Chapter 2 — The Woman I Let In

LYDIA'S POV

I remember the morning I hired Nina like I remember most mornings from that season of my life.

It was an early morning on Thursday, the city outside our bedroom window was still grey and the coffee hadn't finished brewing yet, David was still asleep, one arm thrown over his side of the bed, breathing like a man with nothing on his conscience.

I stood in the kitchen in my work clothes, bag already on my shoulder, and wrote the note.

“Nina arrives at 9. Spare key is in the drawer by the door. Alarm code is 4412. Cleaning products are under the sink. Wifi password on the fridge.”

I read it back once, added the wifi password. Folded it and left it on the counter where he couldn't miss it.

I had told David the night before that the agency was sending someone. I picked up my coffee, drank half of it standing at the counter, rinsed the cup and left.

I didn't think about the house again until eleven when I texted David to ask if Nina had arrived.

He read the message, didn't reply for twenty minutes. When he did, all he sent was —

“She's here. House looks good”.

I remember staring at that message at my desk and feeling nothing except mild relief. Someone was keeping the house running, i could focus on work. Problem solved.

I was so good at solving the wrong problems.

I got home that evening at half past eight.

The apartment hit me the moment I pushed the door open. Clean, like really clean, not the lazy clean I did on weekends when I had twenty minutes and no energy, but the deep kind. Corners, baseboards. The top of the refrigerator where grease always collected and I never had time to reach. The whole place smelled faintly of something warm and citrus and I stood in the hallway and just breathed it in.

It felt like a home again.

David was on the couch. Same position as always, same phone in hand, but he looked up when I came in and something about his face was slightly different, lighter maybe. I didn't examine it then. I was tired and the house smelled good and there was food on the stove and I was grateful.

"She's good," David said.

"The agency recommended her highly," I said, dropping my bag and moving toward the kitchen.

I lifted the lid on the pot. Steam rose, rice and vegetables, simple and warm. I stood over it for a moment longer than necessary. I had a mix of Joy and guilt.

A stranger had come into my home and cooked dinner and cleaned my floors and made the air smell like something worth coming back to. I felt grateful in a way that embarrassed me slightly, that a stranger had done what I hadn't been able to do in months.

I served myself a plate and sat at the table. David came and sat across from me, we ate together for the first time in almost two weeks.

I remember thinking, maybe this is what we needed, maybe this small practical thing, taking one weight off both of us, would give us room to breathe again, to find each other again inside this apartment that had started to feel like two people existing in parallel lines that never touched.

I was building hope out of clean baseboards and warm rice.

That was how desperate I had become.

It was later that night, already in bed with my laptop open, that the agency sent through the staff profile for our records.

I clicked it open without thinking, filing it away. The photo loaded and I looked at her the way you look at anyone — briefly, registering her profile and looks, moving on.

Nina Lawson. Twenty nine, Brown hair, soft face, warm eyes looking directly at the camera with the particular steadiness of someone who knew exactly how they wanted to be seen.

I forwarded it to David the way I would forward any household information, he shared the home, he should have the file.

His phone buzzed on the coffee table across the room.

He picked it up. Glanced at it the way you glance at something you expect to be nothing.

Then he went still.

Like a man whose mind was trying to process what he had just seen. I watched it happen from across the room and I watched him recover from it, rearranging his expression before he looked up.

"Nina Lawson," he said, quietly, almost to himself.

"What about her?" I asked.

He blinked, looked at me. His eyes moved swiftly before I could understand it

"Nothing," he said. "Just reading the name."

He put the phone down, picked up the remote and turned the volume up two clicks.

I looked at him for a moment longer than I meant to, then I looked back at my screen.

I closed the profile, filed it away and went back to my work documents, the apartment was clean and the night was quiet, I had absolutely no idea that the woman in that photograph already knew my husband's name before I ever called the agency.

No idea that she had been waiting for a way back into his life long before I handed her the key to our front door.

I wrote the address on a note and left the key in the drawer and went to work and made it so easy.

God, I made it so easy.