Jane

  This is crazy, I thought. He’s her father. She shouldn’t have to wait here like a servant until he summons her.

  I grabbed Maddy’s hand. “You ready, kid?”

  She held my hand almost all the way downstairs and then tugged free. “Daddy? Daddy?” She broke into a run into the living room, where a fire roared in a fireplace big enough to roast a wild boar on a spit.

  “Is that my girl?” The voice came from the high-backed armchair closest to the fire. From behind, I could see the silhouette of a man — my employer — start to rise, but Maddy tackled him and he sat back down, laughing. Of course his voice was familiar; I’d been listening to his music for a month… no, most of my life.

  “You’re here!” Maddy shrieked.

  I stood in the doorway, hands clasped before me, wondering whether I should stay or go. I was still wearing the grubby clothes I’d hiked in — a pine green T-shirt and a pair of jeans. I’d just about decided to slip back to my room when Maddy’s voice rang out again. “Daddy, guess what? I have a new nanny. Her name’s Miss Jane.”

  “Is that right? Is she good to you? Do you like her?”

  “I like her better than Miss Bridget,” Maddy told him.

  “And where is Miss Jane now?” he asked, peeking around the corner of the chair. Behind him, I heard the jangle of dog tags and saw a long shape stretched out on the rug before the fire.

  I took a step forward and froze. It was the man who had swerved to miss me and sideswiped the guardrail. He looked more natural than on his album covers and was younger-looking than I’d expected, but, still, he was unmistakably Nico Rathburn. How had I not recognized his face? In the many photos I’d seen of him, he had always seemed so removed from the world I lived in that now it was hard to believe he was standing a few feet away and looking right back at me.

  Lucia chose that moment to sweep into the room. She glanced at me, quickly registering disapproval of my sweaty and disheveled state before passing me by to address our employer. “I see you’ve met the new nanny,” she said brightly, then slipped back out the door.

  “Not exactly,” Mr. Rathburn said, looking right into my eyes, “not officially.”

  I stepped up to him and extended my hand. He held it a moment and then gave it a brisk shake. “Welcome to Thornfield Park.”

  I wondered again how I had failed to recognize him on the side of the road. True, his dark hair was shorter now than on his album covers. The clothes he was wearing earlier camouflaged his wiry physique and made him look more like a businessman than the front man of a band. And he’d sounded educated, not like I’d imagined Nico Rathburn would sound. But now that he’d taken off that stockbroker’s jacket, I could see the familiar serpent tattoo on his left forearm. He wore a silver hoop in each ear — how had I missed that? — and what looked like a shark’s tooth hung from a leather cord around his neck. His smoke-gray eyes bored into me, taking my measure. I tried to think of something sensible to say and could not.

  “What did you bring me, Daddy?” Maddy’s voice rang out.

  Mr. Rathburn turned back around in his chair. “There’s a box in my suitcase. Why don’t you go take a look? It’s in my bedroom.”

  Maddy jumped down from his lap and took off running. A second later, she was back in the doorway. “Did you bring a present for Miss Jane?”

  “For Miss Jane?” he repeated, laughing. “Miss Jane, did you expect a present?”

  “Of course not,” I replied.

  “Why don’t you come in and sit down,” Mr. Rathburn said, “so I don’t have to keep twisting around in my chair to look at you?”

  The room contained a number of armchairs. I chose one in a corner.

  “Not there,” he said. “Come and sit by the fire so I don’t have to shout across the room. Despite how it must have seemed to you this afternoon, I won’t bite your head off.” I shifted to the chair beside his. He rubbed his temples. “Copilot seems fine, in case you were wondering.”

  At the sound of his name, the large black Labrador lifted his boxy head and looked up expectantly.

  “You see,” Mr. Rathburn said, “he wants a present too.”

  Not knowing what to say, I said nothing.

  “So where are you from, Miss Jane?” He spoke my name with a trace of mockery.

  “Just outside of Philadelphia originally. I was in my freshman year at Sarah Lawrence until last month.”

  “Sarah Lawrence. And you dropped out to work for me?”

  I recalled one of the interviews I’d read, in which he’d been asked about his own refusal to go to college. “I thought I didn’t need college,” he’d said. “Whatever I needed to know I could learn on the road. But it turned out I was wrong, so I’ve spent all these years reading books, trying to catch up.”

  “No,” I said. “I came to work for you because I dropped out.”

  “Why did you leave school? You don’t look like my idea of a dropout. You look studious.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment; he may have meant to be insulting, but I knew it was true. With my thin lips and my hair pulled back, I must have looked like a caricature of a spinster librarian, minus the glasses. “You can’t tell if I’m studious by looking at me,” I said finally. “I didn’t choose to drop out. And I plan to go back someday.”

  “You just got here, and you’re already planning to leave?” he said. “We’ll get used to you, and you’ll take off?”

  “Maddy’s already used to me,” I told him. “And I’m not planning on leaving anytime soon.”

  Just then, Maddy ran back into the room dressed in a sequined ballerina costume, a tutu rustling around her waist. “I’m a ballerina,” she declared, whirling around in circles. A tiara hung at a precarious angle in her hair. She came to a stop at her father’s knees. “I love it, Daddy.”

  He kissed her on the forehead. “I knew you would.” She beamed.

  “Did you say thank you?” I asked her.

  “Thank you,” Maddy said dutifully. “I’m going to go show Lucia.” On tiptoes, she danced out of the room.

  “Sequins,” Mr. Rathburn said to me. “Can’t go wrong with sequins and tiaras. There’s nothing she loves more. Just like her mother.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do you think she’ll ever outgrow it?”

  “Most girls do.”

  He laughed again. “You haven’t met the crowd I hang out with.” Then his tone changed. “Maddy’s a handful,” he said. “Has she given you any trouble?”

  “Hardly any. She just needs firmness and consistency.”

  “So you won’t let her twist you around her little finger like she does me?”

  I promised him I wouldn’t and stood to go.

  “Where are you going?” He sounded surprised.

  “I’d better get Maddy out of Lucia’s hair so that she can go home for the evening,” I replied. “Excuse me, Mr. Rathburn.”

  His eyes widened. “Nobody calls me that. Call me Nico.”

  I complied but felt strange addressing him by his first name.

  “You make me feel about a hundred years old,” he told me. “How old are you, anyway? Seventeen and three quarters? Eighteen?”

  “I’m nineteen.”

  “You were a kid when my first album came out,” he said. “When I was your age, I was traveling the country, sleeping in a bus, playing dive bars, and getting into brawls. Shouldn’t you be off having adventures?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” I told him.

  “Backpack through Europe? Sit at a sidewalk café in Rome? Go clubbing in Stockholm? Ski in the Alps?”

  I had always wanted to travel and couldn’t imagine being lucky enough to get the chance. “If I had the money to backpack across Europe, I wouldn’t be here right now,” I said. As soon as I said it, I realized how rude I must have sounded, but at least it was the truth.

  His eyes held mine a second. “Huh.… Well, you’re right. You’d better go get Maddy. Feels like it’s almost bedtime.”
br />   As anxious as I’d been to get away from Mr. Rathburn, as I fixed Maddy’s bath and laid out her pajamas, I found myself thinking back to our conversation. Though I was his paid help, he had seemed truly interested in me for a moment, and that was rare in my life. When Maddy’s fingertips wrinkled, I wrapped an enormous fluffy pink towel around her and a smaller one on her hair like a turban.

  “Daddy’s nice,” she told me as I felt around under her bed for her slippers.

  “He loves you,” I assured her.

  “I know,” she said. “But his job takes him away a lot.” For a moment, she sounded older than her years. “Daddy’s famous.”

  “I know.”

  “Mommy is too, but Daddy’s famouser.”

  “More famous,” I corrected her.

  “But Mommy wears shiny dresses and sings onstage. I’d rather wear shiny dresses than be more famous. I like to sing.”

  “I thought you were going to be a ballerina.” I untied the towel on her head and used it to rub her hair dry.

  “Ballerinas can wear shiny dresses,” she said. Then, matter-of-factly, she added, “I can’t see Mommy anymore. She lost custody. She sometimes would leave me alone in the hotel room, and I didn’t like it there.”

  I bent to kiss her on the cheek. “You’re a sweet girl.”

  I read her an extra story that night, in no great hurry to get back to my room. Poor thing, I thought. Even a less-than-perfect mother would be better than none at all. Before I’d finished reading, she fell asleep, mouth open, snoring gently. I set the book down and stretched out beside her for a moment. I must have fallen asleep. When I startled awake and slipped out into the hallway, the house seemed much quieter. I tiptoed downstairs, through the center of the house and past the living room, to get a glass of water. As I approached the kitchen, I caught sight of someone walking my way from the opposite direction. In the faint glow of a small Tiffany lamp, left on as a nightlight, I could make out the bulky figure of Brenda, whose strange mirthless laughter I had heard ringing out in the otherwise quiet house. Could this middle-aged woman, her iron-gray hair tied back tightly in a bun, really have let loose that wild, cackling laugh?

  I paused in the shadows, waiting for her to pass before I continued on, but she looked right at me. In her arm, she held a glass bottle of something clear, probably alcohol. Our eyes locked, and a long moment passed before either of us moved. Just as I was about to say something, she swept past me. “Good night, miss,” she said in a surprisingly deep voice as she disappeared around the corner and out of sight.

  CHAPTER 5

  The next day, I asked Lucia about Brenda. “If she’s a housekeeper, why don’t I ever see her vacuuming or making beds?” I explained that I had run into her the night before, though I didn’t mention the bottle she had been carrying.

  Lucia looked up from the sandwich she was making to bring back to her office. She’d worked the whole day without a break even for lunch, and I already missed the casual conversations we’d had before Mr. Rathburn had returned from his travels. “Brenda?” she asked absently.

  “She knew who I was even though we’d never met.”

  Lucia shrugged and deftly cut the crusts from her cucumber sandwich. “Everybody knows who you are. There’s only one nanny here.”

  “I’ve hardly seen her around the house until now. Has she worked for Mr. Rathburn long?”

  Lucia gave me a look that clearly said Brenda was none of my business. Then she opened the refrigerator, rummaged through, and took out a Tupperware bowl of fruit salad. “The food’s so much better now that the cook’s back,” she said. Then she sighed. “Brenda is no great mystery, Jane. She’s worked for Mr. Rathburn for eight years, so, yes, she’s been here almost as long as I have. She’s a seamstress. She mends anything we tear, on top of the light housework she does. Does that answer your questions?” Her voice sounded sharper than usual. Then she put a hand on my arm. “Brenda may be a bit strange, but she’s reliable, so Nico puts up with her eccentricities.”

  That was all I could get from her on the subject, but her refusal to say more made me suspect she was hiding something. And just thinking back to the loud, cackling laughter I’d heard coming from the third floor convinced me that something wasn’t quite right with Brenda. In the days to come, Brenda and I would pass each other on the stairs or in the hallway, and she would give me a cold, steady look, as if warning me not to say a word. And once, in the evening, I could have sworn I smelled alcohol on her breath.

  Now that Mr. Rathburn was here, the house seemed busier. Every time I turned a corner, I bumped into a new member of his entourage. His manager, a cherub-faced bald man named Mitch, came and went, spending hours holed up with Mr. Rathburn in his office or the music room. Jake, the crew-cut, overly tanned personal trainer, dropped in most mornings. Javier, Mr. Rathburn’s personal assistant, spent most of each day running errands. The housekeeping staff — besides Brenda, two women in their twenties — often gossipped about Mr. Rathburn. It’s not that I meant to eavesdrop, but they would chat in the hallway outside my shut door as I read or sketched, waiting out Maddy’s afternoon quiet time. A favorite topic was his new album and the international tour that was being planned.

  “Do you think this whole comeback thing is going to work?” I heard one of them say — Amber, I believe, though their voices were similar. “Will anyone buy it? The CD, I mean.”

  “For our sake, I hope so,” said the other one — Linda, who had worn her dirty blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail until Mr. Rathburn returned to the estate but now wore it loose. “He won’t be able to maintain a house like this if he doesn’t have some kind of a hit, and soon.”

  Amber’s voice was breezier. She was the more confident of the two, with an abundance of auburn curls that reminded me, a bit unpleasantly, of my sister. “I wouldn’t worry. He gets tons of royalties from that song he wrote for the movies. You know the one.” She sang a few bars. “He’s set for life. Unless he does something crazy. Marries some bimbo without a prenup or starts gambling.”

  “When I was in high school, I was so in love with him,” I heard Linda confide.

  “You only tell me that every day.”

  “He’s even hotter now than he was back then.” Linda sounded wistful. “Especially when he’s onstage.”

  “Get over it, girl.” Amber’s voice rang out — imprudently, I thought. “You should know by now, Nico doesn’t sleep with the help.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Linda said. “Don’t you sometimes think about what it would be like? You’re alone with him in this enormous house one afternoon, and he’s feeling kind of lonely…”

  “Lonely? Don’t you mean horny?”

  I had reached the bottom of the page but didn’t turn it for fear of alerting them to my presence. I doubted very much that they would like me to be overhearing their conversation. At least I took care of my own room, so I didn’t have to worry that they would open the door and find me there listening.

  “You never daydream about it?” Linda asked.

  Amber snorted. “No thanks. I like men who work for a living.”

  “As if you wouldn’t. If he asked you, I mean. Sleep with him. You know you would.”

  “I’d sleep with his money,” Amber replied with a laugh. And then, as if they’d finally realized they might be overheard, their voices fell to a whisper as the laundry cart creaked forward.

  Perhaps they felt free to speak indiscriminately because Mr. Rathburn’s travels through the house were so circumscribed. Since his first night home, I’d only seen him on the first floor — never up on my wing. Still, I couldn’t help but think Mr. Rathburn would be enraged if he had heard them just now. Despite the way Lucia had talked him up as a nice, ordinary guy, he didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor or much patience with his employees, or anyone else for that matter, from what I had seen. Since that first evening, he hadn’t really spent time with Maddy, which seemed a bit strange to me; he s
eemed much too busy noodling around in his music room, working out, or going over strategy with Mitch. Though he would kiss his daughter warmly whenever she ran into the room he was in, he would soon shoo her away to play with me, and I would lure her outside to her swings or the playroom full of her spectacular collection of toys — a playhouse full of cunning, child-sized appliances, a rocking horse and a teddy bear as big as I was.

  Then one night — his fourth night home — he surprised me. Maddy was directing me to build a castle out of blocks for her collection of princess figurines, and an impossibly high tower had just come crashing down when Mr. Rathburn walked into the playroom.

  “Daddy!” Maddy looked up from the line of princesses she had put in careful order. “Come see what Miss Jane and I are building.”

  “It looks to me as though Miss Jane is doing all of the building.” Mr. Rathburn stood for a moment, then sank into the rocking chair — the room’s one adult-sized piece of furniture — as though he had every intention of joining us for a while.

  Was he there to spend time with Maddy? He didn’t approach her but instead sat back, observing our interactions. Maybe he’d come to get a sense of how I was getting along with his daughter. I willed myself to ignore his gaze — which was fixed intensely on the two of us — and concentrated on the tower I was rebuilding.

  “Sleeping Beauty’s going to live in there,” Maddy said, half to her father and half to herself. “That’s where she’s gonna prick her finger and fall down dead.”

  “She only falls asleep,” I reminded her. “The prince wakes her up.”

  Maddy nodded solemnly. “Don’t knock it down,” she said.

  “I’ll do my best, but no promises. This is a very tall tower.”

  Though my hands were shaking a little, I completed the tower without incident. And though Maddy would boss me around if I allowed it, ordering me to make matching towers for each of her princess figurines, I let her know that she needed to sit beside me and do half the building herself. Mr. Rathburn watched us for a full hour before he stood and, without a word, left the room.