Page 80 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"How long has she been in there?"

"Probably since five, like usual. She always comes out at half past eight for Grace’s bedtime routine." Bettina lifted the parking brake. "Go through the courtyard. I'll be here."

Lucy crossed the stones and went in through the courtyard door, keeping the handle down until it shut fully so it stayed silent.

As she walked through the kitchen, Lucy noticed that the blue binder was gone, no longer on the counter, and the weekly meal plan now hung on the refrigerator with a magnet. Somebody had left the mail stacked on the end of the marble. Lucy picked it up and had the stack halfway to the drawer before she stopped and set it back exactly where she'd found it.

The study door was firmly closed with the light under it. Lucy knocked on it and took a step back off the threshold to give Carrington some space. It was a few seconds before Carrington opened the door. She was still holding a pen, and she just looked at Lucy with a blank expression on her face. She didn't say anything at all.

"Grace wrote a letter to me," Lucy said. "Bettina brought it into town this afternoon and drove me back out here. She did that on her own and said that you didn't know. I'm telling you that first so nobody has to find it out later or get in trouble."

Carrington's hand stayed on the door.

"I'd like a half hour upstairs with Grace. If you want to say no, say it now and I'll go back down and Bettina will drop me back off at home."

"Go up."

"Do you want to come with me?"

"No." Carrington moved out of the doorway, and then she said, "She doesn't speak anymore. I didn't want you to walk into that without knowing."

"Bettina told me already."

Lucy went upstairs. The door to Grace's room was open the width of a hand. She knocked twice on the frame and pushed it wide enough to see in.

Grace sat with her back against the bed and a reading folder open across her knees. She looked up, and then she was on her feet so fast the folder fell off her knees and landed face down the carpet.

"Can I come in?" Lucy asked.

Grace nodded twice. Lucy sat down on the rug with her shoulders against the wall, which put her lower than Grace. After a second, Grace slid onto the floor, too, closer than she needed to be.

"Bettina brought me your letter," Lucy said.

Grace watched her.

"So I'm going to answer it." Lucy turned her hands palm up on her knees. "You didn't do it. Not what you said to the lady, and not anything else. You could have told her anything at all that day, and I'd still have gone that Friday."

Grace reached up onto the bed for a pad with a pen clipped onto it. She handled it like something she'd been using all her life. Lucy let her do it and said nothing about her silence.

Grace wrote, crossed something out, wrote again, and turned the pad around.

Then what was it?

Lucy had put the words together on the drive out. None of them were any use down here with Grace sitting right next to her.

"It was between me and your aunt," she said. "The lady asked the two of us the same question. Your aunt gave one answer and I gave a different one, and your aunt let me go that same afternoon over it. That’s all it was, and none of it was because of you."

Grace didn't write anything down.

"It’s not my place to tell you what the lady asked us. If you want to know, you can ask your aunt. She may or may not tell you, though. I can’t force her to do something she doesn’t want to do.”

"Okay," Grace said.

Lucy's hands closed on her own knees. One word out of Grace’s mouth after sixteen days, and all Lucy wanted to put her face down on the rug and howl. She wanted Grace to say it again, right now, and she made herself sit still and not ask for it. She looked at Grace again and studied her face. Her cheeks were still round and soft with baby fat, but there was a knowing look in her eyes.

"You knew," Lucy said.

"I knew a long time before the lady came." Grace's voice came out low and scratchy, and she stopped and cleared it. "You go upstairs at night. The third stair makes a noise. You always miss that one and then you get the top one instead. And she says your name in the kitchen differently than she says it when there's people around."