Page 100 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

The line went dead. Carrington put the phone down on the envelope. She didn't move until her leg went dead under her. Then she got up and started the Hollis report over from the top.

Deborah came at five with a paper sack of green beans from her yard and her reading glasses pushed up on her head. By half past, she had dumped the beans into Lucy's bowl on the island and was breaking the ends off into her palm. Lucy had bought that bowl in town with her first paycheck from the agency. It was yellow and too big for any cupboard in the house, so it stayed on the counter.

Carrington shucked the corn badly. Silk stuck to her sleeves and clogged the sink, and some of it was in her hair.

"Grace read Clara's letter this afternoon," she said.

Deborah snapped a bean. "All of it?"

"Both pages."

"Good." Deborah dropped the ends in the sack. Then, without looking up, she said, "Did Clara say anything about me?"

Carrington knew that letter line by line. "No."

Deborah nodded and kept breaking beans. She got through a handful before she stopped with one in her fingers.

"Nothing at all?"

"It's written to me. Everything else in it is about Grace."

"I sat in that room with her every day for three weeks." Deborah tossed the bean in whole. "She'd have thought I already knew."

"It's Grace's letter now," Carrington said. "If you want to read it, you can ask her."

"No. Leave it with her."

Carrington pulled the last of the husk off an ear and waited. Deborah broke four or five more beans. The corners of her mouth had pulled in tight, and she didn't look up. Carrington wiped the silk off her hands and walked around the island. She put a hand on Deborah's shoulder and left it there. Deborah let her.

"She told me about those fish," Deborah said finally. "Years ago, before Grace. She said you cried over one of them and couldn't tell anybody which one it was."

"Constance."

"That's the one."

Grace padded into the kitchen in her socks and poured herself some juice. "She still can't tell which one Constance is," she said to Deborah, and climbed onto a stool. She spun her glass on the marble. "Deborah, can I come see the birthday picture?"

"You've seen it."

"I want to see it again." Grace kept spinning it. "Aunt Carrie can bring me."

Deborah stopped snapping and waited for Carrington to answer.

Carrington had spent an hour in Deborah's good chair with that photograph on the wall across from her. She didn't want to stand in front of it with Grace.

"Tuesday," she said.

A little before six, tires crunched on the gravel out front.

"That's your wife," Deborah said, without looking up.

Carrington carried the husks to the compost pail by the window and saw Lucy's car coming up past the fountain. The stuffed gray rabbit sat up on the dashboard, one ear faded almost white from the sun. Carrington's shoulders dropped an inch. Lucy walked in from the courtyard with sand in the cuffs of her jeans and dropped her bag and her keys on the counter.

"Nobody talk to me until I've eaten something," Lucy said, and fished a bean out of the bowl.

"That's raw," Deborah said.

"I know it's raw." Lucy ate it anyway. "The twins found a jellyfish. They carried it up the beach in a bucket to show me, and then they wanted to take it home in the car."