“Um, okay. I’m just going to go talk to Miss Catherine and thank her. Um...Lincoln, thank you too, for putting everything together for me. It really looks nice.”

“Made my day to see you happy.”

I can see he means those words. I head on down the stairs, taking the iced tea glasses with me, and find Miss Catherine in the kitchen, making dinner. When Miss Catherine showed me my new room, I wasn’t sure how to respond. She doesn’t know me and she is offering me a room under her roof. This is too much. I have the money I had taken from William in my back pocket, and I pull it out and put it on the kitchen table quietly. I had only taken forty-seven dollars and some coins from Master William’s house, and I didn’t know how I was going to use it. This seems like the right thing to do. Then I quietly walk over to the sink and place the glasses in it, ready to wash.

“You can leave those. I be cleanin’ them up and you can go and enjoy that room of yours,” she tells me. Her eyes seek out the money on the table, but she doesn’t comment on it.

“Okay,” I reply, my usual response when she suggests I do something. Then I take a couple steps back away from Miss Catherine while she watches me. I clear my throat because Miss Catherine likes me to speak up. “Thank you, Miss Catherine, for the room and everything in it. It’s very nice.” My face is heating up at the look she’s giving me. She is so happy, and I can’t repay her for being so kind. I don’t know what else to do with myself, so I smile back awkwardly and then flee back up to my new room.

Lincoln has left, so I go find my pillowcase, pull out Jenny, and place her in the center of the bed. I open the drawer of the side table and place the hard drive inside, and then I put my copy of The Wind in the Willows on top of the bedside table.

When Lincoln had brought over my clothes and toiletries from the house, I had pulled out just a few basic things and kept them out of necessity, placing the rest by the front door for them to take away. I didn’t want to wear anything that gave me a bad memory. The box with my remaining clothes had already been set on the floor of my new room.

Just as I’m about to undo it, Lincoln calls up to me from the bottom of the stairs in his deep voice, “Whisper, I have one more thing I need to bring up for you, and I’m going to need help doing it. Could you please come down and meet Joel?” He waits for me to reply, but I’m a little stunned at what else I could possibly need. “He’s a friend of Boxer’s too.” As a way of explanation, he adds, “It’s too large for me by myself.”

I’m very curious as to what he couldn’t bring up on his own. I walk down the stairs, and Miss Catherine is standing there, waiting for me with an even bigger smile on her face, if that’s possible.

“Honeychile, I had this old French antique armoire in storage, and one of Boxer’s men has been workin’ on it for the past few days. I was hopin’ you would like to use it in your new room. I did take the liberty of assumin’ you might be stayin’ with me. I hope you don’t mind?”

My eyes almost bug out of my head at this enormous piece of beautifully carved furniture. It’s painted in a creamy white, but a funny texture, with two doors which opened with a key. The wood, you can tell, has been carved by a loving hand.

Miss Catherine starts explaining the paint is called the distressed look, and very French, and then I notice the man standing by Lincoln. He has dark hair, and it’s neatly cut short. He’s tall, lean, and very strong looking, but not big and burly like Lincoln. He’s watching me carefully through his black-framed glasses, which make him look a bit like Clark Kent.

“Hey, I’m Joel. Nice to meet you, Whisper.” He’s very handsome, and he gives me a little wave and a genuine smile.

I can’t help but smile a little shyly back at him. I can see Lincoln grinning away next to him, and that makes me smile a little bigger. Miss Catherine has walked over to me and moved me aside, so the men can get the armoire up to my room.

“I love it, Miss Catherine, thank you.” Again, I’m almost lost for words. I don’t quite know what else to say to her.

“Hush now, child. You don’t need to be sayin’ anythin’ to me. I know it’s all a bit overwhelmin’ for you. I just wanted you to be havin’ some nice, feminine things for yourself. Every young lady needs her own room and a place to be storin’ her clothes. The look on your face is enough.” She pats me carefully on the arm. “You go up once they be finished and make use of that fine piece of furniture. That is all the thanks I’ll be needin’.”

I feel a tiny bit of excitement when I close myself in my new room, and I hope never to wake up from this fairy tale dream because this really can’t be my reality.

How could my life be so wrong, and then feel so right in such a short time?

William Dupré is dead.

Now, isn’t this fucking interesting news?

I have to roll this about in my brain for a minute or two, letting the words sink in.

William. Is. Dead.

Huh.

“Didn’t see that coming,” I can’t help saying it out loud, because I’m quite fucking stunned at this information. I’m even pacing my office, trying to let my mind accept what I’m reading.

William has kicked it. And that’s a damn shame for me.

The report shows approximate time of death, and he had been well and truly pissed, sozzled, drunk, inebriated at the time of his death. The cleaners, when they got no reply to their insistent knocking, tried the front door. Look at that, it was unlocked, and they entered the house to be met with the smell of death and William’s lifeless body. He had enough alcohol in his system to allow himself to be pushed down those stairs by that little bitch he kept.

Oh, I know it all.

I’m his lawyer, and he paid me well to keep my mouth shut. I’m well connected to the people he’s connected to. There was no way either of us could double cross each other without severe repercussions. I would not want that wrath to come down on my head, and as wicked as William was, nor would he.

William, the clever monkey, had made allowances for his untimely death if that little bitch ever got the upper hand. His ego doubted it, but nonetheless, he still made arrangements. Even if he was stupid enough to fall down those stairs in his drunken stupor himself, he made sure she would not escape into the night like a ghost, which is what she has indeed appeared to have done.

Score one point to Whisper.

I know William had cameras around his home, and they must have all been taken care of, absolute proof of his cause of death never to be discovered. Nothing came out in the police report about anybody living in that home other than William.

Clever little bitch covered up her tracks.

Clever little bitch got her freedom.

Or so she thinks.

I knew her years were numbered. The one thing that sick son of a bitch didn’t allow for was the tapes. His ego was far too saturated with her submissive, ‘yes, Master’ behavior.

He was only fifty-one years old, fit as an ox, no health issues what-so-fucking-ever, and kept under the radar of any danger to his person. He was expected to have a long life ahead of him. Her heart would have stopped beating once William was finished with her.

He’d hedged his bets on outliving her. I’d warned him. I’d told him to keep the footage off-site, but he was a glutton for Whisper, and the inconvenience of viewing her off-site was simply too much in his mind’s eye.

She was as good as gold, he’d said. Did everything she was told.

William had bragged to me all the time of the goings on in that home. He had nobody to tell. He needed to boast and preen his peacock feathers as he strutted around my office, while I sat there mostly aroused, listening until I asked for proof. It would cost me some of the payment he gave me to shut me up about his affairs, but it was sure worth it. Each month, I got to see some footage. He’d only started showing me from the time she’d turned eighteen. I’d only found out about the girl when he couldn’t contain himself any longer and he’d needed to reveal his sick little sordid stories to somebody.