Chapter 7
June had been loyal to Lena before anyone had taught her that loyalty could be used against her.
She remembered Lena painting at Hawthorn House with the windows open, Nora asleep in a wicker stroller, and the sea wind scattering brushes onto the porch. She remembered Lena saying the house should always be a place where Nora could ask anything.
That memory made the hotel conference room feel airless.
A labor attorney sat beside June, reviewing the payroll records independently of Daniel's counsel.
June hadn't wanted to hire a lawyer. To her, lawyers belonged to people who could afford to wait months for an answer. She had thought about leaving quietly, finding work in another house, and treating the lost wages as the price of getting out. But Nora's question—*Can June come?*—had changed the calculation. Leaving without correcting the record would let Vivienne describe her as unstable and untrustworthy. June wasn't fighting over her pride. She was fighting over whether the next person who tried to protect a child would be believed.
Her attorney asked her to separate documents she actually possessed from things she merely remembered. June spent an evening labeling envelopes with dates, resisting the temptation to improve her notes. She included a page where she had mistakenly recorded a Tuesday visit as Wednesday, then crossed it out at the time. The correction made the record more credible, not less. When the attorney told her that, June seemed surprised. She had been living in a house where every ordinary mistake could be turned into a reason to stay silent. June wanted the missing wages returned, but she also wanted the false accusations in her employment file corrected. Vivienne had written that June was careless, disruptive, and emotionally attached to the child in an unhealthy way.
“I stayed because Nora was frightened,” June said. “They made that sound like misconduct.”
The attorney asked about threats. June recalled Vivienne telling her that housekeepers with bad references did not get new jobs in Newport. Miles had followed with a polished email urging discretion and reminding her of her confidentiality agreement.
The agreement protected private financial information and family records. It did not require silence about suspected child abuse. June learned that from her own lawyer, not from Daniel.
“Why did they need you quiet?” the lawyer asked.
“Because I could hear Nora cry,” June replied. “And because I knew she was never violent.”
June described another incident, eight days before the lighter. Nora had hidden behind the pantry door after asking whether the yellow house still had her mother's paintings. Vivienne told her that greedy children lost the things they loved. That afternoon June found a little paper sailboat torn in half in the kitchen trash.
“I kept the pieces,” June said.
Daniel looked up. “Why?”
“Lena folded boats for Nora. It didn't seem right to throw it away.”
She had placed them in a small envelope inside her recipe book. The detective photographed and documented the pieces after June brought them in. On the back of one half, in Nora's neatest letters, was the sentence: Mommy said I can go back.
Daniel had never heard Nora make a demand for the cottage. She wanted to stand on the porch and remember.
Later, outside the meeting, June confronted him with a different truth.
“You kept asking me to care for Nora while you worked. I did. But when I needed you to listen, I had to go through people who were hurting her.”
Daniel nodded slowly. “I was easier to manage than I want to admit.”
“Easy for them. Not for her.”
He considered offering another apology. Instead, he asked what June needed now.
“A safe workplace. My wages. No one deciding whether I'm allowed to speak. And Nora should know I didn't abandon her.”
Daniel agreed to have their lawyers arrange the practical matters and offered her work only if she wanted it, without tying employment to testimony. June chose part-time hours, a written schedule, and the right to leave if the arrangement stopped feeling safe.
That evening, she visited Nora at the rental house. Nora met her at the door holding a paper boat she'd made from a grocery receipt.
“I tried to make it like Mommy's,” she said.
June knelt beside her. “It's yours, so it doesn't have to be the same.”
Nora smiled, briefly. Then she looked at Daniel. “Can we find the two pieces of the old one?”
“We can ask whether the police need to keep them for now,” he said. “After that, we can see.”
He thought the answer would disappoint her. Instead she nodded. A truthful answer, even an inconvenient one, seemed to steady her.
May you like
June handed Daniel a copy of an old household appointment book. She had found something in its back pages: a note about a surveyor visiting Hawthorn House weeks before anyone publicly discussed selling it.
Next to the appointment was a name Daniel recognized from Thomas's business dealings.
