Chapter 2 - The Scent of Orange Blossoms
Annie tightened her grip on Justin, who had burrowed his face into the hollow of her collarbone as if Kevin were a stranger who might snatch him away.
“It started around noon, sir,” Annie said, keeping her voice level despite the tremble in her fingers. “Mrs. Gable went into town for dry cleaning. I was polishing the hallway banisters on the third floor when I heard glass shatter.”
Kevin felt a cold spike in his gut. “Glass?”
“A picture frame,” Annie explained quietly. “Justin had climbed the credenza in your study trying to reach a framed photo of his mother. He slipped. The glass shattered across the parquet. Jordan was downstairs in the library; when he heard the crash, he thought… well, he thought Justin had fallen out the window like the dreams he’s been having.”
Kevin closed his eyes. Justin had been having recurring night terrors about falling through shattering glass ever since the delivery truck crushed the side of Lauren’s Audi on the parkway.
“Why didn’t you call my private line?” Kevin’s voice was sharper than he intended, the defensive bite of an executive losing control. “Mrs. Gable has strict instructions. If the boys escalate, my security desk notifies me immediately.”
Annie looked right into Kevin’s eyes. She didn’t blink, and she didn’t drop her gaze the way the previous housekeepers had done whenever he walked through a room.
“If I had run to the telephone, Mr. Morrison, Justin’s foot was two inches from a jagged shard of glass, and Jordan was hyperventilating so hard his lips were turning blue. A phone call would have taken three minutes. By then, Justin would have needed stitches, and Jordan might have passed out.”
She drew a steadying breath and smoothed Jordan’s unruly brown hair. “I didn’t think about protocol. I thought about keeping your babies whole.”
Kevin swallowed past the dry lump in his throat. “And the bed? Why my bedroom? Why *her* bed?”
Annie hesitated. For the first time, a faint blush touched her cheekbones, contrasting sharply with the gray cotton of her uniform.
“They ran in there on their own,” she said softly. “Justin was clutching the picture of his mother to his chest, bleeding from a tiny scrape on his thumb. They wedged themselves under the bed skirt in the master room. They were shaking so violently the floorboards were vibrating. I crawled under there with them. Jordan kept crying that the room smelled like dust. He said Mommy was going away forever because the house didn’t smell like her anymore.”
Kevin’s hands clenched into fists inside his trouser pockets. He had ordered the entire master suite steam-cleaned two months after the funeral. He had believed he was being pragmatic, clearing out the lingering ghosts so he could sleep without waking in a cold sweat. He had erased Lauren’s scent with industrial pine and unscented bleach, thinking it was a kindness to himself.
He had never considered what that sterile erasure had done to the boys.
“What did you do?” Kevin asked, the words barely audible.
“I remembered an old trick my grandmother taught me when my mother was sick,” Annie murmured. “Lauren’s wardrobe still holds a few cedar sachets and an old sweater on the top shelf that the cleaners missed. Orange blossom and vanilla. I brought the sweater down. I laid it on the pillows. I told them that love doesn't vanish just because someone isn't standing in the doorway.”
She looked down at Jordan, who had dropped his head against her hip, perfectly quiet.
“I told them a mother’s love gets soaked into the wood, the walls, and the sheets,” Annie continued. “I lay down beside them because they wouldn’t let go of my apron. I sang an old hymn my mother used to sing during thunderstorms. Within ten minutes, their breathing slowed down. Within twenty, they were out. I didn't mean to fall asleep, Mr. Morrison. I’ve been working sixteen-hour shifts between this house and the laundromat in White Plains. My body just… gave out.”
She shifted Justin slightly, bracing herself for the verdict she clearly anticipated.
“If you want me to pack my locker, I understand. But please don’t yell at them. They aren’t bad boys. They’re just terrified that everyone is going to disappear if they blink.”
The silence that stretched between them in the vaulted hallway was heavy. Downstairs, the grandfather clock chimed seven deep, resonant tones.
Five professional nannies had stood in this exact spot over the last year.
Miss Albright, the certified child behavioral specialist from Manhattan, had handed Kevin a fifteen-page binder detailing Justin’s "oppositional defiance disorder" before quitting when Jordan bit her arm.
Mrs. Kensington, who had raised three children for an ambassador, had insisted the twins needed military-style boarding school because their trauma was "inconveniently unmanageable."
None of them had ever crawled beneath a bed. None of them had noticed that the house smelled too much like bleach and not enough like love.
Kevin looked at Annie Reed. Really looked at her.
She was young—perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight—with clear skin, a dusting of faint freckles across the bridge of her nose, and dark circles under her eyes that spoke of exhausting, unglamorous labor. Her hands were raw around the cuticles from harsh cleaning chemicals, yet those same hands were holding his fragile son with an effortless, protective tenderness Kevin hadn't witnessed in over four hundred days.
“You’re not fired, Annie,” Kevin said quietly.
Annie looked startled. “Sir?”
May you like
“Put Justin down in his own bed,” Kevin commanded, his corporate cadence slipping back into place like a protective shield. “Then wash up and meet me in the kitchen. We need to renegotiate your contract.”
***
