Page 1 of The Maid's Secret

Prologue

My gran loved to tell stories. A maid for most of her life, her best tales featured maids. One of them went like this:

Once upon a time, there was a maid who rued her lot in life. Her clothes were threadbare and worn. Her hands were chapped and dry. Why did she have to toil in servitude instead of living a life of leisure? Why was she fated to work from dawn to dusk for a paltry wage, cleaning a mansion she would never live in herself? She had no family of her own, for they had all forsaken her, but she did know love. Oh yes, she knew it well. There was someone who loved that maid deeply. And just one person’s love is enough to keep your soul alive. Anything more is a blessing beyond all measure.

One day, while that maid was toiling in the mansion, the Lady of the house asked her to clean out a wardrobe containing old footwear. “There are work boots left behind by a farmhand, slippers forgotten by a young belle, and granny boots that have seen better days,” the Lady explained. “They’re all castoffs—worthless, the lot of them.”

For a moment, the maid wondered: Was Her Ladyship referencing the shoes or those who had once worn them?

“Take any shoes you want,” Her Ladyship offered. “Get rid of the rest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the maid, holding her curtsy until Her Ladyship left the room.

The maid then got to work cleaning out the wardrobe. Though the work boots were caked with dry muck, they were sturdy. She tried them on, and the moment she did, she was transported into the life of an orphaned stable boy who’d once worked on the estate. She walked a mile in that boy’s shoes, cleaning the barn and tending to the horses that provided the only warmth he ever knew. At night, that boy curled up beside a mare on a bed of straw and wished for another life—to be someone else, anyone else but who he was.

Upon feeling the stable boy’s keen loneliness, the maid quickly kicked the boots off her feet. She was relieved to find herself delivered back to her own life as a maid. In the wardrobe was another pair of shoes that suited her better anyhow—the beautiful ballroom slippers that had once belonged to a belle. She fastened them to her feet, and as if by magic she was wearing a gorgeous chiffon gown, being twirled around the dance floor by a dashing prince. But without warning, the prince cast her aside for a prettier belle, whom he now kissed right in front of her. She wrestled with the clasps and ripped the slippers off.

Delivered unto herself, the maid eyed the last pair of shoes in the wardrobe—old granny boots. She could not resist. She slipped them on and soon found herself living the life of a wealthy matron who’d once owned the entire estate. Much like a vampire, the matron derived pleasure only from sucking joy from those around her. She had no friends or loved ones, and she pestered her workers ceaselessly, all for her own amusement. The maid removed those boots as fast as she could, relieved to return to her own life.

That night, she reported her strange experience to her beloved, who listened without judgment. When she was done speaking, he had but one question: “What did you learn?”

“That my life isn’t so bad after all,” she replied.

The maid was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude. By walking a mile in each of those three pairs of shoes, she’d learned a lesson she held close to her heart for the rest of her days: that a life without love is not worth living.

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Chapter 1

A few years ago, when my gran was alive, she gave me a key. It’s a simple skeleton key, tarnished and worn. No amount of polishing has ever made it shine. To this day, I don’t know why she gave it to me or what it unlocks.

Gran was ailing when she produced it from under her pillow and pressed it into my hands. I didn’t know it at the time, but she had only a few days to live.

“Dear girl, this is for you,” she said as she folded the key into my palm with surprising force.

“What does it open?” I asked.

“My heart,” she replied matter-of-factly.

I sometimes have trouble deciphering the literal from the figurative, but even all those years ago, I knew enough about human anatomy to understand that no key in the world can unlock the human heart.

“If that’s a metaphor, I don’t grasp it,” I said. “Precisely what does this key open? A locked box? A drawer? A safe, perhaps?”

“It’s the key to everything,” Gran insisted. “It is all of me. And it is for you.”

Gran was so ill by this point that I assumed her mind was addled from pain. Moreover, I knew it was. There were times during those final days when she’d mutter unintelligibly under her breath—Birds of a feather…orA stitch in time…At other moments, she’d suddenly call out to someone she saw in her bedroom when there was no one there but me.

“Gran,” I urged whenever she regained consciousness. “This key fits a lock. Where’s the lock?”

Her eyes fluttered—open, closed, open. She homed in on me as though she’d never seen me before, and yet I’d lived every day of my life by her side.

“You don’t know who I am,” she said.

“Of course I do. You’re my gran. And I’m your Molly, remember?”

“I remember everything,” she replied.

Then one day Gran asked—begged—to leave this world. I pleaded with her, but to no avail. I wanted so much for her to be well, and yet I always knew she would leave me one day.

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