Page 98 of The Housemaid Is Watching

“What am I supposed to do with it?” I ask him.

“Nothing,” he says. “You carry it with you, but you never use it. Only if you have to.”

“But…” I stare down at the knife, still in his hand. The blade is retracted, but I bet it’s sharp. “You really think I could…”

“Only if you have to, Ada,” he repeats. He touches an area to the right of his belly button. “You put the blade right in here. And then…” He jerks his wrist. “Youtwist.”

I stare up at him. “Did you ever do that?”

“Me?” His eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, no. This is just… cautionary.”

He holds the knife out to me again. This time, I take it from him.

SIXTY-SIX

Step 4: Start to Suspect the Terrible Truth

It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m in the kitchen, trying to decide if I want a snack before dinner, when Nico slips in through the back door.

I haven’t seen him since the morning. That’s not unusual these days though. I used to spend practically every second of the weekend with my brother, but now he’s either at Little League or locked in his room. I managed to catch him a few times to walk to the bus stop with him, but it didn’t help. He didn’t want to talk.

So it’s not weird that I haven’t seen him all day. But it is weird that he is sneaking in through the back. And it’s even weirder that there’s what looks like a pee stain all over the front of his pants.

Did Nico wet his pants?

“Nico?” I say.

He tries to hide his pants behind the kitchen table, but I already saw it. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I was at the Lowells’ house, and I spilled some water I was drinking on myself.”

Except I don’t think he did. Because now that he’s closer, he also smells like pee. He can tell that I don’t believe him, and then he gets a worried look on his face.

“Don’t tell anyone, okay, Ada?” he says.

“I won’t,” I promise. “But… I mean… how…”

How does a nine-year-old kid wet his pants? There was a time when Nico was about four years old when I remember he used to wet the bed, but that was a long time ago.

“I just held it in too long,” he says.

I still don’t get it. But he looks so embarrassed, it’s not like I’m going to give him a hard time about it. “Okay…”

“You swear you won’t tell anyone?”

“I swear.”

“Because if you do, then you’re a tattletale.”

“I said I wouldn’t!”

Finally, he looks satisfied, and then he hurries up to his room to change. But I can’t stop thinking about what happened. Nico is already acting weird, and this was the most weird thing ever. I wish he would talk to me. I wish he were the way he used to be.

I wish we never moved here.

SIXTY-SEVEN