ONE
It was just past sunrise, the sky pale and washed out above the trees, which were lush and green with new spring growth. Tracey stood on the front steps of a plain beige low-income duplex, shivering a little in the chilly early morning breeze that tugged at her ash-blond hair. The simple gray maid uniform flattered her athletic figure, but its short sleeves and knee-length cut didn't do much to block the cold.
She'd left her sweater inside, and she told herself she'd go and get it in a moment, but for now she just needed a second. Just a second to stand in the peaceful stillness of the early April morning and be apart from the chaos.
"You had breakfast yet?"
She looked up to see her neighbor, a soft, matronly woman named Detta, closing the front door behind her and offering Tracey a bagel. Tracey shook her head and accepted the bagel with a grateful murmur.
"Charlie settled in?" she asked.
Detta chuckled. "You know how he is. Toddled over to the couch and passed right out again. He's a good kid. Some of the neighborhood boys his age still throw fits when their mamas drop them off."
Detta babysat most of the under-school-age children in the neighborhood. She charged a little more than the licensed daycare in town, but even if she had been double that, Tracey still would have gone to her. She was right next door and, more importantly, Tracey trusted her, unlike the rotating cast of fixed-smiling social sciences majors that filtered in and out of the other place.
"He's been through a lot recently," she said, her mouth pulling down at the corners as she thought about her son. "He shouldn't have to be growing up this fast."
"Lots of kids here have been through a divorce, or worse," Detta said, patting her on the shoulder. "He'll be all right."
"It's not the divorce," Tracey said, sighing. "It's the divorce on top of everything else. Everything with his dad before the split, the money problems, his grandma..."
She trailed off, thinking regretfully of her mother.
"It's just too much piling up," she said. "He might be only six, but I know he feels it. He's supposed to start kindergarten this fall. What if it holds him back?"
"I think it's a bit early to be worrying about all that," Detta said, leaning against one of the flimsy vinyl porch supports. "That's nearly a year away. Who knows where you'll be by then? You gotta focus on the now. Think too far past that and you'll just upset yourself."
"You're right." Tracey nodded, straightening up. "I know you're right. It's just hard not to worry about it with the bills piling up. Derek's stopped paying child support now, too."
"They always do." Detta shook her head, clicking her tongue in disappointment. "Have you sent the government after him yet?"
Tracey nodded again, looking exhausted.
"They can't even find him," she said. "He's shut off his phone and just disappeared. Considering the state he was in by the time I left him, he might be homeless by now."
"Don't go blaming yourself for that," Detta scolded, seeing the guilt in her expression. "You're not responsible for his lack of self-control. You did everything you could have and then some to help him straighten himself out."
"I just worry about Charlie." Tracey shrugged, rubbing her arms to warm them. "What am I going to tell him in a couple of years when he wants to know his father and I don't even know if the man is alive or dead?"
"What does anyone say?" Detta replied, her hands open to the sky. "You'll figure it out when the time comes. He's better off not knowing that man anyway. He had a lot more wrong with him than just poor impulse control."
"I need to get to work," Tracey said, glancing at her watch. "I'll see you this afternoon. Make sure Charlie eats his lunch. He's been getting picky lately."
"Don't worry," Detta said, waving as Tracey ducked back into her own house to grab her sweater. When she came back out and hurried to her car, Detta said, "I'll take care of Charlie. You take care of that fancy boss of yours."
On the long drive to work, Tracey's only company was early-morning radio personalities and all the popular hits of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Her ancient Geo Metro rattled with every pothole, just barely holding together as she swept down the damp, leaf-strewn highway, watching the sun slowly bake off the mist. She knew she'd need to get a new car sooner rather than later. The old Metro was swiftly reaching the point where it would cost more to fix than it would to buy it new, even with all her late-night Googling learning to diagnose and repair most of the basic issues herself. But she couldn't be without a car. Public transport didn't run all the way out to the Sheikh's estate.
The Sheikh's palatial manor sprawled across several hundred acres outside the city, close enough for the Sheikh to conduct his business but far enough that he need not endure any of the noise and smog. It was a massive colonial-style mansion with three separate wings and enough gardens to keep a whole cotillion of landscapers busy year round. The interior was a mix of Arabian and high-class European design that painted the very picture of tasteful, exorbitant wealth. Tracey had become lost once or twice among the intricate geometric lattices and mosaicked floors, the crystal and marble and lush interior courtyards.
She was lucky to have been assigned there, and she knew it. A friend had secured the interview with the high-end maid service for her after she'd dropped out of school, and from the first day she'd heard the other maids talking about the mysterious Sheikh. Working at his estate was one of the best-paying and most-exclusive contracts the maid service offered. It was everyone's goal to be assigned there. Tracey, through a lot of genuine hard work and the luck of being in the right places at the right times, had earned the assignment relatively quickly. She'd been one of only a handful of maids who took care of the Sheikh's mansion for nearly a year now.
She pulled up in front of the house at the same time as another of the maids from the service. They followed each other around to the back where the employees parked.
"Morning, Iris." She waved halfheartedly at her coworker as they left their cars, and Iris waved back. Iris was also young and pretty, the maid service's preference for these high-profile jobs. Two other women, Deidre and Mary, had already arrived. Lorraine, the senior member of the service who loosely supervised them, would be in later. Tracey worked with the other girls on big cleaning projects, but day to day they each managed their own part of the estate without much interaction. Despite this, Tracey tried to talk to Iris when she had the chance.
"Morning," Iris replied, dragging a hand over her eyes tiredly. "How's the kid?"
"Shoved a crayon up his nose over the weekend," Tracey said with a snort. "Almost had to go to the hospital to have it removed. How's the studying?"
"Exhausting," Iris said as they headed indoors. "Finals are next month. You look at that stuff about online courses I sent you?"
Tracey sighed regretfully. "Yeah, but I don't think I can afford it. Besides, veterinary science requires too many specialized classes they don't offer online."
"You'll get there," Iris said. "You're already doing better than I am, and I don't have a kid to look after."
"You're still young," Tracey told her. "You're not supposed to have it all together yet. Try not to worry about it too much."
"Easier said than done," Iris said, laughing as they entered the main house together.
They went their separate ways at the stairs. Iris handled the ground floor, which included the kitchen and the other most-used rooms, while Tracey took both the upper floors. Despite being used less, the upper bedrooms, bathrooms, and sitting rooms were still expected to be kept in pristine condition. It was a fairly even split, work wise. Iris's work was more difficult, cleaning the daily messes of living, but Tracey had more to do; her area was spread out and more tedious than challenging.
Tracey took a certain amount of pleasure in the tedium of it. She could let her mind wander, moving mechanically through the same tasks in room after opulent, underutilized room. The only regularly used room on the third floor was the master suite, which the maids never entered. The Sheikh appeared to value his privacy more than the convenience of turn-down service. He left his laundry and anything else that needed attention outside his bedroom doors and took care of the rest himself. Tracey had never seen inside those rooms.
When she was on the second floor, she could often hear life proceeding on the first: voices talking indistinctly, the occasional brunch party, or just Iris's vacuum. But on the third floor, which hardly ever saw any human life except her and was an absolute magnet for dust, things were perfectly silent. If she held still and listened closely, she might hear a distant murmur, too muffled to be distinguished, but otherwise there was only the quiet hum of the air-conditioner and whatever sounds she produced herself. She found herself subconsciously avoiding making too much noise while she was on the third floor, as though the silence it observed was somehow sacrosanct, like the quiet of an empty church, or a graveyard.
Today she would be changing out the linens in all the third-floor guest rooms and bathrooms. The Sheikh had many foreign visitors, often last minute, and though there were usually enough rooms on the ground and second floors for them, he insisted the top floor always be ready to receive guests as well, just in case. Tracey supposed it was an Arabian hospitality thing, a leftover custom of his homeland.
She worked steadily through the morning, one room at a time. She hauled the fresh laundry up from the basement first, leaving the bags in the hall as she went room to room. Strip the beds of their dusty, unused sheets. Dust and vacuum the rooms. Make the beds with the clean sheets. She took note of a lightbulb that needed replacing in one room and brass fixtures that needed polishing in another. She'd come back and take care of those later. As she worked, her mind wandered in the silence, dwelling on her worries.
The sitting room at the end of the hall was a welcome break from the guest rooms she'd been filing through. The decor here was as rich and stylish as it was downstairs, even if it was never used. Before she got started, she made her way to the glass French doors at the center of the room, throwing them open and stepping out onto the balcony patio that looked out across the estate.
Gardens surrounded the house in a seemingly endless sea of green. Just below the balcony, the Olympic-sized saltwater swimming pool was a blue jewel amid the deep green maze-like hedges and exultant pink- and lilac-flowering trees. The pool area was meticulously sculpted to resemble a natural feature rather than an artificial one. It was surrounded by live plants and mossy stone, down which tumbled a perfect, quietly rushing waterfall a little less than four feet high.
The heated water was steaming gently in the cool late morning, and as Tracey watched, the mist parted around a figure at the top of the waterfall. With the silent, poised grace of a heron, he paused briefly, the sun catching his bare copper skin. Tracey stepped closer to the edge of the balcony, pulling down her dust mask to watch. Even from this distance, her breath caught at the sight of him.
She'd had a not-insignificant crush on Sheikh Adil Hajjar since the first time she'd seen him, shortly after she began working there. She'd expected some stereotypical image of an older Arab man with a heavy beard and a heavier gut. He'd shocked her by being not only close to her in age but dazzlingly handsome. He had the sculpted, aquiline features of nobility and hair dark as midnight. His eyes were so black they were nearly blue, like darkest cobalt, a color like the deepest heart of the ocean. He had the body of an athlete, reflective of his preference for daily swims, muscular but streamlined.
Tracey knew her attraction to him was only shallow aesthetics, but darn if he wasn't nice to watch. She paused, her hands on the balcony, to observe him as he dove from the waterfall into the deep end of the pool, his body a perfect arc that made barely a ripple as it slipped into the water. She sighed wistfully, not sure which she wanted more: to be with him or to be him.
Not that it mattered. They'd barely spoken, only exchanging a few words in passing now and then as she worked. He seemed kind but removed. She was certain he'd never have any interest in a maid, much less a single mother pushing thirty. To him, like most of the people she had worked for as a housekeeper, she was invisible, just an inconsequential gear in the background machinery of his life. Service people like her kept things running smoothly, but no gear in a machine had more identity or particular importance than any other. She’d never have a chance with hm. But still, it was nice to fantasize.
He emerged from the water, his skin glistening in the sunlight, and looked up. For a moment, despite the distance, she could have sworn he was looking directly into her eyes. Her breath caught, and she stumbled away from the balcony, wondering if he could recognize her at that distance. Would he think she'd been slacking off? Or spying on him? Which, to be honest, she had been, but still.
Unsettled, she rushed back into the sitting room and immediately collided with a delicate, antique Moroccan side table, on top of which was a beautiful and no doubt obscenely expensive vase. She took all this in as she watched it tumble from the table, her hands moving to catch it too slowly. In the moment between the vase leaving the table and shattering into a million pieces on the lacquered floor, for the split second it was tumbling freely through the air, Tracey saw her entire life flash before her eyes.
She was screwed.
With a crash that seemed to her apocalyptically thunderous, the vase exploded, sending slivers of colorful glass rocketing across the room. Tracey fell to her knees, scrambling to scoop the pieces together as though, if she just did it fast enough, the vase would magically reform, unharmed. In a blind panic, she crawled under expensive dynasty furniture to collect broken shards, piling them on the end table like no one would be able to tell the difference between the priceless vase and the pile of rubble that had replaced it.
Tracey was certain someone would walk in at any moment (despite the fact that she regularly worked up here all day with no interruptions), see what she had done, and have her arrested. Well, perhaps not arrested, but certainly fired. You didn't get second chances with clients this important. The maid service wouldn't just fire her; they'd make an example of her. They’d prove to their clients how harshly they dealt with employees who disrespected their clients’ belongings. She'd seen it happen before. They'd blackball her from the entire industry. She'd never be able to get a job with any of the reputable housekeeping services again.
Feeling near to tears, Tracey sat on the floor of the lavish and unused sitting room, helplessly fumbling pieces of the broken vase. Maybe with enough glue, she thought, she might at least mask what she'd done. This room had never been used in the year she'd been here. The broken vase might not be discovered for ages! She'd be long gone by then, living it up in a lower-middle-class subdivision in Miami as a vet technician. That was what her dreams amounted to these days.
But that was a futile hope. Her manager, Lorraine, did a walkthrough of the entire house to ensure quality control. She'd notice right away, and that would be the end for Tracey.
Tracey groaned, tears stinging her eyes, and put her face in her hands. She could throw it out, dump it in the trash and play dumb. A vase? In this room? I don't remember any vases here. That table was definitely always empty. I plead the fifth.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she accepted that it was never going to work. This was the end. That was all there was to it. So, she'd lose her job. It happened all the time. She'd recover. Maybe this was the push she needed to really start pursuing her dreams. She’d get a part-time job flipping burgers and a few crippling loans and go back to school. More debt was exactly what she needed.
She bent over under the weight of the future and pressed her forehead to the shiny wooden floor, clutching her heaving stomach. This was just a setback. She'd gone through so much already. She could get through this too. She had to hold it together for Charlie. She was never going to let him see her give up. They'd just have to tighten their belts a little for a while. Never mind that their belts were already so tight they could be mistaken for corsets. She was going to give Charlie the life he deserved, one day at a time.
Even if that meant flipping burgers and drowning in debt. Even if that meant working a job she hated for the rest of her life. There was nothing she wouldn't do for Charlie.
She stayed there until she found her composure again. Then she dried her tears, took the largest piece of the vase, and headed downstairs.