Chapter 3 — The Shift

LYDIA’S POV

It started small, everything that destroys you always does.

The first week Nina came, she was perfect. Quiet, efficient, invisible in the way a good help is invisible but present enough to keep things running, absent enough that you forgot she was there.

She arrived at nine, left by four, and the house she left behind was always better than the one she walked into.

I noticed her work. I didn't notice her.

That was my first mistake.

By the second week something had shifted but I couldn't put a name to it yet. The way the kitchen was arranged slightly differently than I kept it, small things, the mugs moved to a different shelf, the dish soap on the wrong side of the sink.

I told myself she had a system and her system worked so I said nothing.

Then she started cooking more elaborate meals.

Not just rice and vegetables, proper dinners, it took time and intention. Grilled fish with seasoning I didn't recognize, stews that had been simmering for hours. I came home to the smell of them and ate without complaint because they were good and I was tired and cooking was one less thing I had to think about.

David ate with appetite I hadn't seen from him in months.

I noticed that, but I didn’t attach anything to it.

I had come home early once, a rare thing in those weeks, and I found Nina in the living room rearranging the bookshelf, not dusting it, rearranging it, moving things around with the confidence of someone redecorating a space that belonged to them.

I stood in the doorway and watched her for a moment.

"Nina," I said. "Can you leave the shelf as it is please, I have a system for those books."

She turned and looked at me with a warm and pleasant smile that didn’t get to her eyes.

"Of course ma’am," she said.

She put the last book down and moved to the kitchen.

I stood there looking at the shelf, she had put it back but not quite right, close enough that pointing it out would make me look like I was searching for problems. I let it go.

That was my problem, I always let things go.

The following week I asked her to use the lavender detergent for the bed sheets,  I had mentioned it twice before in the notes I left. It was a small thing but I slept better with it and the sheets were mine and it was a reasonable request.

I came home and the sheets were changed. Fresh and clean and smelling of something else entirely. Something warmer, but not lavender.

I found Nina in the kitchen and I asked her calmly.

"I did mention the lavender detergent, didn't I?"

She looked at me with that same warm smile that never quite moved past her mouth. "Mr. Cole mentioned he preferred this one," she said simply. "I thought—"

"I run this household, Nina." I kept my voice level, my hands were calm at my sides. "Not Mr. Cole. When I leave instructions, those are the instructions that stand."

Something crossed her face, it was too swift, I couldn’t catch it properly. Then it was gone.

"Of course, Mrs. Cole," she said. "I apologize."

I went to the bedroom and changed out of my work clothes and told myself it was fine, probably she didn’t understand me and nothing more.

I didn't mention it to David.

Three days later, a Sunday morning, I told David over breakfast that I needed Nina to adjust her schedule. Come in later on Fridays so I could have the morning to myself at home.

He looked up from his plate.

"She mentioned Fridays are actually difficult for her to shift," he said. Casual like he was reporting the weather.

I put my fork down. "When did you speak to Nina about her schedule?"

He shrugged, reached for his juice. "She mentioned it in passing."

"In passing?" I repeated, curiously.

"Lydia." He said my name the way people say a name when they want a conversation to stop before it starts. "It's not a big deal, just leave Fridays as they are. It's easier."

I looked at my husband across the breakfast table. This man who hadn't known Nina Lawson existed three weeks ago,was now casually managing the schedule of the woman I hired.

"Okay," I said.

I looked back at my plate and finished my breakfast and said nothing else.

But something felt out of place, I could feel it in my guts, I just couldn’t place it.

Two weeks later I came home at seven to find David and Nina in the kitchen together.

Not doing anything, they were just standing there, him at the counter, her by the stove, and they were talking. Laughing at something I had walked in too late to hear. When I pushed the door open they both turned and the laughter stopped and the room rearranged itself upon my arrival.

"Hey," David said.

"Hey," I said.

Nina turned back to the stove without a word. David moved to the fridge. The conversation they had been having before I walked in disappeared  like it had never existed.

I set my bag down on the kitchen chair.

"Something smells good," I said, to no one in particular.

"Nina made pepper soup," David said, his back to me, head in the fridge.

I stood in my own kitchen and watched my husband reach for a drink while another woman stood at my stove and I tried to find why I was starting to worry.

I couldn't find it.

But it was getting louder.

I was coming down the stairs later that night when I stopped.

David was on the phone in the hallway, his back to me. His voice low, lower than he used when he spoke to clients or when he spoke to me. I caught only the last part of it before he heard my footsteps and turned.

"I'll talk to you later," he said into the phone. Then he lowered it and looked up at me on the stairs.

"Who was that?" I asked.

He slid the phone into his pocket. "Work," he said.

He walked past me toward the bedroom, like he was being chased.

I stood on the stairs and looked at the empty hallway where he had been standing and I felt something move through me, cold and certain.

I didn't know what I knew yet, but something wasn't right.

And I was becoming really uncomfortable.