My 5-Year-Old Son Blurted Out That Our New Nanny Always Locks Herself In My Bedroom – So I Came Home Early Without Warning
“Kind of. You need anything?”
“No. Sorry to bother you.”
I hung up and held the steering wheel with both hands. My mind ran straight to the worst place it could go. I knew I shouldn’t let it. I went there anyway.
By the time I turned onto our street, my hands were steady, and my mind was made up: I was going to find out exactly what was happening in my own home.
I knew I shouldn’t let it. I went there anyway.
Alice’s car was sitting in the driveway like it owned the place. I parked down the block, walked up to the front door, and let myself in without making a sound. The house was completely still.
Mason was at the kitchen table, tongue between his teeth, working on a drawing with great seriousness. He looked up, and his eyes went wide.
I pressed a finger to my lips and held out a candy from my bag. He took it carefully, watching my face.
“Is she hiding again?” I mouthed silently.
I pressed a finger to my lips.
Mason nodded, slow and solemn. “She said I have to count to 100 this time.”
I straightened up and walked down the hallway.
The bedroom door was locked. From behind it, I heard music, soft and deliberate. A woman’s low laugh. Then a man’s voice, just beneath the music, murmuring something I couldn’t catch.
My chest went hollow.
I’d been so certain I already knew whose voice that was.
“She said I have to count to 100 this time.”
I’d been building an entire case against my husband. Standing in that hallway, with that music playing and that laugh seeping under the door, I was completely convinced.
I found the spare key on the linen closet hook. I took one slow breath, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.
Candles on my nightstand. Soft music from a phone propped against my lamp. Rose petals scattered across my floor. And Alice, standing in the middle of my bedroom, wearing my Paris dress, looking like she’d been living that life for weeks.
Because she had.
I found the spare key on the linen closet hook.
Next to her, a man I had never seen before was reaching for his shirt off the chair.
Alice’s expression moved from shock to something that looked almost like outrage, as if I were the intruder.
“Sh-Sheryl?? What the hell are you doing here?!” she demanded. “You weren’t supposed to see this!”
I looked at her. At the man. At my dress, candles, and rose petals on the floor.
“You,” I said to him, holding his gaze. “Get out of my house. Right now.”
The guy left his jacket and was gone before the words had fully left my mouth.
“You weren’t supposed to see this!”
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