Page 23 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"The car comes at eight-forty for the eastern parcel, Ms. Cole." Nadia didn't look up from the pages. "Devika wants ten minutes before the site visit. She'd rather you saw the fault line fix yourself before Thursday."

"We’ll meet in the car," Carrington said.

"She'll ask to talk in a conference room," Nadia said.

"Let her ask." Carrington turned the top page over without reading it.

Nadia wrote that down. Then she pulled the outgoing tray toward her, knocked the stack level against the desk, and swept the cream envelope up with the rest of it.

"Leave that," Carrington said.

Nadia set it back exactly where it had been. "Diane's office, or the family office?"

"Neither," Carrington said.

"Legal, then," Nadia said.

"No," Carrington said.

Nadia's pen didn't stop moving. In six years, Carrington had told her a great many things once and never had to say them twice and had paid accordingly for the privilege. This morning, for the first time, she didn't begrudge a dollar of it.

"Breakfast in here or downstairs with Grace?" Nadia asked.

"Downstairs," Carrington said. "And keep tonight clear. All of it, past six."

"It's already clear," Nadia said.

"Keep it that way," Carrington said.

Nadia let herself out and pulled the door closed behind her, leaving a hand's width of hallway light across the rug. Outside, the courtyard was still gray. The sun hadn't cleared the ridge yet, and the low lights along the path were still on, though it was light enough now that they weren't doing much. No lights were on yet in the kitchen wing across the way. Carrington held her hands out over the desk and turned them palm-up. She'd slept in this chair twice in two nights, upright, badly, yet her hands were surprisingly steady.

She'd read all eleven pages through once more at four that morning, start to finish. One sentence on page seven had gone through four iterations before she stopped rewriting it. Afterward, she put the red pen down and looked at the sentence long after it was needed. She slid the envelope into the drawer, under the day's mail, and went up to change her shirt.

That night, Grace was in bed by eight, the closet shut and latched, the amber nightlight already glowing in its socket by the door, curtains pulled to the same gap they'd been left at every night since April. The fox book sat spine-down on the nightstand, open where they'd left off. Carrington sat on the edge of the mattress and read four pages in the overly careful voice she still hadn't managed to lose, mimicking the sound of the seagull badly enough to be self-conscious about it, and kept going anyway.

"That's the end of the chapter," Carrington said.

"Okay," Grace said.

She closed the book and set it back where it had been. Next to it, gone soft at the folds from being carried around in a coat pocket for four days, was Grace's strip of paper from the tide pools.

"Do you think the orange one is still there?" Grace asked, eyes on the ceiling. "The one that might not have counted."

"It counts," Carrington said. "And it's probably still there. The count changes. Some die, new ones move into the same spot. So if you went back tomorrow, you'd get a different number, and it would still be the right one."

Grace considered that with the seriousness she gave everything involving numbers. "Nineteen was right on Sunday, though."

"Nineteen was right on Sunday," Carrington confirmed.

"Okay," Grace said, her small shoulders dropping lower from the certainty.

"Do you have your line for the school assembly?" Carrington asked.

"Yes," Grace said.

"Will you say it for me?" Carrington asked.

"No," Grace said.