Her mother died anyway.
Life didn’t pause for grief. Rent didn’t care. Bills didn’t soften.
The Hail estate in Connecticut was the kind of place that looked like it had been carved out of money itself. High ceilings. Silent hallways. Art that cost more than Naomi’s childhood neighborhood.
When she was hired, the house manager told her, “Stay invisible. Do your work. Don’t speak unless spoken to.”
Naomi nodded.
She’d been invisible most of her life. She knew how to do it.
Then she met the twins.
They were small whirlwinds with soft voices and watchful eyes. They asked her questions when no one else looked.
“Do you live here too?”
“Are you allowed to eat the cookies?”
Naomi never lied to them.
She never told them adult truths they couldn’t carry. But she also never treated them like furniture.
She became their steady thing.
And when the accident happened and Marcus came home in bandages and silence, Naomi noticed something that everyone else missed.
The way his eyes tracked movement too precisely.
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