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David draws his mouth into a straight line. He appears to shrink before me. “No… I’ve no idea about her family,” he admits.

“What about where she’s from?”

“She’s got a place in New York. That’s all I know.”

“Are you even Facebook friends?”

David shook his head. “I don’t think she’s on social media.”

“I see,” says Baker, but if she thinks like I do, she finds it odd that a young woman would have no social media accounts. “What about an employer?” Baker continues. “Anybody she might check in with?”

Again David shook his head. “She’s self-employed, so no.”

Baker pauses, waiting for him to elaborate, but David leaves it at that. Based on his earlier responses, there’s a good chance he has no idea how Fiona makes money, and he probably doesn’t care.

Baker is as unimpressed as I am. “I see,” she says, looking at her pad of paper, but she has very little to write down. “You mentioned things got a bit heated last night. Can you tell me more about that?”

David shifts his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. “It was nothing. Just a little misunderstanding, that’s all.”

I cough. It’s a reflex reaction. I didn’t mean to call attention to myself, but bullshit doesn’t go down easily.

Detective Baker whirls around. I try to make myself invisible. No shocker, it doesn’t work. I’m frozen like a thief caught in a spotlight.

“Did you hear anything last night?” Baker asks, stepping toward me.

From over her shoulder, I catch David’s eyes harden.

My heart skips a beat. I’m afraid to say the wrong thing. I still need this job, but I have no interest in protecting my boss or endorsing his lies with one of my own.

“I mean, no, not really.” I hate how my voice shakes. Even though I’m telling the truth, I fear I sound deceitful. “I was too far away to pick up their conversation, so I can’t say what it was about, but they both sounded kind of upset.”

Upset. There. Now, that’s a fine word choice. I could have said infuriated, wrathful, or irate, which would have all been accurate. But upset says enough. David can elaborate from here, and Detective Baker isn’t going to let him squirm out of it.

Unfortunately, Baker’s not letting me off the hook, either. She advances, holding her little spiral notebook out in front of her like a Taser. I take a tentative step in retreat. The air has chilled a few degrees. David advances, falling into step behind the detective.

“She’s just the nanny. She doesn’t know anything,” he says. “Fiona was drunk and being ridiculous. It was nothing serious.”

Baker gives David a sidelong glance. She’s not buying it, and now I’m all revved up.

Just the nanny, my ass! Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about disclosing last night’s tumult.

I may not be experienced at my job or entirely truthful about it, but I am working hard to care for this man’s children. You’d think he’d show some respect.

“We all had some drinks,” he adds. “But whatever Fiona and I were arguing about, it wasn’t important enough for me to even remember.”

“But it was loud enough for others to overhear it,” Baker counters. “So, Just the Nanny,” she continues, “I assume you go by another name.”

Her smile is meant to be disarming, but I remain on edge.

I tell her my full name, Isabelle Rebecca Greene, and that I’m called Izzy for short, without mentioning the Frizzy Izzy nickname that’s followed me since middle school.

Then I wait for the worst, consumed by an irrational fear that Baker is going to call my mother, who will demand I come home.

She asks for my ID, but that’s up in my room and Baker would rather keep talking.

“What do you think happened to Fiona?” she inquires.

I sense no prejudgment in her question. She’s inviting me to be open, but David’s cold stare could turn me to stone. I might as well have “She knows more than she’s telling” emblazoned across my forehead.

“Well, Fiona did drink a lot last night,” I croak. My knees feel weak. My legs are as sturdy as pipe cleaners.

“That much I gather,” says Baker. “And you heard a fight but didn’t hear what it was about?”

I nod, though not emphatically.

“Anything else?” Baker sounds hopeful. “Did you see anything unusual? Something to explain where Fiona might have gone or what could have happened to her?”

In typical Izzy fashion, without thinking, I vomit out the unvarnished truth: “She was pretty wild, kind of out of control. She came on to Lucas.”

“Who is Lucas?” Baker asks.

“Lucas?” shouts David in disbelief. “Like, the kid next door, that Lucas?” He appears dumbfounded.

A shiver of fear slips down my spine. I should have kept my mouth shut. I don’t know where I got the knee-jerk reaction gene, but it keeps getting in my way.

Baker interrogates me with her eyes. “And what exactly happened between Fiona and this boy next door—Lucas?” she asks.

I don’t want to be involved in this, but I lie only when absolutely necessary. “I was up on the deck last night after I put the kids to bed, and I saw Fiona and Lucas kissing on his patio,” I confess.

“What do you mean, you saw Lucas and Fiona kissing?”

The new voice draws my attention to the front door. It’s Taylor. My breath catches in my throat when I see that Julia and Lucas’s mother, Erika, have also entered the house at the perfect time to hear my story.

Taylor goes pale, covering her mouth with her hand. Julia stands in stunned silence. But if looks could kill, Erika’s would be inflicting bloody carnage.