The Ruining (8 page)

She’d been so temperamental lately: warm and supportive, mostly, but I was beginning to see hints of a moody streak that I worried was largely due to my presence.

I scooped up a stack of papers, shoving them back into their manila envelope. It looked mostly like receipts and documents, but I didn’t want to look too closely. If there was one thing I supported, it was the concept of privacy. Two other folders next to me, though, had spilled all over the place. Their contents were definitely mixed. I’d have to sort through them. One of the files was labeled “lawyer,” another read “receipts,” and the last read “vacations.”

“No big deal,” I muttered under my breath. “It’ll be easy. Quick and easy.” Yep, that was the way. I’d worry about whether to tell Libby about this later, or whether to let sleeping dogs lie, as my mother would have said. “Stop,” I told myself. I couldn’t think about her. Every time my mother entered my brain, I felt a pang of remorse.

I sat down cross-legged on the cold cement, tucking my ankles up under my calves. I went for a handful of what looked like receipts. They were labeled in foreign currencies, so I put them in the “travel” folder. There was an email printout of itineraries to Spain and Greece. Even though I was doing my absolute best only to identify the information needed to file the papers away, rifling through everything was like getting a secret glimpse into the life I wanted for myself—and a life I’d never seen up close until now.

There was a deed to the house: that went into “lawyer.” A Harry Winston receipt from Turks and Caicos (a place I couldn’t even pronounce). An airline ticket stub for Walker Cohen to Madrid, seat 4C, business class. Despite myself, I found it fascinating—the places they’d been, the life they led. Maybe one day I’d get to accompany them on a trip in order to watch the kids. I felt a streak of jealousy wend its way through my heart and settle in my gut when I realized that was probably the best I could hope for. I would probably never have a life like this for myself; I’d always be the tagalong au pair. It was irrational, that jealous feeling. But I wanted so much from this—so much more than just a job.

Only a few minutes had elapsed, but I was aware that Zoe wouldn’t be satisfied making figure eights in the driveway forever. Thankfully, there were only a dozen or so documents left to identify.

A quick glance at a pay stub from Walker’s architectural firm told me that his gross yearly income was a lot. But not the kind of “a lot” that I’d thought it took to live in a place like this. I felt a sharp pang of guilt—I hadn’t looked on purpose, but this was way outside the bounds of appropriate and professional. I bit my lip and forged ahead—what was I supposed to do, leave it for Libby to clean up?

The next item was bound by a paperclip. A bolded statement across the top of the first page read, “Last will and testament of Adele Cohen.”

“Adele Cohen?” I whispered it aloud, and Zoe looked at me curiously. I peered closer at the paper, which obviously belonged in the “lawyer” envelope. I wondered who Adele was—Walker’s sister, his mother? Whoever she was, the numbers that flashed in front of my eyes indicated that she’d had a tremendous amount of money. More money than I could imagine. I’d never liked dipping into people’s private lives, mostly because I’d never wanted anyone to dip into mine. I didn’t like knowing anything about the Cohens’ money or their relatives’ money or anyone’s money at all. It made me squeamish.

I shoved the paperwork into its appropriate folder. I filtered through the rest of it in two minutes flat; suddenly, I wanted to get out of there. I felt dirty, like I’d done something illicit, and I had the urgent need to put as much space as possible between me and the documents. I stared down at the folders in my hands, about to place them back in the box; but at that moment, a car pulled into the driveway. Zoe pushed the brakes on her tricycle, but it was almost too late; the car was pulling toward us fast. At the end of the driveway, just before the garage, it slammed on its brakes.

Libby exited the car and strode toward me, an angry expression on her face.
I buried the folder at the bottom of the box before she reached the inside of the garage, while she was still squinting against the sun. But it didn’t matter; she’d seen me. I only hoped she didn’t think I’d been snooping around on purpose.

the countertops, and she doesn’t touch it? Not only that, but she’s amazing with Zoe. Zoe adored her from the start. And god knows I’ve needed help with Zoe.” Libby’s voice faltered a bit at that, as though she was struggling to maintain her composure. It was the most upset I’d ever heard her.

As much as my heart swelled at Libby’s obvious trust for me, Walker’s comments stung. I was listening from the hallway outside my room, not that it could be called eavesdropping. Zoe was long in bed, but Walker wasn’t doing anything to adjust the volume of his voice. I probably could have heard it from inside my room with the door closed. If I’d had a door. Libby still hadn’t been able to locate a repairman whom she trusted with the antique wood.

The girl isn’t like us. How stupid I’d been to think I could fit into their world.
“She found some things she shouldn’t have,” Libby continued in a cool tone. “Some things that shouldn’t have been there at all. I thought you’d gotten rid of Adele’s stuff, Walker!” Her voice was shrill, thick with potential sobs. “How dare you! Do you still love her?” There was a pause that probably only lasted seconds, but to me it may as well have covered the space of an hour. Because in those seconds, something fell into place. Something that, for reasons unknown, drained my entire body. Walker had been married before. The file I’d found—it was his former wife’s. That’s why Libby had reacted so sensitively. I’d unwittingly unearthed something that reminded her of the woman her husband had loved before her. And as for Walker . . . no wonder he wanted to fire me. Who knew how

raw his wound still was, how much pain he still felt over his dead wife? Everything was starting to make a lot more sense. No wonder the Cohens had so much money.

“Of course not!” Walker shouted. “And how could I get rid of the will? We need a record of it.”
“Stop yelling!” she said, crying then. “You’ve woken the baby!” Sure enough, Jackson had begun to cry through his monitor. Walker lowered his voice then, and I heard sounds of his murmuring and her quiet assents. “Sweetheart,” he crooned. “Please. I love you. You’re my life now.” Libby quieted finally, and after a few minutes, Walker declared, “I want her out. I want Annie to pack her bags and go back to wherever she came from. She’s caused enough trouble.”
“Walker. Listen to me.” Libby’s voice was as commanding and steady as ever now, as though she was talking to a child. “Let’s not lose our heads. Annie is the best thing that’s happened to us since we’ve moved here. I will not let you fire her. She is fantastic with Zoe, she’s incredibly mature, and I like her. I know she’s trustworthy. I know that what happened was an accident. I believe her.” She was speaking confidently, louder now. “And what of it? She’s living with us. She’s bound to hear or see things that are personal every now and again. It’s not as if we’ve got any skeletons in our closet. What does it matter if she knows how much money we have or that you were married before? I know you value your privacy, but the worst that can happen is the neighbors know how much money we have, which they’ve all been dying to know for months anyway.” There was a pause, and finally Walker responded, his voice strained.
“You’re right,” he said evenly. “We have nothing to hide. But it’s the principle of the thing. The girl isn’t family, Libby. She’s a sweet kid, but accidentally or not, she’s crossed the line.”
“I’ll speak to her. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Remember what we talked about. We need her here. God, Walker, the baby’s still crying! I have to get him. We can talk about this later.”
As I heard her start up the stairs, I slipped back into my room and curled up in bed with my book. The relief I felt at hearing Libby say they needed me was immeasurable. Because I needed them, too. I loved Zoe. And I’d begun to think of Libby as a sister. But more than that, I was afraid of what would happen if I left. Without their recommendation, I wouldn’t be able to get a job anywhere. If they revealed the truth of my past—and my sister’s death—to another family, I’d be ruined. Who else would take a chance on me the way they had, knowing my past? And for the wages they were paying me? No one. I’d have to quit school, move back home, work a minimum wage job at the diner or movie rental store, just like everybody else. The Cohens knew too much about me for me to leave. And, I realized as I snuggled underneath the fluffy down comforter that enveloped my bed, the light from the hallway pouring into the gaping hollow of my doorway, now I knew something about them.

THE dOOR sTILL wAsN’T FIxEd. I didn’t even know what was wrong with it in the first place that required an entire week of repair, but I was finding it harder and harder to fall asleep at night. Owen might have had something to do with it; I hadn’t seen him since two days ago when I’d stormed out of his house. I could see now that I’d overreacted. Maybe it wasn’t his place to judge the Cohens or comment on my job here, but it’s not like he was being rude. Just presumptuous. And then I responded by being . . . well, rude. I had raised myself on Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers and How to Be a Lady. Books I’d coveted, thinking they gave me insight into a world I’d never know. It was not like me at all to be unnecessarily mean.

But I’d been super stressed lately. My initial classes were difficult, and I wasn’t making friends easily on campus. I only had one class with Morgan, who’d looked at me blankly after the night of Dis-O, as if she barely remembered hanging out together (and she probably didn’t). I wanted to please Libby, but she’d been short-tempered, and it seemed like I was always screwing up: putting the wrong baby formula in the bottle; giving the baby a swim diaper instead of a regular one; washing Zoe’s laundry on hot instead of cold, letting the colors run together and all over the whites. It’s not that I couldn’t babysit—I was awesome with kids and knew exactly what I was doing—It was that I was so distracted.

“So how did it go? When you went out to talk to that boy, I mean,” Libby asked in a friendly tone. A few days had already passed since the incident with Owen. It was strange that she was bringing it up again, especially after she had expressed disapproval the first time. She was making coffee in the Nespresso machine and I was preparing Zoe’s peaches-and-cream oatmeal while simultaneously feeding the baby bananas from a can. I patted the corner of the baby’s mouth where a chunk of banana puree had dribbled out.

“It was fine, I guess.” Although it wasn’t fine, not at all. The last thing I wanted to think about was Owen and The Date That Never Was.

“Just fine?” Libby raised an eyebrow.
“I think Zoe had fun with his dog,” I said carefully, uncertain whether she’d approve. I felt my throat constricting a little as I remembered how much fun we’d had joking around. Before the incident on the lawn, when he’d become a judgmental asshole. Or was I projecting? I tried to ignore the little voice in my head.
“Hey,” Libby said, placing her cup gently on the marble surface of the countertop and removing Jackson’s spoon from my hand. “You can tell me anything, remember?” She skillfully maneuvered the bananas into Jackson’s sparrow mouth, wide open and waiting now that Libby was at the spoon’s helm.
“It’s no big deal,” I said. “He’s just not that great. I mean, I guess I kind of hoped we’d be friends.” I shook my head and tried to smile. “It was stupid. I just thought it would be cool to have someone so close by to hang out with.”
“So why can’t you? Did something happen?” she pressed.
I sighed. I didn’t really want to tell Libby what had pissed me off. The last thing I wanted to do was cause tension between them and their neighbors, or to make her feel bad.
“I don’t know, I guess I just decided he was kind of immature,” I admitted, twisting the truth a little. “I mean, who lives with their parents at age twenty? He doesn’t have a job, and he’s not even in school.”
“Walker says he’s running his own tech startup,” Libby said. “Apparently that’s why he skipped out on college. He got some investments and wanted to throw himself into the company. Apparently it has, just in the last six months or so, started to take off. He just does the EMT thing once a week because he likes it,” she continued. “I guess he’s always had an interest in medicine and thought about going to med school for a while. Walk really got a good impression of him.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling guilty as the significance of what she was saying began to hit me. “So he’s running his own business?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I think he wanted to put his savings into the company rather than funneling it all into rent.”
“Oh.”
“So maybe he’s not as immature as you thought.” She smiled knowingly, scraping the last of the baby food from its jar.
“Maybe.” I officially felt terrible. I had judged Owen based on . . . pretty much nothing. And now even if I apologized, it wouldn’t matter, because the damage was already done. He’d think I was apologizing just because I thought his job was “up to my standards” or something. But none of this would have happened at all if he hadn’t mentioned Libby. I normally didn’t even care about stuff like getting a slow start—if anything, I understood it better than most. But he’d never see it that way.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Libby asked, appraising my face.
“Not really,” I said. “Pretty much just that.”
“Did he say something you didn’t like?” Libby’s voice had become graver, more intense. “I thought we had an understanding, Nanny. I thought you understood you were to tell me everything.” I felt confused, lightheaded. She was trying to be supportive, so why did it sound weirdly like a threat? And why was she calling me by my title again?
“I—”
“Did you sleep with him?” she asked suddenly.
“What? No, of course not. God!” I couldn’t mask my shock. I hoped desperately that she wouldn’t be offended.
“Are you a virgin, Nanny?” I looked toward Zoe to see if she’d heard, not that she was likely to know what the term meant.
“Mrs. Cohen, I really don’t like when you call me ‘Nanny.’” The words escaped me before I had a second to think about it.
“What?” Libby set her mug down abruptly. It hit the counter so hard that I was afraid it would break. Zoe looked up from her cartoons and stared at us curiously.
“I—I just—”
“No.” Libby cut me off in a stern voice, lifting a hand to silence me. “What’s with this ‘Mrs. Cohen’ thing all of a sudden? And what do you mean, ‘when I call you “Annie”’? What else would I call you?”
“Annie would be great,” I told her. “But you just called me ‘Nanny.’” Suddenly, though, I wasn’t so sure. The look on Libby’s face was a cross between shock and confusion.
“No,” she said slowly. Then in a sharper tone, “Zoe! Go watch your Dora. Mommy’s iPad is right over there. Nanny and I are having a conversation.” There it was again. Nanny where I should have heard Annie. “That’s ridiculous,” she continued, turning to me. “I would never do something like that! I’m insulted that you’d even suggest it. I would never treat you like you’re . . . I don’t know, a servant or something.” She seemed genuinely appalled.
“I don’t know,” I stammered. “I thought maybe I’d done something to make you angry—”
“That’s ridiculous. You probably just heard wrong. ‘Nanny’ and ‘Annie’ aren’t exactly on opposite ends of the spectrum,