When Addison climbed out of the pool, she glanced at the door leading to the wine cellar and then silently admonished herself for her inability to break a habit born in her youth. More than once the staff had reported to her father that while he was at work, she had been found in an area forbidden. They had always come through that door. Pushing it open so hard it would bang against the wall, they’d order her out of the water, and when her father eventually came home, punishments would follow. But she was no longer a child cowering in the shadows, and servants no longer entered any room without her permission. So, ridding herself of the memories with a shake of her head, Addison hooked her fingers in the straps of her one-piece black Speedo and stripped it from her body. It slipped from her fingers and landed with a splat against the damp concrete floor, where it would remain until someone else picked it up. When next she returned to the pool, she knew the Speedo would be back in its place, cleaned, dried, and folded neatly atop a fluffy white towel in the bath area.

Like so many other parts of the house, the gym’s bath had fared no better. Once separated from the pool by a wall, the moisture had done its damage. The plaster and lath had long since rotted away, and by the time her father had purchased The Oaks, the only thing allowing any privacy was a vinyl curtain hung from a long drapery pole, behind which was a sink, toilet, bench, and shower. Every year Evelyn would have the rusty rod and plastic curtain replaced, but Addison had never noticed. For her, the area was only a means to an end.

Pushing aside the curtain, Addison turned on the taps in the shower and then stepped under the warm spray. For the most part, the calisthenics performed for the past two hours had slowed her adrenaline, and she breathed easily, her mind more on ridding herself of the offensive chlorine than on the business dealings which would occur the following week. A short while later, she emerged feeling refreshed and then continued a routine that was a carbon copy of one she had repeated dozens of times.

After toweling herself off, Addison pulled the tracksuit from the padded hanger dangling from a hook on the wall, and after donning the pants and tank top, she sat down long enough to pull on her socks before heading back upstairs. She was mindless of the lights she had left on and didn’t give a second thought about stepping around the clothes she had worn to the office that day, now littering the floor near the treadmill, for Addison had a staff to keep things tidy. It was not her job. It was theirs.