Page 68 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"You'll have a glowing reference letter from me as well." Carrington found a white envelope in the drawer and laid the check inside it flat and left the flap standing open. She put the envelope halfway across the desk and took her hand off it.

"That will be all, Ms. Harper."

Lucy looked down at the envelope for long enough that Carrington could have made another speech. Carrington had two or three ideas ready and said none of them. Lucy didn't reach for it.

"I'll get Grace at three," Lucy said, then she walked out and left the door standing open behind her, the envelope with the check still on the desk.

Carrington heard her walk down the hall and then open the courtyard door. It took a second for it to come back against the frame, the way it always did when somebody shut it without letting go of the handle.

24

LUCY

Lucy started packing at five in the morning, and she only took what she had paid for herself. It was a stupid rule and she knew it, but she kept to it anyway.

Some of it took deciding. Two of the towels on the rail belonged to the house and the third was hers. All three were white, but she knew hers by the fraying along one end. She packed that one and left the other two. The reading lamp stayed on the table and the paperbacks came off the shelf. She left the good pans and took the small dented one she’d brought. She packed three boxes before six.

Wednesday, she had picked Grace up at three. Thursday, she worked the whole day, drop-off to bedtime. Two dinners, two homework sheets, and one morning on the coastal road with Grace counting up how many school days were left before summer. Grace got it wrong twice, and Lucy let her keep at it until she had it.

She packed the clothes loose, rolling everything but the two good shirts. She laid the shoes along one edge with the toes turned out and folded the coat off the hook over the top with the sleeves tucked under. Books at the bottom of the next box, heavy end down. She wrapped the mug in a sweater, since she had nothing else in the cottage to pack it in.

The fifth was the box labeled KITCHEN on the flap. The cardboard had been folded and unfolded so many times it had gone soft along the crease.

That left the top of the dresser. She sorted the random items as she went: a hair tie, two receipts, the plastic comb she had bought at the pharmacy in town in February and used on Grace's hair every morning since. She dropped it in the box, then fished it out again and slid it into her coat.

Then the bed. She stripped it, folded the sheets in half and in half again, and stacked them on the mattress with the pillowcase on top. The throw she laid across the bottom the way it had been on her first afternoon here, when the place had looked like a hotel suite nobody had checked into. It took her less than three minutes from start to finish.

She checked the room once more, opening drawers she had already emptied and running her palm along the back of the closet shelf. Under the bed she found a sock, a pen, and Grace's blue hair elastic.

Then she put the last box on the couch and taped it, then carried it over to the wall with the others. She stayed there a second with the tape in her hand. Then she set it down, washed her face at the sink, and laced her shoes.

Lucy came in from the courtyard. Bettina had the range lit and the back door wedged. The radio was on the shelf, softly playing, and she reached over and shut it off before she said anything.

"Ms. Cole said you're supposed to leave Grace with me this morning," Bettina said. "I'm running her over at ten past."

"Is she back tonight?"

"She's at the office until this evening. That's all I was told."

"Thank you."

Bettina set the flour bin down on the marble and returned to what she was doing. Upstairs, Lucy saw Grace's door was open a hand's width. She was in her uniform on the near corner of the bed, one sock on and the other in her fist. The whale book lay open and face down on the covers beside her, which meant she had gone under the bed for it in the night and hadn't said so.

"Can I come in?"

"Yes," Grace said.

Lucy came in and knelt down on the rug by the bed. From there, Grace's face was level with hers.

"I have to tell you something before school."

Grace waited.

"I'm leaving today. Everything of mine is packed already, and I'm going this morning after you've gone."

For a second, Grace didn’t move at all. Then she brought one knee onto the mattress and wrapped both arms around it and set her chin on top. She answered in the flat polite voice she used at the dinner table. "Okay."

Lucy wanted her to cry. She wanted Grace to make a scene—shouting, throwing the sock across the room, anything at all with heat in it. What she got instead was a stoic seven-year-old, who was sitting up straight and waiting.