Page 50 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"Your things. Your mom's house sold and they're packing the rest of it Monday. Some of what's in there isn't anybody's but yours." Deborah tipped it so Grace could see the top. "You can go through it now, or you can shove it under your bed for years until you’re ready to look through it. Both are fine."

Deborah set the box on the kitchen island. Grace climbed up on the stool and took the things out one at a time. She laid each item flat in front of her before she reached in again.

Deborah kept her hands in her jacket pockets and looked once around the kitchen and the courtyard past them.

"Claire never came up here," she said. "Not one time."

Lucy filled the kettle and stayed at the sink where she could see them both.

Grace turned over a shoebox with two rubber bands around it and set it down without opening it and laid a swimming badge still stapled to its card beside it. Then she took out a picture book, soft at the corners, a whale on the front of it in a green sea.

Grace laid both hands on the cover.

"This is Marguerite," Grace said. "She's too big for the boat. She's too big for the boat and she keeps saying so, but nobody hears her the first time. And then at the end they all get out and walk." She turned it around and opened it in the middle. "My mom did the low voice for her. She did it too loud. She did it in the store one time, and a lady came around the shelf to look at us."

"I am the biggest thing here," Deborah said, down in her chest.

Grace laughed with her mouth open. Then she read four lines out loud herself, got two of them wrong, and Deborah didn't stop her. Inside the front cover, somebody had written Grace, four in blue ink, and the year.

Then Grace shut the book on her thumb and told Deborah about Tuesday. About the restaurant on the harbor where you stand outside until they shout your name, and the girl called Pilar whose grandmother owns a boat that leaks, and the tank by the door with four lobsters in it where one of them sits on the others, and how you can pick one but then somebody eats it, so she didn't.

"Who took you down there?" Deborah said.

"Aunt Carrington. And Lucy."

Lucy could call Nadia and have her put it through to Carrington at the office. But what would she even say? A woman named Deborah Mensah is in the kitchen with Grace and making her laugh? That would only invite more questions from Carrington, questions Lucy wasn’t sure she could answer. She set the kettle on its base and pressed the switch.

"I’m making coffee," she said, "if you have some time."

Deborah looked at her for about a second and a half, and Lucy said it again before she could stop herself.

"I'll take one," Deborah said.

Grace carried the box and the book up to her room to arrange everything where she wanted it, which she said would take a while.

Lucy made the coffee in the press and brought two cups over. Lucy opted to sit in the stool next to Deborah instead of across from her, then wrapped both hands around her cup, feeling the warmth seep into her skin.

"I called in March," Deborah said. "I left my name with a woman who wrote down my message very carefully, but I don’t blame her for it. It's a big house. Things get lost."

"I never saw a message."

"No." Deborah drank some of her coffee. "Does Grace sleep through the night?"

"Most nights. She wakes up if there's bad weather."

"She did that at four." Deborah turned her cup a quarter turn on the marble. "Clara used to bring her in and put her in the bed and then lie awake the rest of it herself. In the morning she'd tell me she'd handled it beautifully."

"That's about right."

"And she eats?"

"She eats like she's been paid by the plate," Lucy said. "She just won't do it in front of anybody."

Deborah put her head back and looked at the ceiling for a second. Then she looked down at her coffee and was fine. "How long have you been living down in the cottage?"

"Since February."

"That's a long time in one room," Deborah said. "Do you get days off?"