Page 51 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"Sundays, mostly."

"Mostly."

"It depends on the week."

Deborah nodded and let it go and turned her cup around by the handle.

Lucy asked, "How long did you know Clara?"

"Since she was twenty-two. She sold me a plant I killed within a month." Deborah put both elbows on the counter. "She couldn't drive. Did you know that? Forty-three years old and she never learned it, so I drove her everywhere. Including to Phoenix Ridge General when she was in labor with that girl upstairs and she made me stop for a sandwich on the way. I drove her to the appointment where they told her she had terminal cancer too. She made me come in and sit down, and I stayed with her for three weeks after that, and I was there her final night."

She turned the cup back the other way.

"And then in January, I stood at that cemetery in the wind with everybody else, and after, I got in my car and drove home. After that, nobody needed me for anything. I'm not family. Not really." She shrugged. "I'm now just a woman who calls the house."

"I'm sorry."

"You're the first person who's asked me about her since she died," Deborah said. She wiped a ring of water off the marble with the side of her hand. "Anybody at all."

"She doesn't take calls at the house. It isn't about you."

"I've met her." Deborah laughed at that, once, and it changed her whole face. Lucy liked her so much in that half second that she had to look down at the counter.

"Are you happy here?" Deborah said.

"Yes."

"Good. Is she?"

Lucy took longer over that one than she should have. "I think she's better than she was in February," she said.

"I'd take that." Deborah smiled into her cup. Then she said, "Clara used to say her sister could love anybody in the world, as long as they stayed on paper."

Lucy set both hands on the counter, one on each side of her cup, and left them there. Her face was hot.

"She wasn't being unkind. She told it at parties." Deborah checked the clock on the oven. "How do you manage the school run from out here, with the coast road the way it is."

"I leave at ten past eight."

"That's what I'd do."

Lucy stood up and took the milk out of the refrigerator and held it there a second and put it back on the shelf.

Grace came back downstairs with the book held against her chest and climbed up on the stool between them. Lucy picked up her coffee and took a few sips, but it had gone cold.

By ten past five, Deborah stood and already had her keys in her hand.

"But you haven't seen my room yet," Grace said.

Deborah stopped and looked over at Lucy, and Lucy said it was okay. The two of them went upstairs. Overhead, Lucy heard Grace talking without stopping to take a breath. Lucy stayed in the kitchen and washed the two cups and the press, then set them upside down on the rack.

They came down after five minutes. Grace was still talking on the stairs, and Deborah was answering her in the same voice she'd used at the door, no louder, taking every part of it seriously.

"She's put the whale at the end of the windowsill," Deborah said. "Where she can see it from the bed."

"It's the biggest one," Grace said.

Deborah put her glasses on to find the keys she already had in her own hand, and Grace walked her out with the book still crossed over her chest.