Page 26 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"That's fair," Lucy said.

"So I made the list myself. Somebody had to," Carrington said.

Lucy looked at her for a long moment, hands loose at her sides, doing nothing at all. In every version of Lucy that Carrington had ever watched—wiping a counter, stealing a fry, worrying the corner of a dish towel—her hands were always doing something. They were doing nothing now.

"There's one more thing." Carrington's voice found its shortest register again, three or four words at a time, the ground she stood on best. "Page six. If you leave tomorrow—no reason given, none required—the trust pays you for twelve months. It's already funded. You could be out that gate tonight and you would not be stranded anywhere, by anyone, ever again."

Lucy took a slow breath and let it go. "I've been paid to go away before," she said. "I'm not doing it in advance."

Carrington waited for whatever came after that, but Lucy just stood there. For the first time Carrington could remember, she had nothing to say back. She wanted her hand on Lucy's wrist. She wanted it the same as she had on the gravel path, in the rain. She stopped herself before she reached it and laid her hand flat on the blotter instead.

She held it out again, palm up, and Lucy set the pages into it.

Eleven pages didn't tear the way a single sheet did. Carrington gripped the stack in both hands and pulled. The staple held, then gave, and the top few pages tore clean through. But the rest held on, and she had to wrench at it a second time, harder, before the whole stack finally came apart in her hands, lower down the page than she'd aimed and far louder than she'd expected. The two halves came away uneven, one wider than the other. Page nine was in there somewhere, torn straight through the clause she'd spent an hour deciding what to say.

She set both halves down on the blotter, side by side. Her hands weren't steady. She hadn't planned to do it, and she had no answer ready when she looked for one. The sound of the tear was still the only thing in the room.

Lucy looked at the two halves and didn't touch them. Then she pushed her sleeves down over her wrists—something Carrington had never once seen her do, not on the coldest morning at Cormorant Point—and turned for the door.

"I'll have Grace up at seven," she said, and went.

Carrington stood at the desk until the sound of gravel under Lucy's shoes stopped somewhere past the hedge. Then she sat, pulled a clean sheet toward her, and reached for a pen.

After a while, she slid the sheet back onto the stack, unopened, and let it be. She gathered the torn halves off the blotter and opened the drawer to put them somewhere out of sight. Clara's letter was already in there, where it had been since Diane Bell sent it up to the house after the funeral, a cream envelope with Carrington's name on the front in her sister's handwriting, the flap still gummed shut.

She laid the torn halves on top of it and shut the drawer.

12

LUCY

The parents came in through the wrong door. Somebody had chained the front entrance shut from the inside, so all of them had to come around by the flagpole and up the corridor past the trophy case. At twenty past eight, the line of them still ran back along the wall, coats over their arms, one man steering a stroller with a travel mug held in his teeth.

Lucy was sitting in row four. She'd taken the two seats closest to the aisle and draped her coat across the second one before the room filled. She had been sitting in the folding chair long enough that the front edge of it had printed a red line across the backs of her legs.

The multipurpose room smelled like floor wax and lemon peel. The risers were up at the front in three tiers, and above them a paper banner ran most of the width of the stage with THINGS WE FOUND OUT cut out one letter at a time and glued on by seven-year-olds, the G sitting lower than the other letters around it. Renata Ford stood at the end of the first row with her clipboard held flat against her chest, counting heads.

Her phone buzzed against her leg at eight thirty-one.

"Lucy. It's Nadia." Something clicked twice on the other end. "Does it finish by nine-fifteen?"

"No," Lucy said.

"How far off?" Nadia said.

"Nine-forty." Lucy leaned forward to hear her voice under the room. "There are eleven classes and third grade is second from last. Renata puts the little ones first so they can go back to their classrooms before they get too rambunctious."

"Right," Nadia said.

The clicking stopped.

"Is that a problem?" Lucy asked.

"Ms. Cole was flying out at nine-fifteen," Nadia said. "The state geologist walks the eastern parcel at one o'clock and she doesn't come back for another six weeks. I've canceled the plane. Which door does she come in? There's a chain on the front one."

"The one by the flagpole," Lucy said. "It's propped open with a bucket."

"Thank you," Nadia said, and was gone.