The Housemaid Is Watching

Suzette confessed to killing her husband. I didn't quite understand it, but I didn't feel nearly as bad about Suzette Lowell being sent to prison. She's really quite a horrible person. For the last two weeks, I have been certain the truth would be discovered. I have been certain that the police would come knocking on my motel door, ready with an arrest warrant for the murder of Jonathan Lowell. But it hasn't happened. They haven't arrested me. They haven't even questioned me. I suppose nobody ever suspects the housemaid.

But all I could think about was what Jed would do to me if I got arrested for stealing. He would probably kill me with his bare hands. I don't know at what point I noticed the letter opener lying on the coffee table next to us. It all happened so fast, honestly. I grabbed it, and really, I just wanted him to stop talking. I just wanted him to stop saying that he was going to call the police. But the next thing I knew, he was lying on the floor, and there was blood gushing from his throat, pooling around hiş dead body. I had to run. There was certainly no time to clean it up.

Many years ago, back when I was young and full of hope about my life, I worked for a wealthy family. They had a teenage son who was the sort of boy who believed anything he wanted should be his. I disliked him intensely, especially after I saw a girl dashing out of his bedroom in tears. He laughed about it later, when I was changing the sheets on his bed that were spotted with her blood. Three months after that, he was dead. The first time I heard about Wilhelmina Calloway, the girl who would become Millie Accardi, was when she was being charged with the murder of this boy.

It's been almost two weeks since Suzette Lowell confessed to the murder of her husband, Jonathan Lowell. The four of us are having breakfast in our kitchen, something that didn't seem like it would ever be possible again only two weeks earlier. But now Enzo is home again. After Suzette confessed, all the charges against him were dropped.

"They checked out that room below the stairs,"

"Millie, they found Suzette Lowell's fingerprints.".

"Millie, she slit his throat with a pocketknife. This is trouble for her." That's the part of it that tugs at me. Jonathan Lowell had two stab wounds. Ada stabbed him in the belly to get him out of the way, but there's no way she is tall enough to effectively cut a grown man's throat while he was standing in front of he. She didn't tell me every detail only that she stabbed him to get him out of the way-and I didn't want to push her because she was already so upset.

I can't let you leave, Ada," he says. I remember when Gabe told me about that missing boy, Braden Lundie. I had imagined him being trapped in a room just like this. The thought terrified me, yet here I am. And just like Braden, nobody might see me ever again. Except I have one thing that Braden didn't mave. I reach into my pocket, and my fingers close around my dad's pocketknife. After he gave it to me, I practiced in my room. I practiced opening and retracting the blade quickly, the way I have seen Dad do it. Mr. Lowell is staring at my face, so he doesn't see me slide the knife out of my pocket and extend the blade.

But the strangest part of the room is what is in the far Corner. It's a bed. A small bed, meant for a child maybe even a little younger than Nico, but about that age. It has a white bedframe and a thin mattress with no boxspring.

“He said that if I told anyone about the room," Nico says, "that he would kill my whole family. He said he would kill Dad firsț, then Mom, then you." And now he's crying.

"So that's what I was doing when I went over there," Nico explains to me. "I wasn't doing chores. I was playing in the little room. And Mt. Lowell was watching from the camera."

The Lowells have a tiny room that is identical to ours, also hidden below their staircase. When he was vacuuming, Nico noticed the very edge of the door on the wall, mostly hidden behind a bookcase, and being my troublemaker brother he decided to push aside the bookcase, open the door, and go inside. But unlike the room under our staircase, this one was not empty. "It was filled with toys," he tells me. “Cool toys. Stuff that we could never afford. So... well, nobody was around, so I thought I could play with the toys just a litle bit. But then Mr. Lowell caught me while I was playing with this really cool Transformers truck, and I dropped it and it broke." Mr. Lowell told Nico that the toys were collectors' items, and the truck he broke had been very expensive. And now he owed the family thousands of dollars

"Don't even think... telling anyone,"" Mrs. Lowell is saying to Nico. "Don't you dare... Do you know how much trouble you'll be in?" And then Nico says in a tiny voice, “I won't. I promise." Was she... threatening him? I don't know what they were talking about, but I didn't like the tone of her voice. She was threatening him. I'm sure of it. I keep thinking about it as I'm swimming, and I get madder and madder. How could she talk to my brother that way? And what were they talking about? I get so angry, I can't even think straight. And then when I'm swimming under the water, I pass by her legs.

"Don't tell anyone, okay, Ada?" he says. I won't," I promise. “But... I mean... how..." How does a nine-year-old kid wet his pants? There was a time when Nico was about four years old when I remember he used to wet the bed, but that was a long time ago. "I just held it in too long," he says. I still don't get it. But he looks so embarrassed, it's not like I'm going to give him a hard time about it. "Okay..."

I haven't seen him since the morning. That's not unusual these days though. I used to spend practically every second of the weekend with my brother, but now he's either at Little League or locked in his room.I managed to catch him a few times to walk to the bus stop with him, but it didn't help. He didn't want to talk. So it's not weird that I haven't seen him all day. But it is weird that he is sneaking in through the back. And it's even weirder that there's what looks like a pee stain all over the front of his pants. Did Nico wet his pants?

"But there's a chance he might not stop." Dad's dark eyebrows come together, and he gets a deep crease between them. “And if that happens..." Dad is quiet for a second, thinking something over. Finally, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out that pocketknife he always carries around. The one that his dad gave him, which has his initials engraved on it. “My father gave me this when I was your age," he says. "Now I give it to you."

"Well, would it be okay if I held your hand?" I don't even have a chance to say no this time before Gabe reaches out to grab my hand. His is sweaty and hot. It's pretty gross to touch. I pull away, but instead of backing off, he grabs my wrist instead. hand anymore-he's grabbing my wrist. tightens his grip. "Just for, like, two minutes, Ada. Please?" "1 don't want to hold hands," I say. Even though he's not holding my Gabe still isn't getting it. His long fingers encircle my wrist as he "You're hurting me," I say through my teeth. "No, I'm not," he insists.

Nico is acting weird. He's been going over to the Lowells' house after school because he broke their window playing baseball in the backyard so he has to work it off doing chores. Anyway, it seems like he goes there every day, and then he doesn't get home until just before Mom gets back. I asked him what kind of chores they have him doing and he said just cleaning. But then when I asked him what he was cleaning, he got quiet about it.

As we pass the house next door to ours, I notice somebody at the window. It must be our neighbor. It's a man about the same age as Dad, and when he sees us, he waves. Nico waves back, and so do I, but I feel weird about it. I don't know why that man is standing at the window, watching the school bus arrive. It's just a strange thing to do.

Tears stream down her cheeks. "But he didn't!" This next part is going to be hard for her, but she's going to hear it sooner or later. Better she hears it from me than reads it online or hears it from a friend. “Ada, honey, he confessed," I tell her. "He admitted to them that he killed Mr. Lowell." "He didn't though!" she cries. “I know he didn't!" I try to put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs me away. "How do you know?" "Because," my daughter says, "I was the one who killed him."

"No, a pocketknife," she says. "It had your initials on it EA. They found it stuffed in a drawer:" I turn my head to look at my husband. I know that knife the one his father gave him. He always carries it around. "And." she adds, it looked like it had been wiped clean, but there were still traces of blood on it. They did a rush DNA analysis that came back this morning with a match for Jonathan Lowell." Enzo's mouth falls open. He slumps against the wall, looking like his legs are about to give out. Of all the evidence they had against him, this is by far the most damning. But he must have a reason. There must be a reason why his knife has Jonathan's blood on it. I need to hear his explanation. I need to hear it now. Enzo?" I whisper. "L..."He blinks a few times. "I thought I wiped it all off." What? He stands up straight and takes a shaky breath. "I'm so sorry, Millie," he says. "I was not honest with you. I am the one who killed Jonathan."

"Mom?" he says. I perch myself at the edge of his bed. Yes?" "Do you think that if a person does a bad thing, that makes them a bad person?" "Well, what kind of bad thing?" His eyes grow larger. "A really bad thing," He must be thinking about his father. It must have been so jarring for him to wake up this morning to the police in our house. What will he think if they arest Enzo?

"Millie," she says, “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Enzo was obsessed with me." "Obsessed with you?" I repeat incredulously. "Do you think I asked him to come over here every minute?" She shakes her head. "He always had an excuse to be here. Always flirting with me. And he was intensely jealous of Jonathan." This is almost laughable. Enzo wasn't flirting with her. I could see with my own eyes that she was the instigator. At this point, I can tell when a woman is throwing herself at my husband. "After all," she says, "you saw the way he was all over me at the beach. Do you think I wanted him to practically carry me back to the car? I couldn't get him away from me."

Okay... Of all the people I would have thought my husband might cheat with, my sixty-year-old cleaning woman was at the bottomn of the list. Of course, he is claiming he didn't cheat. But if he didn't, why was he at a motel with her? I went over to her house to give her last paycheck," he begins. I dench my teeth, remembering how I asked him not to do that, yet he did it anyway. "Okay..." "And she had..." He touches his hand to his face. "Bruises everywhere. I had sensed it when I spoke with her before, but that day was when I knew. Her husband... He took her whole paycheck, and that's why she was stealing thingsHO save up enough to leave. He would have killed her,

Mrs. Accardi," he says. "Did you know that your husband recently purchased a gun?" My mouth falls open. “A.. a gun?" That's right." He is watching my expression. “He withdrew a thousand dollars from your joint bank account and then used some of that money to purchase a firearm. Illegally."