Chapter 3 - The Silent Assistant
The office annex smelled of old paper, damp cedar, and linseed oil. When Walter let himself in through the side door, the girl was sitting on the wooden bench in the hallway.
She was thin—not the thinness of youth, but the gauntness of someone who lived on tea and toast. Her hair was dark, tucked behind her ears, and wet at the ends from the drizzle. She wore a yellow slicker that was three sizes too big, the sleeves rolled back to reveal pale, bony wrists. Her eyes were very dark, nearly black under the fluorescent light of the entry hall.
"Mr. Holloway?" she said. Her voice was low, with a slight flat drawl of the outer banks.
"Yes," Walter said. He didn't sit. He stood with his hands in his pockets, studying her. "You're late for an interview, Caroline."
"I saw the light," she said. "The man with the truck said you were looking for someone to clear the files and keep the floors. I’m good with wood. My father had a shop in Arapahoe."
"Arapahoe’s thirty miles from here," Walter said. "That’s a long way to come for twenty hours of cleaning a week."
"I have a room in town now," she said. She didn't look at his eyes; she looked at his collar, then at the floorboards between them. "Near the harbor. I can walk here."
Walter looked at her hands. They were clean, but the skin around the nails was raw, as if she had been scrubbing things with hard soap. There was a small, crescent-shaped scar on the back of her left thumb—the kind of mark left by a slip with a small chisel or a pocketknife.
"Do you know anything about old houses?" he asked.
"I know they don't like to be rushed," she said. "If you scrub them too hard, you take the silver off the pine. You have to use vinegar and oil. No lye."
Walter felt a small knot in his chest loosen. It was the first correct thing anyone had said to him about wood in three weeks. "The pay is twelve dollars an hour. Margaret—Mrs. Ellis—runs the house. She’ll tell you what to do. If she says you stay, you stay. If she says you go, I can’t help you."
"I understand," Caroline said.
"Start tomorrow at eight. The house is on Front Street. White clapboard. Two chimneys."
She stood up, her yellow coat rustling. "I know the house."
"How?"
She paused, her hand on the brass doorknob. The light from the streetlamp outside caught her profile—the straight, slightly thin nose, the high forehead. "Everyone knows your house, Mr. Holloway. It’s the one that’s still straight after ninety-nine storms."
She was gone before he could ask her why she had been standing under the hardware store awning the night before.
When Walter returned home, Margaret was asleep in the armchair by the kitchen, her head tilted back against the cushion. In the cradle, Emma was awake. She didn't cry; she simply stared at the ceiling, her tiny tongue moving against her lower lip.
Walter sat on the floor beside the cradle. He reached in, his large, calloused index finger looking absurd next to her small hand.
May you like
"We have a cleaner," he whispered to the child. "She knows about vinegar. That’s something."
Emma’s hand closed around his finger. Her grip was surprisingly tight, like a small, warm vine taking root in the dry ground of his hand.
