“That’s so funny,” I said, “my baby’s Chloe too.”
“Really,” she said, arching one perfectly plucked eyebrow (who has the time to pluck her eyebrows!), “I guess we’re fated to be friends then.”
Chapter Two
You must be exhausted,” Schuyler Bennett says.
“I’m really sorry we’re so late,” I say. “Some last-minute things came up . . .” Like driving to Laurel’s that last time. I hadn’t planned on that. “I didn’t know you’d wait up.”
She waves a crooked hand (Arthritis, she’d told me on the phone, can’t so much as lift a pen these days) in the air. “When you get to my age, you don’t need much sleep. Billie would have been here to greet you too but it’s her grandson’s birthday so I gave her the night off.”
“Billie?” I echo, wondering if this is someone I’m supposed to have heard of.
“Mrs. Williams, my housekeeper. The one I suggested could watch Chloe for you?”
“Oh!” I say. “That’s so generous. But I’m sure I can find daycare in the village—”
“Nonsense. Billie used to be a nurse, plus she’s raised five children and fourteen grandkids. She was over the moon when I told her there was a baby coming to stay.” She looks toward the rear seat, where, miraculously, Chloe is still sleeping. “And such an angel.”
“Thank you. She is . . . at least while she’s asleep—” I bite my lip to make myself shut up and then remember that normal mothers complain about their children. It’s not like I called her a bitch the way Laurel would.
Schuyler Bennett doesn’t seem to have made anything of my criticism of my baby. “Well, you’d better get her inside before she wakes up.” She turns to lead the way back and I shoulder my handbag and the baby bag and unhook the car seat. The stroller attachment is in the trunk, but it wouldn’t be easy to push it over this gravel. Besides, I don’t want Schuyler Bennett to see how little luggage I have and think it’s strange that I’ve arrived for a six-month stay with only one suitcase. Better I get it later.
Before I close the door I grab the baby blanket lying next to the car seat. It’s soaking wet. For a moment I stand holding it, trying to figure out how this happened. Did I spill that second bottle on it? Did Chloe’s diaper leak on it? But when I touch her diaper it’s dry. I leave the blanket on the car seat to deal with later and turn to join my new boss. She’s waiting at a different door from the one she came out of. “The tower has its own entrance, so you’ll have your privacy,” she says, unlocking the door and limping into a narrow foyer. “This door”—she points to a door on the right—“leads into the main house. You’re welcome to come through anytime, use the kitchen, sit in the parlors. Of course you’ll have full access to the library on the second floor, but please make yourself at home in the rest of the house as well. It’s just me and Billie rambling around like a couple of dried-out peas in a pod.”
“Thank you, that’s so generous . . .” I’m repeating myself. But what else can I say? You’ve saved my life. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t taken me and my baby in?
She waves away my thanks. “Save your thanks until you see the library. When the university offered to buy my papers I knew I’d have to get someone I could trust to sort through it all.” She turns around in the doorway and fixes me with a hawklike gaze. Now that we’re in the light I can see how sharp the bones of her face are under her thin, papery skin. Her short silver hair barely covers her skull. She had mentioned something about being ill and now I wonder if she was in such a rush to hire me because she doesn’t have much time to get her papers in order. “And I’m really thrilled to have gotten someone with your credentials.”
Laurel’s credentials, I think, my face going hot.
“And I’m thrilled to get a chance to work with my favorite author, Ms. Bennett.” At least that part is true.
A hectic blotch appears on her face. Have I embarrassed her? She turns away to open the door. “Please, call me Sky—everyone does—and come on in. You’ll see I didn’t lie about the apartment being small.”
The apartment is small, and oddly shaped since it’s the bottom floor of the octagonal tower. There’s a sitting area with a flowered couch and coffee table, a tiny kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom with a double bed. In the middle of the space is a spiral staircase that coils up to the next floor, its smooth wooden planks suspended on a skeletal iron frame that makes me feel uneasy just looking at it.
“My father saw patients here when I was a girl,” Schuyler—Sky—says, as if that explained the apartment’s size or its odd shape.
“He was a doctor at the hospital, right?” I ask, more to show that I remember what she told me on the phone than because I want to think about mental patients in my new home.
“The director,” she says, as someone else might say king or president. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wade through a good deal of his papers. They’re all mixed up with mine and some of the records will have to go to Crantham . . . actually, I have an idea about that, but we can discuss all that tomorrow.” She must see how overwhelmed I am. She never mentioned her father’s papers in our conversations. The idea of going through the files of a psychiatrist makes me queasy; I’ve had enough of madness in the last few months to last a lifetime.
She’s gone on to describe the layout of the house. “The study on the
