I wince at her use of the term “loony bin.” I’m sure she has some equally colorful terms for the place where I spent the last decade of my life. But I need to hear this. My heart speeds up, beating in sync with the tapping of little feet in the other room. “I did hear something about that…”
Amanda clucks. “Cecelia was a baby then. Poor thing—if the police had arrived a second later…”
“What?”
She drops her voice a notch, looking around the room. “You know what she did, don’t you?”
I shake my head wordlessly.
“It was horrible…” Amanda sucks in a breath. “She tried to drown Cecelia in the bathtub.”
I clasp a hand over my mouth. “She… what?”
She nods solemnly. “Nina drugged her, threw her in the tub with running water, then took a bunch of pills herself.”
I open my mouth but no words come out. I have been expecting some story like, I don’t know, she got into a fight with some other mother at ballet practice over the best color for tutus and then had a meltdown when they couldn’t agree. Or maybe her favorite manicurist decided to retire and she couldn’t take it. This is entirely different. The woman tried to murder her own child. I can’t think of anything more horrible than that.
“Andrew Winchester was apparently in the city at his office,” she says. “But he got worried when he couldn’t get through to her. Thank God he called the police when he did.”
My headache has escalated, despite the Advil. I’m truly about to throw up. Nina tried to kill her daughter. She tried to kill herself. God, no wonder she’s on an antipsychotic.
It doesn’t make any sense to me. Whatever else I can say about Nina, she clearly loves Cecelia very much. You can’t fake that sort of thing. Yet I believe Amanda—I’ve certainly heard this rumor from enough people. It doesn’t seem possible that everybody in town has got it wrong.
Nina really did try to kill her daughter.
Then again, I don’t know the context. I’ve heard about postpartum depression, and how it can make your mind go to dark places. Maybe she didn’t have any idea what she was doing. It’s not like they’re saying she plotted to kill her daughter. If that were true, she would be in prison right now. Forever.
Still. As much as I worried about Nina’s mental status, I never truly believed she had the capacity for real violence. She’s capable of much more than I thought.
For the first time since Enzo rejected me, I think back to the panic in his eyes as he hurried toward the front door. You get out, Millie. It’s… dangerous. He’s scared for me. He’s scared of Nina Winchester. If only he spoke English. If he did, I have a feeling I might have moved out by now.
But really, what can I do? The Winchesters are paying me well, but not well enough to strike out on my own without at least a few more paychecks under my belt. If I quit, they’ll never give me a decent recommendation. I’ll have to go back to searching through the want ads, faced with rejection after rejection when they find out about my prison record.
I just have to hang in there a little longer. And do my best not to piss off Nina Winchester. My life might depend on it.
TWENTY-ONE
By dinner time tonight, the cardboard box Enzo brought into the house is still sitting on the dining table. In the interest of setting the table, I try to move it, but it is very heavy—Enzo made it seem lighter than it was by the way he effortlessly carried it into the room. I’m scared if I try to move it, I’ll accidentally drop it. Odds are good there’s some priceless Ming vase inside, or something equally fragile and expensive.
I study the return address on the box again. Evelyn Winchester—I wonder who that is. The handwriting is big and loopy. I give it a tentative shove and something rattles inside.
“Early Christmas present?”
I look up from the package—Andrew is home. He must have come in from the garage entrance, and he’s smiling crookedly at me, his tie loose around his neck. I’m glad he seems to be in better spirits than yesterday. I really thought he was going to lose it after that doctor’s appointment. And then that terrible argument last night, where I was half-convinced Nina had murdered him. Of course, now that I know why she was institutionalized, it doesn’t seem nearly as far-fetched.
“It’s June,” I remind him.
He clucks his tongue. “It’s never too early for Christmas.” He rounds the side of the table to examine the return address on the package. He is only a few inches away from me, and I can smell his aftershave. It smells… nice. Expensive.