Page 44 of The Housemaid Is Watching

I grip the phone more tightly; my fingers start to tingle. “What happened?”

She hesitates. “You really should come down here so we can talk in person. Your husband is already on his way.”

They called Enzo too? Oh God, this is not good.

I check my watch. I’m supposed to be meeting with a patient’s family in twenty minutes, but my own family has to take precedence. I can get somebody to cover for me.

“I’ll be right there,” I tell her.

TWENTY-SIX

I speed all the way to the school. I can’t think straight, and I nearly go through a red light. I’ve gotten a fair number of calls from the kids’ schools over the years, but this is the first time I’ve been told to come in without any explanation of what went wrong. But the principal said that Nico is fine. He’s not dead and he’s not in the hospital. She said he’s fine.

But what if somebody else isn’t fine? That thought haunts me.

When I get to the school, I am comforted by the fact that there are no ambulances or fire trucks lined up outside. They make me sign in at the front desk, and it takes forever for them to make me a little temporary ID sticker to plaster on my chest. I follow the directions to the principal’s office, where I find Enzo already sitting outside in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs. He stands up when he sees me.

“They said for me to wait until you got here,” he says.

“Do you know what’s going on?” I ask.

He shakes his head. Even though he is as clueless as I am, I am really glad he’s here. Enzo can be incredibly charming, and if Nico is in some sort of trouble, that could come in handy.Although I wish he didn’t have quite so much dirt on his boots. He’s left a trail leading into the room.

We sit back down on those plastic chairs. Enzo keeps tapping his foot on the ground, and after a minute, he reaches out to take my hand. We exchange nervous looks.

“I’m sure it’s nothing serious,” I say, even though I am sure of no such thing.

“I did not see any ambulance,” Enzo agrees. The exact same thing I had been thinking. “Is nothing.”

“This school is so snooty,” I say. “He probably just, like, had too many rips in his blue jeans.”

“He does have many rips in his jeans,” he agrees.

He squeezes my hand. Neither of us really thinks that.

Finally, the principal opens the door to her office, looking much like what I remember. She’s even wearing a white dress shirt and tan slacks like she was during the tour. But unlike during the tour, she’s not smiling.

“Please come in,” she tells us.

Enzo gives my hand one last squeeze, and we follow her into the office. Nico is already sitting there, and when I see his face, I gasp. He has what is definitely going to be a black eye, and his shirt collar is torn. He also looks like he’s been rolling around in the dirt.

“As you can see, Nicolas was fighting during recess today,” she says.

Nico won’t even look at us. He’s hanging his head, as well he should be.

I can’t believe he was caught fighting. How could he do something like that? He’s gotten into trouble for a lot of different things, but never anything violent.

“Who started the fight?” Enzo asks.

Principal Corkum’s lips tighten. “Nicolas did.”

“Nico!” I cry. “How could you do that!”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles into his torn shirt.

“Why?” Enzo addresses the principal. “What is reason they are fighting?”

“The other boy was making fun of a girl on the playground,” Corkum says. “Obviously, that was not good behavior on the part of the other boy. But Nicolas’s response was completely inappropriate. He could have told a teacher, or if he did not want to involve the teachers, he could have used his words. Instead, he punched the other boy in the nose.”