Once or twice, Rose allowed herself to wonder,Why me? Why did they pluck a girl from Mississippi and bring her here?
It was Rose’s fourth afternoon at the Walden Estate. Hogarth’s tennis teacher had come and gone, and she andthe four children were spread out on the beach, their hair flapping, salt water drying and leaving crystals across their tanned arms and legs. Evie shot up and down the beach, her feet flying so that white sand flashed out behind her, and Hamilton threw stone after stone into the water and watched them splash.
That was when Rose heard the voices coming down the walkway.
Rose turned to peer out at Mr. and Mrs. Walden plus two men who looked so similar they had to be related. Rose’s stomach twisted with the realization that one of them was Zachary—the man who hadn’t told on her for spying. The other one was his brother, then. The one who was involved in the fire.
The four of them evoked wealth and prosperity. They evoked summering in Europe and skiing and eating oysters or whatever else rich people did. They had nothing to do with Rose’s entire existence, which made them like an entirely different species to her.
