Page 53 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"She's fine. She's making pancakes."

"Get the reply back to me by Friday," Diane said, "and then you don't have to think about it again." She hung up.

Carrington turned the phone over on the counter. She had said no to Diane before she decided to. Her ear was hot where the phone had been against it, and she rubbed it until she made herself stop.

Lucy turned the pancake over and it was the right color underneath. "Deborah Mensah came here Thursday," she said. "She brought a box of Grace's things from Clara's house."

Carrington took a cup down out of the cabinet. She had last seen Deborah Mensah at the cemetery; she was wearing a long black coat cut for a much taller woman.

"She did the whale voice," Grace said animatedly.

"There was a picture book in the box." Lucy slid the pancake onto a plate. "Apparently, Clara used to read it to her."

Grace turned around on the stool with the spoon still in her hand. "Deborah does it the same way Mom did it."

"Is that right?" Carrington said.

Grace turned back and beat the batter hard enough to slop some of it over the side.

The kitchen smelled like hot flour and butter burning at the edge of the pan. Carrington held the empty cup and watched them make a second pancake. Grace tipped the bowl over, and Lucy quickly reached out a hand to catch it before it spilled.

Lucy stacked the two pancakes on a plate and cut them into quarters, then handed the plate to Grace. "Take that outside to the table before it gets cold."

Grace got down off the stool and carried the plate out through the courtyard door with both hands, keeping her eyes trained on it, and sat down at the metal table in the sun with her back to the house.

"How long was she here? Deborah, I mean," Carrington said.

"About an hour and a half."

"Where were you all?"

"In here, mostly. Grace took her upstairs to see her room."

Carrington looked up at the ceiling over the island. Grace's room was directly above it. "What did she ask you?"

"Ordinary things. She wanted to know whether Grace sleeps through the night." Lucy laid the spatula across the top of the pan. "And she asked me to tell her if you weren't all right."

"If I weren't all right," she repeated detachedly.

"I told her I would," Lucy said.

"Did she go into any of the other rooms up there?"

"No."

"Did she ask about me?"

Lucy ran the water into the bowl and left it soaking in the sink. "No. She asked how long it takes me to get Grace to school on the coast road."

Out in the courtyard, Grace had propped up her feet on the second chair and was eating her pancake with her hands. Carrington looked back at Lucy. "Did she ask you for anything?"

"No." Lucy dried her hands on the towel over the oven door. "She called the house in March. She left a message with somebody, but nobody ever called her back."

Nadia would have written it on a slip and put it in the pile Carrington never asked to see.

"I let her in the house myself." Lucy took the pan off the heat and left it there. "I should have called the office to ask first, though."

"You didn't do anything wrong."