Page 83 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"Some of it's hers to keep and decide who to share it with," Lucy said. "I'm not going to betray her trust. She'll tell you herself or she won't."

Carrington's hand slid an inch along the marble and stopped. She didn't ask again. "Was it hard for her? Getting it out."

"I could tell she had a lot of it ready," Lucy said. "It wasn't hard for her to speak it. But it was hard for me to hear it."

It would have been so easy to tell her what Grace had said. Weeks of it in that house with a child who wouldn't speak; she could only imagine how difficult that must have been for Carrington. Lucy swallowed the words because it was Grace’s decision to share, not hers.

Carrington nodded once without looking directly at her. “I want to offer you something, but I haven’t figured out how to ask it. I’ll just go ahead and try anyway.” Carrington leaned her weight forward onto her hands, which were planted on the island. “Bettina can drive Grace into town every other Saturday to come see you, and you can have her for the afternoon. I won’t be anywhere near you both. It will just be the two of you. The trust can pay you at the same rate.”

She stopped. Lucy waited for more, but Carrington stood behind her island with her mouth shut. In all the time Lucy had known Carrington, she had never once watched her catch herself halfway through a thought.

"Will you see her again?" Carrington said. "That's what I really want to know. The rest of it was me getting out of asking it."

Lucy looked at the fruit bowl instead of looking at Carrington. "I don't know," she said.

"That's fair."

"It isn't fair. It's just true." Lucy made herself look up and meet Carrington’s eyes. "She asked me the same thing the morning I left and I gave her the same answer. I've had two weeks to come up with a better one. I haven't. If I start showing up every other Saturday and then I take a live-in job in another town, I’d have abandoned her twice. She would survive it and she shouldn't have to."

"No," Carrington said.

"So I'm not going to stand here and say yes to you because it's the easier word."

Carrington took that standing still.

"You'll tell me either way," she said, and she didn't put extra pressure on her.

"I'll make sure of it."

"Thank you." Carrington pushed both hands into her pockets and left them there. "I wrote your reference letter already," she said. "Diane has it and she'll put it in the mail tomorrow. You should know I included the reason I dismissed you. It would look worse if I had left it out, and you would get a lot of questions about that. I don't want you to have to deal with that on top of job searching and interviews. I recommend that you read it before you hand it to anybody."

"All right."

"You'll want it for Ashworth."

"I already put my name back in," Lucy said. "The week before last."

"Then the letter is late. I'm sorry," Carrington said.

"It is."

"Thank you for coming out here," Carrington said.

"I came for Grace."

"I know you did."

Lucy turned the handle behind her and pushed the door half open with her back, then paused.

"I spent a week telling myself you'd have taken the check if I'd written a bigger number on it," Carrington said.

The cold came in around her legs. Lucy had four or five answers to that and she gave none of them. Lucy knew that Carrington knew, deep down, that it was never about the money.

Carrington picked the glass up off the marble and carried it to the sink, the wine mostly untouched, and she stood over it with her back to Lucy.

Outside, the low path lights were on down both sides of the gravel. Bettina had the car in the same place with the engine still idling and the headlights off.

Lucy walked down over the stones and out onto the gravel. Nobody came out after her.