Page 77 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"If you want to be named on the guardianship, I'll have Diane start it tomorrow," Carrington said. "It can be varied. I wouldn't fight you on it."

"I don't want the girl," Deborah said.

"But you wrote to Family Services."

"I wrote one page and it took me a month. There was nothing in it about taking her anywhere." Deborah took her glasses down out of her hair and into her lap. "Yet you drove out here still thinking I'd come for her."

Carrington had nothing to say after that.

"How is she?" Deborah said.

"She's stopped talking," Carrington said. "Not at school and not to me. It’s been twelve days. She only writes her replies."

Deborah's hands came together in her lap. "Where's Lucy Harper?"

"She left."

"Why?"

Carrington closed her hand around the glass she hadn't drunk from and didn't lift it. "A caseworker asked whether our relationship was personal. I said no. Ms. Harper said yes. I never asked her to lie for me, but I wanted her to. She didn't, and I wrote her a severance check. She wouldn’t take it, though."

Whoever owned the mower up the block finally started it. It ran a while and stopped, and Deborah still hadn't said anything.

"All right," Deborah said.

"I'd like to apologize to you." Carrington looked at the photograph and not at Deborah. "At the cemetery you said something to me about an envelope. I brought an envelope to that birthday and I left before the cake, and the reason was that I couldn't think of anything else. That's not a defense of it."

Deborah didn't help her.

"I didn't speak to my sister for two years. I don't have a reason for that I'd say out loud in this room. And you left your name at my house with a woman who wrote it down properly, and it never came to me. I want you to know that I wouldn't have called you back if it had."

She stopped there. Her mouth was dry. The water was still next to her where Deborah had put it, and she left it alone.

"I'm sorry," Carrington said.

Deborah sat back in her chair. "You've said that very well," she said. "You've been practicing it in the car?"

"Yes."

"That's all right. You still said it." Deborah pushed her glasses back up into her hair. "Nobody in that family has ever said it to me. Clara didn't either. I sat by her bed for three weeks. She never once said she was sorry about the years she let go by with you. I'd have liked to hear it, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise now she's dead."

"What do you want?" Carrington said. "I'll do it."

"When I call that house, I want somebody to call me back."

Carrington waited for the rest of it.

"That’s all," Deborah said. "I don't need a key. I can drive."

"You'll get a call back," Carrington said.

"From you?"

"Yes. From me."

Deborah stood and carried both glasses out to the kitchen, hers empty and Carrington's untouched. Carrington heard the tap run, and then Deborah came back drying her hands on a towel she brought in with her.

"I'll write to Family Services in the morning and take back my statement," she said.