LYDIA’S POVIt 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 o
Last Updated : 2026-04-08 Read more