Page 70 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

Lucy stopped with the braid strands crossed over one another in her hands and held them there and counted to four. Grace sat still and didn't turn around. Then Lucy continued, over and under, right hand and then left, down past her collar.

"Are you ever coming back?" Grace asked.

"I don't know."

Grace's head stayed exactly where it was under her hands. "You could say yes. Everyone else does."

"I could. But I won’t lie to you and promise something I don’t know. " Lucy worked it down to the end, fixed the blue elastic on, and turned the last twist under with her thumb.

Grace reached up and ran her hand down the braid to the bottom of it and let go. “Thank you.”

Lucy stood. Her knees had fallen asleep under her, and she leaned a hand on the mattress until the feeling came into them again. Grace got up and took the gray rabbit off the pillow by the middle and held him out at arm's length toward her.

Lucy took him. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Grace said.

Lucy held the rabbit against her chest while Grace worked her arms into her cardigan and buttoned it up wrong before redoing them. Then Grace stopped with one button still open, went to the bed and moved the whale book off the covers to under her pillow.

Grace ate half a bowl of cereal, and Bettina stood by the door with the car keys in hand and her coat on, patiently waiting. At ten past eight, Grace hoisted the bag on her shoulder and walked out over the stones.

She stopped and turned around. "Bye, Lucy."

"Bye, Grace."

She climbed in. Bettina took her around the fountain and down through the hedge and through the wrought-iron gates. Lucy watched until they disappeared from view, then started walking along the path toward the cottage.

Lucy walked each box out one at a time and stacked them two boxes high by the fountain. It took her twelve trips in total, and by the fourth, her arms had started shaking. It was the box with all her books. She waited it out in the courtyard with the box pressed against her hip, then carried it over and set it down with the rest.

She walked in the kitchen and wrote a note on the pad next to the house phone. Make sure her closet clicks shut or she won’t sleep. Read her two pages from a book. Her nightlight automatically clicks off at four, so if she wakes up later from a nightmare, she might not call out.

Lucy paused and read through the note, then added another line: She won’t eat in front of people, so leave the plate in front of her and do something else. She’ll finish her food then.

She tore the page out along the perforation, folded it in half, and stood it up like a triangle against the blue binder with the meal plans on the counter. She took the cottage key off her key ring and placed it down beside the note.

Lucy waited outside, sitting on the rim of the fountain with Grace’s gray rabbit in her lap. She was absentmindedly stroking its ears. At nine exactly, the car pulled up and stopped short of her boxes. The driver was a woman of about sixty in a fleece with the company name across the chest.

She got out, looked at the six boxes, and then up at the house behind them. "Is that everything?"

"That's it."

The driver loaded four into the trunk and laid the other two across the back seat, and Lucy climbed in beside them with her bag on her knees. When they drove around the fountain and down between the hedges, Lucy turned in her seat to take a final look at the house as the gates closed behind her.

25

CARRINGTON

Carrington cut the toast corner to corner and then across the other way and set the four triangles on the plate with the long edges out. She had rinsed the green cup, filled it with juice, and placed it by the plate. She walked to the far end of the kitchen and sorted through the mail. Behind her, the stool legs dragged on the tile.

The note was still against the blue binder where it had been left, torn off the pad by the house phone, folded in half and stood up like a tent. That had been eleven nights ago. Since then, Carrington had shut the closet door until it clicked and read Grace two pages and never three, even the night Grace held the book open at the third page and waited.

Carrington opened a letter from the school. "There's a sheet in here about the aquarium," she said. "You're on the bus with Kayla."

Bettina slid a pan into the oven and shut it and kept to her own end of the marble.

The plate scraped on the marble, then Carrington couldn’t hear anything back there but Grace chewing. She put the aquarium sheet face down on the marble and opened the next envelope.

At eight, she washed her hands and got the comb off the shelf. Grace climbed off the stool and sat down on the floor in front of it with her back turned without having to be asked. Carrington lifted Grace's hair off her neck and combed it out from the ends. She divided three sections at the crown and worked her way down. She reached the collar, and the whole thing slid loose in her fingers.