Chapter 4 - THE BLUE MEDICINE
I slept for forty minutes.
At four-thirty in the morning, I gave up pretending sleep was possible.
The photograph of Elena and me lay on the desk beneath the lamp.
I remembered almost nothing about the day it had been taken.
St. Agnes had hosted dozens of charity visitors.
Politicians handed out toys in December.
Corporate wives posed beside donated coats.
Photographers asked frightened children to smile for newsletters none of us would ever read.
Most adults came once.
A few returned.
There had been one woman who sat on the floor instead of standing above us.
She had worn a blue sweater and asked every child what book they wanted rather than what toy.
I remembered gray eyes.
I remembered her tying a thin bracelet around my wrist after I burned my arm trying to open a locked storage room where another foster child had been trapped.
The bracelet I still wore was not the original.
That one had fallen apart years ago.
But I had replaced it with the closest thing I could find because it reminded me that someone had once looked at my scar without looking away.
Until that morning, I had never known the woman’s name.
Elena Kretti had known mine.
She had expected me to enter her daughter’s life.
That could not be coincidence.
Someone had arranged my employment.
The agency claimed it selected candidates through a standard placement process.
Six nannies had left in two years.
Perhaps the first six were never meant to stay.
Perhaps they had been searching for me.
At six, I left the staff floor and found Monique in the kitchen.
She was directing breakfast preparations while three cooks worked in silence.
I waited until she entered the pantry.
Then I followed and closed the door.
She turned slowly.
“You should not corner people in this house,” she said.
“You should not leave photographs on their pillows.”
Her expression did not change.
“You found something?”
“Someone found me.”
I took out the photograph.
The color left her face.
It was the first uncontrolled reaction I had seen from her.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“My room.”
“Who entered?”
“I thought you might know.”
Monique reached for the photograph, then stopped before touching it.
Her eyes moved across Elena’s handwriting.
“When Hazel returns, give her the key,” she read.
“What key?” I asked.
“I do not know.”
“You are lying.”
Her gaze snapped to mine.
“In this house, lying has kept people alive.”
“Has it kept Zara safe?”
The question struck harder than accusation.
Monique looked toward the pantry door.
“Not here,” she whispered.
“Then where?”
“Nowhere with walls.”
She took a paper bag from a shelf and began filling it with tea tins.
“Zara has school at eight.”
“You will accompany her.”
“Does she normally go?”
“Three mornings each week.”
“Why are you helping me?”
Monique folded the top of the bag.
“I have not decided whether I am.”
She walked out.
At seven-fifteen, Zara entered the breakfast room in a navy school uniform.
Her butterfly barrette was clipped into place.
She looked exhausted but alert.
Vincent sat at the table reading reports on a tablet.
A cup of coffee rested untouched beside him.
Damian Kretti occupied the chair to his right.
I recognized him from business pages.
Vincent’s younger half brother was thirty-nine, handsome in the polished, deliberate way of men who understood the value of being underestimated.
His suit was dark blue.
His smile was easy.
A silver wolf ring circled the little finger of his right hand.
The same ring had flashed inside the service elevator.
He stood when I entered.
“Miss Brennan,” he said.
“Finally.”
I stopped.
“We have not met.”
“No, but I have read enough about you to feel otherwise.”
Vincent looked up.
“Damian.”
“What?”
“I am welcoming Zara’s new nanny.”
Damian extended his hand.
I did not take it.
His smile widened.
“Hazel Marie Brennan,” he said.
“Born in Queens.”
“No known father.”
“Mother deceased.”
“Three foster placements and one sealed juvenile record.”
Zara went still.
Vincent placed the tablet on the table.
“That is enough.”
Damian sat.
“I value knowing who enters our family home.”
“Our security department conducted the review,” Vincent said.
“And approved her.”
“Security departments miss things.”
His thumb moved slowly across the silver wolf.
I pulled out the chair beside Zara.
“What did they miss?” I asked.
Damian studied me.
“That depends on what you came here to find.”
“I came for employment.”
“Of course.”
Vincent’s gaze moved between us.
“You are here unusually early,” he told his brother.
“The Hudson project requires your signature.”
“It could have waited.”
“I was nearby.”
“At seven in the morning?”
Damian picked up his coffee.
“Some of us enjoy working before noon.”
The brothers smiled at each other without warmth.
Zara reached beneath the table and took my hand.
Her small fingers squeezed once.
She had seen the ring too.
After breakfast, a black sedan drove us to the Hawthorne Academy on the Upper East Side.
Two security vehicles followed.
Zara sat beside me in the rear seat.
The city moved past the tinted windows in gray morning light.
“Is Uncle Damian the visitor?” I asked softly.
Zara looked toward the driver.
Then she opened her school notebook and drew a small wolf on the page.
She circled it twice.
I understood.
At school, Zara disappeared into a guarded entrance.
Monique had instructed the driver to remain with the car.
I told him I needed coffee.
He said he would send someone.
I told him I became unpleasant without walking.
He looked as though he believed I was already unpleasant.
After a phone call, he allowed me to cross the street with one guard following twenty feet behind.
My friend Theo Park worked at a small independent pharmacy four blocks away.
We had met when I cleaned rooms at a hotel near Columbia University and he worked nights while finishing pharmacology school.
He had once loaned me sixty dollars for an emergency dental visit.
I had repaid him in weekly installments and terrible coffee.
He was behind the counter when I entered.
His face lit up.
“Hazel Brennan in expensive shoes,” he said.
“The shoes belong to my employer.”
“That explains why they are not falling apart.”
I placed one blue tablet inside a folded receipt.
“I need to know what this is.”
Theo’s smile disappeared.
“Do you have the bottle?”
“No.”
“Prescription number?”
“No.”
“Reasonable explanation?”
“Also no.”
He looked over my shoulder at the guard outside.
“Who are you working for?”
“Someone whose name will make you refuse.”
“Then do not tell me.”
Theo carried the tablet into the back room.
I waited beside a display of vitamins.
Ten minutes later, he returned wearing gloves.
“This is not a normal sleep aid,” he said.
“What is it?”
“A compounded sedative with a memory-suppressing agent.”
“For an adult?”
“It should not be given to anyone without close monitoring.”
“Could it cause confusion?”
“Yes.”
“Hallucinations?”
“Yes.”
“Could it make a child unable to wake while someone entered her room?”
Theo stared at me.
“Hazel, whose medicine is this?”
I folded the receipt around the pill.
“Can you document what you found?”
“Not without exposing the pharmacy.”
“I need proof.”
He hesitated.
Then he wrote a chemical name and concentration on the back of a business card.
“This is not an official report,” he said.
“It is enough to ask the right questions.”
“Thank you.”
He caught my wrist before I turned away.
“People do not compound this by accident.”
“I know.”
“Then leave the job.”
“There is a child inside it.”
His grip loosened.
“That is what you always say before walking into something dangerous.”
“Usually because there is.”
I returned to the school before dismissal.
The security guard reported my movements into his sleeve.
Someone would know I had visited the pharmacy.
That meant I had very little time.
At noon, Zara came through the entrance holding a drawing.
She handed it to me in the car.
It showed a black vehicle beneath falling rain.
A woman lay beside the road.
A small child stood behind a tree.
A man wearing a silver ring knelt near the woman.
Another figure waited beside an open car door.
The second figure had gray hair and carried a medical bag.
“Dr. Kesler?” I asked.
Zara nodded.
“This is the accident?”
Another nod.
“Were you there?”
Her lips trembled.
“They said I was asleep at home.”
“But you were there.”
“Yes.”
“Who told you to say you were home?”
“My uncle.”
The car slowed near the mansion gate.
Zara leaned closer.
“Mommy was still moving,” she whispered.
The gates opened.
Damian stood inside the courtyard waiting for us.
His right hand rested in his coat pocket.
When Zara saw him, she crushed the drawing against her chest.
He smiled through the windshield.
Then my phone vibrated.
A message from an unknown number appeared.
YOU SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THE JOB IN BOSTON, HAZEL.
The next message contained a photograph of Theo standing behind his pharmacy counter.
May you like
The third contained only six words.
GIVE BACK THE PILL BEFORE NINE.
