Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

“And what kind of vibe did you get from Tanya?”

He turned to look at her. “Don’t start. She was an unfortunate, temporary lapse in good judgment.”

Juliette leaned down and kissed his neck. “Oh, Evan. Relax. I’m just teasing you. If it weren’t for Tanya, we wouldn’t have Maya now, would we?”

“That’s true,” he said, pulling his girlfriend onto his lap. “And if we ever get done with all this custody shit, we’ll have Maya full-time, and get her crazy mother out of my hair once and for all.”

Maya’s voice chimed in from off camera. “All done! JuJu, I want grapes.”

“Grapes, please!” Evan yelled. “Jesus, she’s just like her hillbilly mother. No manners.”

Letty winced at the mention of her late sister’s name. It was jarring, hearing Evan’s voice after all these months, and even more disturbing hearing the way he interacted with Maya.

“There’s a lot of this kind of stuff,” Sierra told her, pausing the video. “It’s a ton of data, so I broke it up into individual files and put them on a thumb drive for you. The original files are date-stamped, by the way, so it looks like your sister put the nanny cam into the elephant back in November. The most recent date on any of the files was from February twenty-eighth.”

“Sierra, this is amazing,” Letty said, sitting back in her chair. “I don’t know what to say. I never actually expected you to be able to get anything from the nanny cam. Isabelle said you were a genius, and she wasn’t kidding.”

The teenager grinned. “Not a genius. Lots of people are way better at this than me. One thing though. Some of the video is pretty crappy quality, and you can’t quite make out what they’re saying on the audio. Maybe that’s because Maya was holding Ellie, or moving around, or whatever. Not really sure.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Letty said. “I can’t thank you enough. This was a lot of work. You have to let me pay you.”

“No way,” Sierra said. “It was fun. Like solving a mystery. Real James Bond spy stuff.”

Letty got her billfold. “I’m serious. How many hours did you spend working on this?”

“Not that many.”

“Stay there.” Letty tiptoed into the bedroom, pulled Tanya’s go-bag from its hiding place, and extracted five twenty-dollar bills.

She took Sierra’s hand and pressed the bills into it, closing her fingers around the money.

“Take it,” she said. “It’s not as much as you earned, but it’s not fair to ask you to work for free.”

Sierra’s eyes widened when she fanned out the bills. “For real?”

“Absolutely. I forgot to ask Isabelle. Are you headed to college next year? Where are you going? MIT?”

“No way,” Sierra said, giggling. “I’m taking a couple college classes at University of South Florida, but that’s just for fun. I want to go to Caltech, but my mom has a fit every time I mention it, because she says she doesn’t want her baby going so far from home.”

She began packing up her laptop. “In fact, I gotta go. My parents bought a smart TV, and I promised I’d help them figure out how to use the remote control tonight. My dad is pretty hopeless with techy stuff.”

Letty stood in the doorway and watched Sierra zip out of the parking lot and into traffic on Gulf Boulevard. When the green Vespa was out of sight she went back to the living room and set up her laptop. She fixed herself another cup of tea and settled in to watch Ellie’s video secrets unfold.

33

LETTY OPENED THE BEDROOM DOOR to check on Maya. The child was sleeping on her side with Ellie tucked beside her on her pillow.

The videos did not make for riveting entertainment. The first few were herky-jerky motion-sickness-inducing views of the various rooms in Tanya’s apartment, clearly the result of Ellie being dragged around the house by an active four-year-old. Letty heard and saw Angelique, Tanya’s on-again, off-again Dominican housekeeper/babysitter, vacuuming and folding laundry, in between singing songs and reading to Maya.

Tanya herself was a constant presence in the videos. At first, Letty found herself tensing each time she heard her sister’s voice, with its lingering Southern accent. Tanya had never bothered to try to erase her drawl, even exaggerating it on occasion, claiming that casting agents—and men—found it alluring.

Letty felt a thick cloud of melancholy descending over her as she realized she would never again hear the sound of her infuriating, intoxicating, darling, damaged sister’s voice.

There were lots of blurry views of Tanya, talking in hushed tones on the phone, watching television or practicing her yoga poses, dancing around the living room to her favorite Taylor Swift song as Maya laughed and, with Ellie in hand, spun around in dizzying circles until mother and daughter collapsed, breathlessly, onto the floor.

Mostly the videos were of a toy’s-eye view of Maya’s world, going from trips to the grocery store with Angelique to Mommy-and-me exercise classes with Tanya, with weekly cameo appearances by Letty herself, strapping Maya into a stroller for trips to the park or the zoo during their weekly playdates.

Letty had almost dozed off watching one of the videos, which, because of Angelique’s presence in the apartment, must have been a weekday morning. As she watched, Tanya came into the living room, dressed in her yoga clothes, carrying a cardboard take-out container from the corner deli.

From the camera angle, Letty guessed that Maya must have left Ellie on the bookshelf that held her stash of favorite picture books.

“Angie,” Tanya called. The housekeeper bustled in, carrying an armful of folded towels.

“You can go home early today. See you tomorrow, okay?”

Angelique looked surprised, but a little while later she hurried out the door. Maybe five minutes after that, Tanya reappeared in the living room, dressed in jeans, a low-necked black sweater, and thigh-high black suede boots. She’d combed her hair and applied makeup. Camera-ready, Letty thought.

The door buzzer sounded, and Tanya spoke into it, although Letty couldn’t hear what she said. A moment later, her sister stood, holding the door open, as a tall man in a knit ski hat and bulky leather jacket appeared. Tanya took a half step backward, then threw herself into the man’s embrace.

“What the hell?” Letty whispered aloud. She couldn’t see the man’s face, or hear their conversation. A moment later, her sister closed the door and led the man into the living room, still holding his hand. She pointed at something just out of camera range. “Isn’t she precious?” Tanya cooed. The man hung back, though, and Letty still couldn’t get a good look at his face.

Without any warning, Letty heard Maya burst into tears, and Ellie, and the camera, beat a hasty retreat up the stairs, toward her bedroom. All Letty could see at this point was the pricey leopard-print runner on the stairway.

“Maya!” Tanya called. “Come on back, baby! Don’t be scared.”

“Noooo,” Maya’s voice cried. “I don’t wanna. I don’t like that man.” The video footage was dizzying as the stuffed elephant was dragged behind on the stairs, and then down the hallway and into Maya’s nursery. Letty heard the door slam. More crying from Maya, and then, eventually, views of the ceiling of the nursery, with its commissioned painting of clouds and treetops. Soon, she heard her niece’s soft snores.

Letty backed up the video, freezing it at the point the stranger entered the apartment. She studied the frame, but Tanya stood between the man and the nanny camera, so tall in her high-heeled boots that she totally obscured him from view. She tried enlarging the frame, too, but only got a fuzzier image of a man—at least she thought it was a man—in a knit cap.