The Sweet Nothings Covered In Dust

(1st POV)

The guard fawned over Kirk McGraw.

“Ms. Holden, Mr. McGraw, this thief just tried to break in. I’ve got him under control.”

Kirk was flushed as he started to speak. Then, he turned and met my eyes.

His face went white.

“Miller? When did you get back?”

He forced out a smile.

“Why didn’t you tell us? I mean, I’ll have the housekeeper set another place for dinner.”

He spun around in a panic, then tripped over his own feet and nearly fell.

Rebecca Holden quickly caught his arm. She frowned at him with fond exasperation in her eyes. “You’re always so clumsy! How many times have I told you to be more careful?”

My heart lurched. I pressed my lips together.

We had been together for ten years, yet I had never heard her speak to me with such affection.

The guard hurried to help him up. Then, he turned to me and said with an apologetic smile, “Oh, you’re a friend of Ms. Holden and Mr. McGraw! The alarm went off, so I thought you were a thief. It’s all just a misunderstanding.”

Rebecca murmured a response and took my suitcase.

I stared at her. “You deleted my face from the system?”

She explained as if nothing was wrong with it. “The system had reached its limit for saved faces. We had to remove the ones we rarely used, so I deleted yours. I’ll add you back later.”

Once inside, I watched Kirk direct the housekeeper to serve the food with the ease of the man of the house.

“Where’s Mrs. Woller?” I asked Rebecca.

When we first started the business, I drank heavily with land clients to get the deal, and I ended up with gastric bleeding.

She had interviewed over a hundred housekeepers before choosing Mrs. Woller, who specialized in light, nutritious meals.

Every dish this unfamiliar housekeeper brought out of the kitchen smelled sharply of hot peppers.

Rebecca set out a child’s plate and cutlery with practiced ease.

“Lenny’s a picky eater. He wouldn’t touch anything Mrs. Woller made. We can’t just think about ourselves. We have to consider what he likes too.”

Yet apart from the barbecue wings, everything on the table was tangy and fiercely spicy. All of it was Kirk’s favorite food.

I lost my appetite.

When I pushed open the master bedroom door upstairs, I was stunned by what I saw.

Every wall had been painted bright red. A sickly sweet floral and fruity fragrance wafted from a diffuser on the nightstand.

I was allergic to artificial fragrances. Red was also the color I hated most.

Rebecca brushed past me and gathered the red bedding into her arms.

“I didn’t know you were coming back today. I haven’t had time to tidy up. Kirk kept insisting this room had the best natural light, so he wanted to stay here.”

“Did he ask you to paint the walls too?”

Rebecca frowned and said impatiently, “You’re the one who said he could do whatever he wanted as long as it made him happy.”

I clenched my fists. I remembered when we had moved into our new home last year.

The painters had missed the master bedroom walls. Despite being the CEO of Holden Corp, Rebecca had gone to the hardware store herself.

She had bought paint and stayed up all night to paint the walls pale blue.

She remembered that my therapist had said that blue would help me feel calmer.

I struggled with insomnia, so she bought a fresh bunch of lavender to keep by my bedside every week without fail.