She would not go in. It was not her space.
She reached in and pulled the door shut with 1 finger and went back to the towels.
She was halfway down the stairs when she stopped.
She did not know why she stopped. There was no sound, no movement, nothing that should have made her pause. She simply stopped on the fifth step from the top, her hand on the railing, and looked down at the hallway below.
The study door was still closed.
On the wall opposite the foot of the stairs, the row of framed photographs caught the midmorning light. She could see them from there: the formal group photograph, the one of him in front of his building, the smaller black-framed one of the young Mr. Caleb that had held her attention that Thursday morning.
She came down the rest of the stairs.
She told herself she was going back to the kitchen. She was going to start preparing lunch. That was the next thing in her morning.
She stopped in front of the photographs.
She looked at the small black frame.
The young man with the sharp eyes and the serious face looked directly at the camera. She still could not explain it, that feeling she had tried, in the quiet moments of the past 2 weeks, to put a name to. The closest she could get was this: it was like looking at a place you had never been and feeling for 1 strange second that you had. Not a memory. Something older than a memory. Something that lives in the body rather than the mind.
She looked at the photograph for a long moment. Then, without entirely planning to, she turned and walked to the study door and knocked.
“Sir?”
“Come in.”
She opened the door.
He was at his desk, but his laptop was closed and he was not reading anything. He was just sitting there in a way that was unusual for him, hands in his lap, looking at the desk surface.
“I’m about to start lunch,” she said. “I wanted to ask if Mr. Benjamin is joining you today, so I know how much to prepare.”
“No,” Mr. Caleb said. “Just me.”
“Yes, sir.”
She was about to close the door when he spoke again.
“Rebecca.”
She paused.
“I need to take care of something this week,” he said carefully. He was looking at the desk as he spoke. “I have been meaning to finalize the paperwork for your employment properly. Contract, emergency contact, the usual things the company requires for household staff.”
He looked up. Then his eyes met hers.
“I’ll need you to bring your official documents. Birth certificate, any identification you have. Can you do that by Thursday?”
There was nothing strange about the request. It was a completely normal thing for an employer to ask.
“Of course, sir,” Rebecca said. “I’ll bring them Thursday.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
She pulled the door closed behind her.
She went to the kitchen and began taking things out for lunch, her hands moving through their familiar routine: pot on the stove, water on to heat, vegetables on the board.
Her birth certificate.
