“Oh honey… if Mrs. Harrington sees them, she’ll tear you apart,” she murmured.
But Rosa still promised to bring soup and keep watch. Because between women who survive on little sleep and too many worries, kindness becomes a kind of faith.
At exactly seven o’clock, the head housekeeper arrived.
Carmen Harrington had ruled the Whitmore household for thirty years. Her heels clicked across the marble floors like a judge’s gavel. Everyone shrank slightly when she walked by.
“What is that smell? Medicine?” she asked sharply.
Moments later, she opened the supply room door.
Her smile held no warmth.
“Mariana Carter… you brought your children to work?”
“They’re sick,” Mariana said quietly. “I had nowhere else to take them.”
Carmen’s eyes narrowed.
“Your problems are not my problems. And today, you’re in my way.”
She handed Mariana a list of impossible tasks—clean the entire west wing before three o’clock. The dusty, abandoned part of the mansion no one had used for years.
“Investors from Tokyo are arriving tonight,” Carmen said coldly. “And your children will not contaminate my kitchen.”
Mariana swallowed her anger. Pride didn’t buy diapers.
So she carried her twins to the empty wing.