Chapter three.

CAMILLE

I'd assumed, walking into the Smith estate for my first real day, that surviving the interview was the hard part. I was wrong within the first hour.

I'd be a live-in maid with Sundays off, which sounded generous until I did the math and realized six days a week inside a house where I'd already been slapped twice meant I'd be spending most of my waking life somewhere that could turn on me without warning.

I stood in front of the mirror in the staff quarters that morning longer than I should have, not really looking at myself so much as looking past my own reflection at a memory that liked to surface whenever I was about to do something hard.

I'll always be there for you, Camille. We're going to be fine. One big happy family, you'll see.

My father used to say that at the dinner table, like a man laying a foundation he had every intention of finishing. We hadn't been rich,but we were comfortable, the kind of family that argued about whose turn it was to do dishes and meant it as affection more than complaint. It had felt, at the time, like the safest thing in the world.

He broke that promise the same week my mother's diagnosis came in, which told me everything about the order of his priorities that I needed to know.

"Camille. Mrs. Smith wants you." My roommate's voice cut through the mirror and the memory both, and I wiped my face fast enough that I nearly convinced myself I hadn't been crying.

"Coming."

I wasn't fast enough, apparently. Mrs. Smith was seated when I arrived, legs crossed, radiating the particular patience of someone who enjoys watching you know you've disappointed her.

"Late. On your first day." She let the silence stretch after it, long enough that I understood the silence itself was the punishment. "That tells me everything I need to know about how seriously you take this position."

"I'm sorry, ma'am. It won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't." She handed me a folded sheet without looking at me. "You're assigned to Brian. Meals, bath, his schedule, anything the boy needs ….that's on you now. His allergies and routine are on that page. Learn it today,I won't repeat myself."

"Yes, ma'am."

I found Brian in his room a little while later, small and curly-haired and considerably less intimidating than everyone else I'd met in this house so far, which felt like a mercy I hadn't earned yet.

"Did you make that tea? The one that helped my chest?"

"I did."

"Are you secretly a doctor?" He asked it with the total sincerity only a six-year-old can manage, eyebrows drawn together like he was solving something important.

"Not even a little. My dad had asthma so I picked things up."

"Well, thank you. I haven't breathed that easy in ages." He said it with the weary gravity of someone twice his age, and I had to bite back a laugh.

"I bet that's why Grandma picked you. You're useful." He added.

"I'll take useful."

"Want to walk with me? There's a garden past the hedge nobody uses anymore. It's better than in here."

I couldn't have said no to him even if I'd wanted to, which I didn't. He had the kind of open, uncomplicated warmth that made the rest of the house feel even colder by comparison, jet-black curls that refused to sit flat, round cheeks, the kind of face that hadn't yet learned to guard itself.

"Quick introductions, since we skipped them," he said, matching my pace with his shorter legs.

 "I'm Brian. Six years old. I live here with Grandma, Uncle Zack, and Aunt Alexis."

"I'm Camille. Twenty-two. I live with my mom."

"Twenty-two?" He looked genuinely scandalized. "Shouldn't you be married already?"

"Not everyone gets married at twenty-two, Brian."

"Maybe soon, though." He said it like he was already plotting something, and I decided not to ask.

"What's so funny?" A voice cut across the garden before I could answer him, sharp enough that Brian's shoulders visibly tensed beside me.

 "Did I miss the joke?"

Two women were seated under the far pergola, close enough that they must have been listening for a while. One of them shared enough of Mrs. Smith's bone structure that I guessed family before anyone confirmed it.

 The other rose and started toward us with the unhurried confidence of someone who'd never once questioned whether a room would make space for her.

"The big bad wolf," Brian muttered, just loud enough for me to catch, and I understood immediately that whatever this woman's name was, six-year-old Brian had already formed an opinion about her that adults usually take years to reach.

She stopped close enough that her perfume arrived before she did, expensive and cloying, and I found myself doing the math on it out of habit …. the way I did with everything now, converting things into what they'd cost against what my mother's medication cost, a reflex I couldn't seem to switch off.

"I asked you a question." Arms crossed. Chin tilted just enough to remind me she was looking down at me even though our height difference barely justified it.

"I'm sorry, Brian said something funny, that's all. Nothing about you."

The slap landed before I finished the sentence, which was becoming, I noted with something between fear and grim amusement, something of a pattern in this house.

"Don't insult me by lying to my face." Her voice didn't rise. There was something almost bored in the way she said it, like slapping a stranger cost her nothing at all. 

"I don't take disrespect from people who clean up after me for a living."

My cheek throbbed in the same place it had the day before, which felt almost efficient of her, at least. I thought about apologizing. I thought about the version of myself that would have, three years ago, before my father left and my mother got sick and I learned that some situations only reward you for holding still.

I didn't apologize this time.

"I don't know you," I said instead, quiet but even, "and I don't know what I did to deserve that, but I won't stand here and take insults for it."

I walked away before she could answer. Behind me I heard her call for me to come back, and I kept walking anyway, because being poor had cost me almost everything I had, but it hadn't yet cost me the right to leave a conversation I hadn't asked to be part of.

"I'm sorry," Brian said once we'd put enough distance between us and the pergola, his small hand finding mine like he needed to apologize with his body as much as his words. 

"That's Aunt Alexis. She's awful to everyone, but I hate that she did that because of me."

"It wasn't your fault." I pressed the ice pack the kitchen staff had quietly handed me against my cheek and forced a smile for his sake. "Nothing about today has really been your fault."

By the time a maid found me to say Mr. Zack wanted to see me upstairs, I'd been slapped twice, fired once, rehired once, and it wasn't even noon.

I stood outside his door longer than I needed to, running through every version of what this could be about. The stolen bracelet,the garden. Something I hadn't even thought to worry about yet. My palms had gone damp by the time I finally knocked.

"Come in."

His room told me more about him than any article ever had. No excess, nothing performative….just clean lines, a stack of documents arranged with the kind of precision that suggested he'd touched each one deliberately, a grey duvet pulled tight enough to bounce a coin off. He didn't look up when I entered. He finished writing something first, unhurried, like my presence hadn't changed his schedule at all.

"You wanted to see me, sir."

"I know." He still didn't look up. "Sit if you'd like. This won't take long."

I didn't sit. Sitting felt like a privilege I hadn't earned yet, and some instinct told me he'd notice either way.

"The bracelet." He finally set his pen down, closed the folder in front of him, and looked at me directly for the first time since I'd walked in.

 "I had it looked into. You were framed. One of the other candidates planted it in your bag, hoping it would eliminate the competition before the final round."

I felt the words land somewhere behind my ribs, but nothing came out of my mouth. A dozen questions arrived at once …who, why, whether it had been personal or simply convenient and none of them made it past my throat.

"She's been dealt with. The police have what they need."

"Thank you," I finally managed, though it felt inadequate against the size of what he'd just told me.

"I'm not telling you this so you'll thank me." 

His tone stayed level, almost clinical. "I'm telling my mother not to hold it against you. 

She acted on the information she had. That's not the same as acting with malice, even if it felt that way to you."

It took me a second to understand what I'd just been given wasn't quite an apology. It was closer to a verdict ..,..a correction to the record, delivered because he'd decided the record needed correcting, not because he felt he owed me anything for the two slaps I'd taken over a lie someone else had told.

I left his room lighter than I'd entered it, but no less confused. Men like him, I was starting to understand, didn't apologize. 

They audited the situation, found the error, and issued a ruling. It should have bothered me more than it did.

I was halfway back to the staff quarters, still turning the conversation over, when my phone buzzed against my hip.

I almost didn't check it. I wish, in hindsight, that I hadn't.

Camille , you need to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Your mother has collapsed.

The hallway tilted, just slightly, the way rooms do right before you understand your whole day is about to become a different day entirely.