Chapter 1
"Did I tell you I fired my cleaner?" Audrey asked.
The woman sitting beside her lowered her iced coffee. "What happened?"
"She scratched my marble island, then told me the mark was already there."
"Right before your dinner party?"
Audrey sighed. "I have twelve people coming Saturday and absolutely no one to clean."
I kept my eyes on the blank raffle sign-up sheets in front of me.
A Saturday job could cover the missing half of Willa's aquarium trip fee.
Grant had promised to handle the full amount weeks ago. On Tuesday, he called from Salem.
"I can cover half," he said.
"You promised the whole fee."
"I know. You'll have to figure out the rest."
"From where? The grocery money is already gone."
"I'm on the road, Maren. I can't do this now."
"When are you coming home?"
"Friday morning."
The line went dead.
The rest of the fee was mine to find.
Grant liked telling people that sending Willa to Cedarwick was a sacrifice we had chosen together.
In practice, I signed permission forms at the kitchen counter after Willa went to bed and answered school emails between cleaning jobs.
Grant remembered Cedarwick when someone praised us for sending Willa there.
He forgot it whenever another bill came home.
When the school needed supplies, chaperones, or another activity fee, he was usually in a hotel lobby or driving down I-5 to meet his next client.
He had chosen the school. I handled the everyday cost of keeping her there.
Yesterday afternoon, when I picked Willa up, I heard her talking to her teacher by the cubbies.
"Can you take a picture of the otters if I can't go?" my five-year-old had asked.
She had not cried. She had already figured out what she would do while the other children were gone. Hearing her make a backup plan hurt more than hearing her beg.
I sat in the sunroom, waiting for one of the other mothers to recommend a cleaning service.
Sloane sat directly to Audrey's left. She kept turning the green straw in her drink, staring down at the ice in her cup.
Last Thursday, I had spent twenty minutes on her dining-room floor getting red wine out of her wool rug.
"You saved it," she had told me when she paid me.
Now she watched the ice and said nothing.
"How many rooms?" I asked.
Audrey looked across the marble table at me. "Why?"
"I clean houses."
The table went quiet. Sloane's straw stopped moving.
"Five bedrooms, but nobody goes upstairs," Audrey said. "I need the ground floor—the kitchen, living room, dining room, office, primary bedroom, and two baths."
"Four hours," I said.
Audrey looked at my faded canvas jacket. "Do you have your own supplies?"
"I bring everything," I said. "Eco-friendly cleaners, microfiber cloths, vacuum."
"Do you have references?" Audrey asked.
I looked straight at Sloane.
"Sloane has my number," I said.
Audrey turned in her chair. "You've hired Maren?"
"Last week," Sloane said.
"Was the work good?" Audrey asked.
Sloane paused. "She got red wine out of my dining-room rug."
Audrey turned back to me, nodding once. "What do you charge?"
"Fifty an hour," I said. "Four-hour minimum."
"And you know how to clean marble?"
"No vinegar. No scrub powder."
Sloane looked up. "That's more than the agency charges."
"That's my rate."
Audrey picked up her phone. "Saturday at eight. I'll text you the address and gate code."
"No one should be home," she added. "You'll have the place to yourself."
Two hundred dollars.
Grant had chosen Cedarwick Academy because Willa "deserved one good thing."
Now he was in Salem, and I was taking a Saturday job to keep our daughter on Wednesday's aquarium bus.
The classroom doors opened down the hall.
"Activity forms are due Monday, parents," Ms. Penrose called out.
Willa saw me in the crowd and stopped.
I nodded.
Her face lit up. She pushed through the hallway, her backpack half open and bouncing against her hip. The bright orange plush fox Grant had bought her swung from the front zipper.
Audrey's six-year-old son, Tobin, came out from the kindergarten hall behind her. Willa was still in Cedarwick's pre-K class, one room over.
Willa reached my chair and held out a sheet of construction paper.
"I drew the otters," she said, pointing to two brown shapes floating across blue crayon waves. "I'm going to see the real ones, right?"
"That's the plan," I said.
I folded the drawing and slid it into my tote bag.
Tobin stopped beside Willa.
He wasn't looking at the drawing. He was staring at Willa's backpack.
He reached out, his fingers brushing the fox's pointed ear.
"I like that," Tobin said.
"It's Willa's," I said.
Tobin looked toward Audrey, who was gathering her keys, and then back at the little orange toy.
"My daddy bought me the exact same one," he said.