"How was your flight, son?"

Teddy leaned away from Mr. Caldwell's scotch-scented breath and forced a smile. "Fine. Crowded."

"I hear you," he said, laughing uproariously. "I hate airplanes. Back in the day, you could get a first class seat and live like a king."

"I'm actually a little tired," Teddy said, getting to his feet. "I think I'll head to bed early."

"Of course, of course." He didn't bother getting to his feet, waving Teddy off with a loose gesture. He didn't seem to notice he came with inches of shattering the scotch on the floor.

Teddy grabbed his bags, full of souvenirs from the most recent dinner meeting of his frat brothers. Luke had given him a particularly lurid pair of orange and purple socks with the Sigma Alpha Omega logo on it. His daughter insisted Teddy put them on immediately, or risk not getting any cookies. They were surprisingly comfortable.

Focused on not dropping anything, he almost didn't notice the petite woman rushing around the corner in time to sidestep. She ducked her head, muttering an apology in broken English.

"It's my fault," Teddy said, frowning. Even when he made a point to look for Carlos every day, he very rarely seen any of the people who worked around the Caldwells’ house. He was almost certain he'd never seen any other women helping Theresa keep the house. "My name is Teddy. Are you here helping Theresa?"

The maid ducked her head even farther. She was younger than Carlos' mother, her hair streaked with dust and flour. "No English," she said, fidgeting anxiously.

Cursing under his breath, Teddy waved her off. He'd been meaning to learn Spanish for months, but every time he thought about it, he ended up texting Carlos instead. He was pretty sure he passed well beyond creepy now.

He watched her scurry away, an unpleasant feeling swirling in his stomach. In his room, nothing had changed, and he set his bags down. He meant to unpack them but got distracted calculating the number of hours he'd been gone. Not long enough for anything bad to happen, surely.

Distractedly undressing, he crawled into bed, then got back out to brush his teeth. The second time he laydown, he was just dozing off when he got thirsty. The third time, it was an itchy bug bite that drove him into the bathroom for an antihistamine. By nine o'clock, he'd gotten up eleven times and had never been further from sleep.

When his stomach growled, he sat up in bed with a disgusted huff. "I give up," he announced to the room. He pulled on a pair of pajama pants, purple with orange cuffs, and his bathrobe, red plaid, and headed downstairs.

It wasn't unusual for the Caldwells to entertain well into the night, but he was surprised to stumble across Chloe Caldwell sitting alone in the tiny vestibule between the great hall and the dining room. She was talking on the phone, so engrossed in her conversation that she didn't even notice him standing there.

"Peter didn't even finish his dinner, it was that bad," she said, examining her nails. "I'm pretty sure she lied on her resume. Of course, I let her go! Why should I pay someone who can't even put a gourmet meal on the table?"

Teddy tried to ease back out of the room, but she glanced up at the movement.

"Theodore, dear. Peter said you weren't feeling well," she looked him over critically. "You got lucky, at any rate. Dinner was atrocious."

Clearing his throat, Teddy glanced toward the kitchen. "Is Theresa on vacation?"

Chloe snorted. "No.We had to let Theresa go last week. It wouldn't do to have such immoral associations in the house. We're considered pillars of the community, you know."

His gut clenched like he'd been shot. "Immoral associations?"

"I've been trying to find a replacement," she said as if he hadn't spoken, "but, well, you know how lazy they are. It's impossible to find any good workers. Yes, that's exactly what I mean." Turning back to her phone conversation, she gestured wildly. "How do they think that is acceptable?"

Ducking through to the kitchen, Teddy was surprised to find the tiny woman from before still in there, scrubbing away at the dishes with tearful determination. She didn't look up as he hovered in the doorway, trying to decide if he should try to console her.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. There was a lingering spice in the air, and no matter what the Caldwells thought, it smelled delicious.

She paused in her scrubbing only long enough to shrug, rinsing the dish and setting it on the rack before picking up the next one.

"It smells wonderful." He watched her sniff, rubbing her nose with soapy fingers.

The lines around her lips made her look a decade older than when he'd seen her earlier. Chloe's voice was just loud enough to echo in the big, tiled space, and it was clear the maid understood her as she slumped lower over the sink with each high pitched complaint.

His mind had been running in circles, trying to think of ways he could help Theresa, but looking around the kitchen, he was overwhelmed with how much bigger the problem really was.

"Here," he said, grabbing a paper towel and the pen off the fridge. He scribbled down Kurt's contact info, making a mental note to text him about it later. "Call this number, and he'll help you find somewhere else to work. He knows people all over the south, and he speaks Spanish."

She didn't glance up as he held the scrap out to her, so he set it on the counter out of the way of the water. Whether she called or not, it was out of his hands.

He grabbed a snack and left quickly, not wanting to intrude on her any more than he already had. Chloe was still on the phone, complaining about the weather as he strode past. She didn't pay any attention to him, and he was grateful.

Instead of going back to bed and spending the next few hours unsuccessfully trying to sleep, he went up to the study and sat at the desk to eat. He sent off a quick text to Kurt without receiving a reply, leaving him with entirely too much time to think.

Five days wasn't long enough for Carlos or his mother to be in any truly dire straits, but it was more than enough time for the curt dismissal to take its toll. He composed and deleted a text asking Carlos if he was okay. He got crumbs all over his stack of papers. He composed and deleted a second text offering to help if they needed it. He dug out his emergency chocolate bar and somehow managed to get chocolate in his hair. He composed and deleted a third text asking what the immoral associations had been.

By two in the morning, his eyes were burning, and his phone was almost entirely out of battery, but he had an idea. Shuffling down to his bed like a zombie, he fully expected to lie awake until it was late enough in the day to implement it, but he was asleep within minutes.

He slept better than he had in weeks, waking up well after his alarm should have gone off. A quick call to the site and he was free for the day.

"Is today a holiday I forgot about?" Nana asked as he walked up to the house. Despite her protests, he hadn't taken her by surprise. Unless there was someone else she was waiting for on the front porch with a full tea service. "Have a seat."

Downing the tea like a shot, he looked around and avoided his grandmother's eye. "You used to have a maid, didn't you?" He could vaguely recall the tall, thin woman who had hovered in the background every summer, her dark skin smooth and luminous in the Texas sun.

"Yes," Nana said, sipping slowly from her cup, a blue and gold number today, one of her favorites. "She retired. Went home to the islands with enough money to keep her family happy for life. I get a Christmas card every year."

Teddy turned his own cup over in his hands, green with a bamboo pattern. "Why didn't you ever get another one?"

"Without your grandfather here to mess things up," she said cheerfully, "I didn't really need one. Why?"

"The Caldwells fired their maid, and I was hoping to help her find a new job," he said, keeping his voice level. "You know how it can be. She was with them for years, and they'll never give her a good reference."

She was watching him closely, and he resisted the urge to fidget. He loved his grandmother more than just about anything, but sometimes she made the kind of leaps of logic that would have gotten her burned at the stake a few hundred years earlier.

"Is she the girl you've been mooning over?" Nana asked.

"No," he said, his lips twitching. "She's old enough to be my mother."

"Bah." Nana set her cup down with the tiniest clink. "Granddad was almost two decades older than me. Didn't stop us. And don't tell me that it's different when it's the man that's older. Don't be sexist, Teddy, dear."

"Yes, Nana," he said. "I wouldn't dare."

She sniffed, sticking her nose in the air and nodding. "Good." Leaning back in the chair, she stared out across her gardens thoughtfully. "Is she a good maid, then?"

"She didn't murder them in their sleep," he said. "The house is clean, and she cooks."

"She has more restraint than I have," Nana muttered. "I can't stand that family. I don't know why your father insisted you stay there. I have a perfectly good guest house."

"It's good for networking, Nana," Teddy replied dutifully. It wasn't entirely a lie, but he didn't care anymore about networking than he did about marrying into the right family. That was always Regan's obsession.

"Pish," she said, swatting him lightly. "So tell me about the girl."

"I don't know what happened, Nana," he said, staring at his hands. "My texts don't get answered anymore. I thought it was going great."

She caught his hand, squeezing gently until he looked up at her. "Did you ask?"

"Not as such, no," he said, chewing his lips. "I wasn't sure it was socially acceptable.

"Society has no idea what it's doing," she grumbled. "If you ask and she doesn't answer, you haven't lost anything. If she does answer, then at least you know what happened. Who cares if it's acceptable or not?"

He squeezed her hand, the urge to tell her the whole story pressing up behind his teeth. He'd never actually told his Nana he was gay, though. Not because he was worried about the inheritance, but because he couldn't stand to have her look at him any different.

"I'll try," he said. He wasn't sure how much good it would do him after...he did some quick math and frowned. "Huh." That was a thought.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said slowly, squeezing her hand. "At least, I don't think it's anything important. I'll let you know if that changes," he promised.

"You'd better," she said, pulling him in for a kiss. "I'll call Chloe and find out about the maid."

"Do you think she'll tell you?"

Nana scoffed. "I'll make something up. Have a little faith in your Nana."

"I love you, Nana," he said, burying his smile in a cookie. Now that the ordeal was over, he was starving.

"I love you, too, sweetheart. More tea?"