Watch Out for Her Read online

  Sarah gestures to the pool through the sliding glass door. “Lisette told me you’re a certified lifeguard. Are you okay swimming with Jacob?” She looks at Holly’s shoulder. “I see you’re wearing a bathing suit already.”

  Holly tucks the strap under her tank top and nods. She’s more than okay. The water’s her happy place. Her father and Lisette had insisted both she and her stepsister excel at swimming so they could join the swim team at York House, the prestigious private girls’ school they’d attended as kids. Both skilled swimmers, they’d easily landed spots on the team and summer jobs as lifeguards. Alexis, of course, wanted to save lives, but for Holly, it was a great way to meet boys since she didn’t go to school with them, not that she ever really dated them. Boys are for practicing. Men are for real life.

  “Come. I’ll show you the back.”

  Jacob yanks opens the door, racing out, and Holly follows Sarah to an enclosed deck with four turquoise lounge chairs surrounding a kidney-shaped pool and a round glass table with a red umbrella for shade. It’s simple, unpretentious, like Sarah. Set to the right of the pool, there’s a cedar cabana.

  Sarah notices Holly looking at the cabana. “That’s Daniel’s man cave. Don’t let Jacob play in there. Daniel’s pretty protective of his space. He doesn’t even like me to go in there.” She rolls her eyes and laughs. “Men.”

  Holly smiles, shifting her attention to the spectacular view from the deck. She has to shield her eyes from the sun. “My house is just across the river. The concrete-and-glass one right in the middle there.”

  Sarah squints. “Oh, that’s a gorgeous house. I didn’t realize we lived so close to each other.”

  Holly moves her finger to the far left. “My bedroom is right there at the top.” The river ripples, even without much wind, and the thick cluster of treetops in the woods, so close to the Goldmans’ house, barely sway in the humidity. Through a small opening in the knotty branches, she sees her wide window, where she left her curtains open. No one understands what life is like for her in that house. It’s so different on this side of the river.

  Sarah gives a quick nod and leads Holly back inside to the living room. Jacob sticks close to Holly, and Sarah’s eyes dart to her son. “Jacob, can you get in your bathing suit, please?”

  Jacob ignores his mother, plopping onto the couch with a thud.

  Sarah tenses up instantly but quickly covers her reaction by focusing on Holly. “Your stepmother told me you just finished your first year of medical school.”

  Holly coughs. “Yeah. I mean, yes. At UBC.”

  “What an accomplishment. Why medicine?”

  Holly spouts the same lie she tells everyone. “To join my dad at Health ProX. We’re one big, happy working family.”

  Holly wishes she wasn’t a Monroe but just herself, whoever that might be. But her father made a stipulation to her trust fund, which she is to get when she turns twenty-five, that she has to graduate from medical school and represent Health ProX. It’s his way of tethering her to Forest View—and him—forever.

  How lucky Jacob is to have a mother who obviously loves him so much, who gives him the freedom to run and play. How lucky he is to have a mother at all.

  Sarah looks expectantly at her. “So, what do you think? Are you up for the job? If you’re okay doing a trial run today, maybe you can stay and we can see how things go with Jacob?”

  “Yay!” Jacob squeals, grinning at Holly.

  She grins back. “I’d love that.” And she means it. Jacob seems to have taken an instant shine to her, Sarah’s so nice, and this house is comfortable, definitely more comfortable than hers.

  “Great. I’ll be in my darkroom if you need me.”

  “I’ll get my bathing suit!” Jacob speeds from the couch to the stairs in a blur.

  Holly laughs. Taking care of this kid won’t be so bad after all.

  Sarah’s eyes go wide. “Wow. He likes you. Usually he’s much more… stubborn.”

  Holly feels her cheeks flush. “He won’t be bored. I love swimming and biking, and I’ll keep him busy.”

  Judging from the toys and electronics spilling out of a wicker basket in the corner of the living room and the easel pushed against one wall, Jacob has a lot to keep himself busy. Holly’s dying to peek into the other rooms. It’s something she does whenever she goes somewhere new: people’s houses are a reflection of their true selves, but they keep their secrets hidden. There’s so much one can learn by poking around. Luke taught her that. It’s not about the possessions themselves but more about how people arrange them—what they display, what they hide. Everything tells a story. She wants to know what the Goldmans’ story is.

  Holly’s phone pings, and she pulls it out of her backpack. She feels Sarah watching her. Does this look bad? Maybe she’s not supposed to use her phone? After all, she’s here to secure a job.

  “It’s my stepsister,” she tells Sarah. “Do you mind if I quickly text her back?”

  “Go ahead,” Sarah says. “Then if you don’t mind running up to hurry Jacob along and go for a swim?”

  Holly smiles. “Definitely.” Sarah turns on her heel and heads toward the basement stairs.

  Alexis: How’s it going?

  Holly: Mom nice. Kid cute.

  Haven’t met the dad.

  Alexis: He’ll love you.

  Holly winces.

  Holly: Gotta go.

  She hears stomping from upstairs, so she puts her phone away to deal with Jacob. When she gets to the landing on the second floor, Jacob’s door is open. Still in his Iron Man pajamas, he’s hopping from his bed to the floor and back again. He lands with a bang and his eyes widen when he sees Holly.

  “I’m exercising.”

  Holly laughs. “Ready to go swimming?” She peels off her tank top to reveal her navy one-piece—tasteful but curve-hugging. It’s important to always feel good on the outside even if she doesn’t feel it on the inside. “Get into your swimsuit, and I’ll teach you how to dive for pennies.”

  She tousles his hair and goes to the hall to wait while he changes. She’s proud of herself for handling him so well. She wishes her dad could see how good she is with kids.

  She looks down the hallway. Sarah’s bedroom door is open. Holly creeps over and peers inside. It’s a large but cozy space, with a mint-green armchair in the corner, draped with a fuzzy white blanket, where she imagines Sarah and Jacob cuddle and read together. It feels safe. Like the kind of bedroom she sees in family sitcoms. She wants to lie on the pretty sky-blue duvet, curl up with the fluffy cream pillows.

  “Holly?” Jacob calls down the hallway.

  She hurries back to his door. He’s wearing a white swim shirt and blue swim trunks, leaving less skin exposed to the harsh rays of the sun. “Let’s go!”

  Together they walk downstairs, Jacob slipping his small hand in hers and tugging her toward the backyard pool. He jumps into the water before Holly can stop him. For a moment, she panics, but when she sees what a strong swimmer he is, she starts to breathe again.

  “Watch this!” she calls out. Jacob’s eyes pop as Holly performs a perfect-ten jackknife off the diving board.

  “Wow! Will you teach me how to do that?”

  “By the end of the summer, you’ll do a killer dive!”

  Jacob ducks under the water in the shallow end to do a gangly underwater cartwheel, which makes Holly giggle. But then she hears something behind her.

  She turns, glances at the basement window at eye level. In the window, she sees Sarah, her face half-covered by a long lens. Sarah taps on the window, waves. Then she points the camera at Holly and clicks.

  Holly smiles stiffly.

  Jacob’s in a far corner of the pool. He’s not even in the frame.

  The hairs on Holly’s arms tingle. It feels like Sarah’s looking right through her.

  And Holly doesn’t want anyone to know what she hides inside.

  CHAPTER THREE SARAH

  Now

  I’m frozen, stari
ng up at the round eye of the camera in the smoke detector. I need to move. Fast. I slide off the chair I’m standing on and, in a panic, scan the room for other hidden dangers. But I don’t even know what I’m looking for. It would be laughable if I weren’t so frightened.

  A hidden camera. That’s exactly how it started with Holly.

  It was innocent in the beginning. Nanny cams always are. It’s what any good mother would do to check up on a stranger taking care of her child. But not every mother would take photos of their babysitter through her bedroom window when the babysitter had no idea she was being watched. The thought of it now makes me feel sick, both that I could sink so low and what I saw when I did.

  I remember the day I hired Holly, how Jacob took to her immediately. She was young, energetic, and playful—everything I’m not. My son listened to her, followed her around the house. It made me feel confident enough to leave them alone and shut myself away in my darkroom very soon after she arrived. Plus, I had two nanny cams in the living room: one hidden in a vase on the mantel and one in a wall clock.

  Daniel knew nothing about the cameras. He would have told me I was losing it. He always thinks I overreact, that I believe the worst of everyone, especially him. He thinks I’m overprotective of Jacob, too. I didn’t want to hear his complaints, so I hid the cameras from him until I had no choice but to show him what they’d recorded.

  And I have to admit that the way Holly looked at me that first day, with admiration, it made me feel seen—seen for who I really am. Right from the moment she arrived in her jean shorts and black University of British Columbia hoodie tied around her tiny waist, all coltish legs and a delicate build, I had this heady feeling that we’d get along, that despite the huge age gap between us, we needed each other. I guess this masked my usually sharp instincts. Because I got everything wrong.

  When I turned forty-one in January, I felt… lost. Without anything else to do, I found myself sticking to Jacob like glue, worrying about him constantly, overcome with bad thoughts about what would happen if I took my eyes off him for even a second. You hear stories of mothers whose children are taken or get hit by cars, who drown in the moments their mothers look away. Those scenarios played through my mind in horrifying freeze-framed images.

  Daniel noticed the change in me, said I was hovering, that my constant stress about our son was verging on madness. His exact words: “Your mothering is smothering. You need a break.”

  At his insistence, I rediscovered my first love, photography. Still, I was torn. Wasn’t it my job to be Jacob’s mother? To protect him from danger, to spot it before he did and steer him away? I longed for some passion that was all my own, and deep down, I knew Daniel was right. There was guilt there, too, the guilt of wanting to be more than a mother, not even knowing what “more” was. Maybe that’s what made me susceptible to the dewy-skinned young woman who took over my responsibilities like they were the easiest thing in the world.

  I never meant for Holly to become the subject of my photography. Or my thoughts.

  The first time I watched her was an accident. It was in the middle of the night, hours after she’d gone home from a successful trial day with Jacob.

  “You’re hired,” I told her in the early afternoon, sure I was making the best decision, beaming with relief and appreciation for Daniel having the idea in the first place. He’d found her, after all.

  “Really?” Holly asked, slightly unsure, the first indication I’d seen that she wasn’t a hundred percent confident.

  “Yes, you’re fantastic with my son. Let’s do nine until four, Monday to Friday. Does that work for you?”

  “It’s perfect,” she said.

  At 4:00 p.m., as she cycled away, Jacob turned to me, glowing, calmer than usual because Holly had swum with him for hours and then taken him to look for treasures around the front lawn. She seemed to know to stay close while also giving him space to explore.

  “Is Holly coming back tomorrow?” he asked as she made her way back to her family mansion on the other side of the Capilano River.

  “Every weekday,” I told my happy boy.

  I got an exhausted Jacob ready for bed around 8:00 p.m. I fell asleep at 10:00 p.m., and Daniel crawled into bed at 1:00 a.m. after a night out with Stan Fielding, one of his golf buddies, a former fraternity brother he’s remained close with. I couldn’t go back to sleep.

  Finally, after two hours of tossing and turning, I grabbed my Leica and went out to the pool deck to take a few shots of the night sky. I’ve suffered on-and-off bouts of insomnia since Jacob was born. That night, though, it wasn’t the sky or stars that caught my attention. It was a light across the river.

  I don’t know what compelled me to get a closer look by stepping onto the thickly tree-lined plateau outside the pool enclosure. Beyond the narrow ledge was a steep, dense forest, rife with gnarly branches and spiky tree roots, leading to the thrashing river. It was a beautiful view but dangerously precipitous.

  Once on the ledge, I peered through a small opening in the cluster of trees. Then I sucked in a sharp breath because I realized where the light was coming from: Holly’s bedroom window.

  I couldn’t stop myself from lifting my telephoto lens and aiming it at her sheer curtains. There she sat on her bed, her features not visible, but it was clear she wasn’t clothed. I knew it was Holly because of her ponytail. The diaphanous curtains made only her dark silhouette discernable, her body an outline of youthful perfection but no specific feature completely clear. Someone else crossed the room. I couldn’t see their face, either, but the figure had a muscular male frame. It didn’t matter. It was Holly I wanted to see—this young woman in her prime, untouched by the ravages of time and responsibility. It’s not like I could see anything—not overtly—and yet here she was with who I presumed was her boyfriend, completely unaware of what her life would become, going through this rite of passage in her bedroom.

  Her boyfriend approached her on the bed, but she was the one who initiated the kiss. She took charge. This wasn’t her first time—that much was clear—but it must have been fresh and new. And Holly was unaware that she was so lithe and lovely, that this moment was so fleeting, that age and experience would change everything. She also didn’t know that anyone was watching her. I couldn’t unsee the sight. I was mesmerized.

  I clicked the shutter. There was something about her, something that made me nostalgic for days long gone when love and lust were so intoxicating and the whole world was mine, when I was young and naive, my skin didn’t pucker and sag, and anxiety about my son’s every move didn’t hold me hostage. Sure, this wasn’t a moment I was meant to see, but I felt happy for Holly, that she was a young woman experiencing life to the fullest. Maybe this was her first serious boyfriend. And he was allowed to sleep over. I was never allowed to have a boyfriend stay over even at her age.

  Taking those photos was wrong. Yet I did it anyway, more than once. I was certain it was my secret alone, but now I’m not so sure.

  I know I’m nervous about a lot of things. It’s not like I have blinders on. Where other people seek adventure, I anticipate peril. I hate the jumpy anticipation in my chest whenever Jacob climbs too high in a tree or runs down the stairs too fast. Everywhere I look, I see danger; people I can’t trust who might hurt us. The garbage collector is potentially stealing our personal information; Jacob’s basketball coach is a pedophile; the customer service representative at the bank is going to drain my accounts. I have to corral my thoughts before they go wild. I’m staring into a round eye on my ceiling. There must be a reasonable explanation for a hidden camera being in my new bedroom. Holly is out of our lives.

  It’s all over and has been since her last day with us. No text or call, not even a note before she left Jacob alone in the house, waiting for her under his bed in a cruel game of hide-and-seek so she could walk out our door without having to say goodbye.

  According to her father, she’s off on some silent tropical retreat; according to her Instagram feed,
she’s “finding herself.”

  I leave the smoke detector with its ominous eye and head back down to the main floor, which is eerily quiet. Without any rugs to absorb the vibrations, my footsteps echo off the hardwood.

  I get to the bottom, and I gasp.

  A grinning blond woman in a hot-pink windbreaker is holding a plate of cookies in my dining room.

  “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Your husband let me through the back.” She sticks out a hand. “I’m Tara Conroy. I live next door.”

  First, a hidden camera and now a stranger in my house? Where the hell are Daniel and Jacob?

  “Oh, if you’re looking for your husband and son, they’re in the backyard playing with my boy, Cody.”

  I might be shaken up, but still, it’s creepy that this woman has just waltzed into my house like it’s the most normal thing in the world. I channel Daniel and try not to jump to conclusions. I’ve learned that can be dangerous. I walk toward the middle of the room, where she’s standing next to the table.

  I take her outstretched hand and shake it. “Sarah Goldman. Nice to meet you,” I say.

  “Same,” she says.

  I crane my neck to see over her shoulder, but every room in this house is so oppressively closed that I can’t catch a glimpse of the backyard.

  “These are for you.” She hands me the plate of cookies. “I make them with carob instead of chocolate because Cody’s allergic to peanuts. Does Jacob have any allergies?”

  I stiffen but try to hide it. She’s using my son’s name as though we’ve been friends for years. “No, he doesn’t. Thank you for these. They… look delicious. Why don’t I take them to the kitchen? We can go out back, and I can meet Cody?”

  She beams, her teeth so white she probably just bleached them. Her eyes don’t crinkle in the corners like mine do. She must be younger than me.

  I don’t enjoy this envy, the part of me that always sizes up other women, comparing them, favorably or not, to myself. I never used to care so much, until the day I looked in the front hall mirror, and in the sunlight, I saw my mother’s neck on my body. Aging happened so fast, I never noticed. Now it feels like it’s all I ever notice. Of course my insecurities go deeper than that. It’s not like I’m unaware. I’m just not sure what to do about them.