Page 61 of The Maid's Secret

“One hundred percent. I’ll see you later,” I say.

“See you,mi amor,” Juan says, squeezing my hand, then disappearing into the hotel.

I say goodbye to Speedy and make my way down the street, heading home to our apartment. It’s a lovely afternoon, and as I stroll I forget all about the death threat and find myself enjoying the walk. I leave the posh downtown core and cross into my own decidedly unposh neighborhood. As I turn onto a side street, a black car slows beside me.

I try not to panic.Only fools jump to conclusions.

The car is merely slowing to avoid potholes, I tell myself. But when it flanks me for a full minute, I hasten my pace. So does the car. My heart starts to race. I glance at the vehicle, but the windows are tinted. I can’t see inside. I break into a run, and instantly, the car picks up speed. There’s no doubt now—the vehicle is following me.

I spot a dead-end alley up ahead with a pedestrian walkway at the end. I run full tilt into it, but a dumpster is blocking the pedestrian path. The car pushes toward me until my back is up against the dumpster, my hands held high in the air. “Stop! Please!” I yell.

I close my eyes, expecting the car to hit me, but it doesn’t. I hear a car door open, and when I look, a woman is standing by the driver’s side.

“Don’t be scared. I’d never hurt you, Molly. I swear,” she says.

She’s about my height with straight black hair down to her shoulders, tinged with gray. Her face is porcelain pale. There’s something so familiar about her, but try as I might, I cannot place her.

“I don’t have much money on me, but whatever I have is yours,” I say in a tremulous voice.

“That’s not why I’m here,” the woman replies. “I need to tell you something. I know about the death threat. Molly, the danger is real,” she says.

I’m staring at the car, expecting someone to jump out and mob me, but that’s not what happens.

“I’m alone,” the woman says, as if reading my thoughts. “The car’s not even mine. I stole it so I could warn you.”

“Stole it?” I say. “Are you…the egg thief?”

“No,” she says instantly.

“But you know about it,” I reply.

“In more ways than you can imagine. I was watchingHidden Treasureswhen you found out the egg was worth millions. I couldn’t believe it—you were right there in front of me, and so was the Fabergé. I watched that episode over and over again. I held my hand to the screen, wishing I could reach in and touch you. But someone else was watching along with me—a man I used to work for, and not a good one. Without thinking, I told him things I shouldn’t have—about you, about Mom, and about the egg.”

Giant tears roll down the woman’s cheeks. “Molly, do you remember me? Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about you. Not a single day.”

A memory returns with such force, vertigo sends me reeling. I lean on the dumpster, not caring if it’s dirty, hoping beyond hope that I’ll remain upright. “The stranger at our door,” I say. “The rent money.”

When I was barely ten years old, Gran was doing laundry downstairs when a woman showed up at our apartment claiming to be Gran’s friend. I let her in. She sat with me at the kitchen table. The entire encounter was strange, and when giant tears rolled down the woman’s cheeks, just as they do now, I knew something was terribly wrong. She left abruptly, swiping Gran’s envelope with our rent money right off the table. It took me a long time to figure out who she was and why she’d come that day.

“You visited our apartment all those years ago. You came to see me,” I say now.

She nods, and more tears stream down her face.

“You’re Maggie, my mother.”

“I am,” she whispers.

“She told me you were dead,” I say, but the truth is I was never quite sure if Gran meant it literally or figuratively. I look at my mother—her shaky hands, the tears running down her cheeks, the way she’s leaning forward as if she wants to reach out and touch me. It’s definitely her, and she seems genuine, but her sudden appearance in my life is unsettling, and my stomach clenches with fear.

“You stole rent money from your own mother. And from your own child,” I say. “How could you?”

“I was sick, Molly,” she says. “I wasn’t clean.”

I remember the red marks up her arms, which in my innocence I thought were bedbug bites.

“Are you better?” I ask.

“Right now I am,” she says. “When I saw you on TV, I couldn’t believe it—my little girl, all grown up. And the Fabergé right there in front of you. It sat on the mantel in the Grimthorpe mansion when I worked there all those years ago.”

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