Page 35 of The Housemaid Is Watching

“Martha,” I say sharply. “If you break something, you should at least have the courtesy to admit it. I’m not going to charge you for it.”But I am going to fire you.

She blinks at me. “I don’t break things,” she says stiffly. “But if I did, I would admit it.”

“Then who broke it?” I shoot back. “Did it just walk off the table and break itself?”

This is unbelievable. It’s not like I didn’t break my fair share of glasses and vases and whatever when I was cleaning houses. But I always admitted it. It was obvious that I did it, so what would be the point of lying about it? But Martha is stubbornly refusing.

“What is going on here, ladies? What is the shouting?”

Enzo is standing at the entrance to the kitchen. Apparently, I was shouting. I didn’t think I was, but I feel a little vein throbbing in my temple like it sometimes does when I raise my voice too loud.

Martha places her hands on her sturdy hips, on either side of her immaculate white apron. “Mr. Accardi, can you please tell your wife that I did not break the vase in the living room?”

Wow. Now she’s turning my husband against me? This just gets better and better. “I found it broken when I came down here this morning. Who else would have done it?”

Enzo snorts. “That sounds exactly like the work of Nico.”

Granted, Nico does break a lot of things. But when he does, he always tells me about it immediately. He’s not one to break a vase and then just leave all the broken glass behind in the living room. I know him well enough to know he wouldn’t do that.

“It wasn’t Nico,” I insist. “Besides, he’s still asleep.”

Enzo looks down at his watch. “Well, is time to wake up, I think.”

Before I can stop him, he goes to the foot of the stairwell and starts shouting Nico’s name. It takes a good minute of him shouting for Nico to get his butt down here until my son descends the stairwell with sleepy eyes and tousled hair.

“What is it?” Nico mumbles, still rubbing his eyes. “Why are you bothering me?”

“Nico,” Enzo says sternly. “Did you break the vase in the living room?”

There’s a long pause while all three of us stare at Nico.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah.”

I stare at him, astonished. “Seriously? Why didn’t you say anything? I could’ve cut my foot open on the glass.”

He shrugs. “You were asleep. In the middle of the night, I got hungry so I went downstairs to get some food, and that’s when I bumped into the table and it fell.”

Great. I knew he was going to be hungry after not finishing his dinner. Also, it disturbs me that the sound of shattering glass didn’t rouse me from sleep. What else am I sleeping through?

“You could have tried to clean it up,” I point out.

“You told me not to touch broken glass.”

That is true. But still. I would have hoped Nico had more of a sense of responsibility, especially now that he’s doing chores for the Lowells.

“Martha,” Enzo says. “We are so sorry we thought you broke the vase. Clearly, we were mistaken.”

He’s being generous.Iwas the one who accused her of breaking the vase. In my defense, it really seemed like she had broken it. But I know the feeling of being wrongly accused, and I feel terrible that I did it to Martha. Moreover, I have been accused without any sort of apology plenty of times. A woman I was cleaning for once accused me of taking a ring she left in the bathroom, and when she found it behind the toilet later that day, she didn’t even tell me she was sorry. I do not want to bethatwoman.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I say to her. “I just… I jumped to conclusions, and I was completely wrong. I hope you can accept my apology.”

Martha doesn’t say anything.

“And we will clean up the broken vase,” Enzo adds. “Of course.”

She rests her gaze squarely on my face. “I did not appreciate being made to feel like acriminal.”

I suck in a breath. Why did she look at me like that when she said the word “criminal”? That wasnotjust my imagination.