“I don’t know why you hate me so much. I know I can be cold, dismissive. Maybe cruel at times. But If anything, it should be the other way around. You could get ten more years with my daughter, and I barely have ten days. You’ll live for another sixty years.” She pauses. “You know how much trouble I went to to have children? You’ll probably have a family of your own someday, a whole full life, you lucky thing.” She tries to prop herself up but fails, too weak to even press the Up button of the mechanical bed, resigning herself to the supine position she’s been forced into. “So, why waste your energy on me?”

The question sounds almost rhetorical, and Annie’s eyes widen as the silence between them broadens. Mrs. Keller wants an answer, and she is so close to saying a plaintive, treacly, “I don’t hate you,” but instead, something much closer to the truth slips out.

“You have what I want. You got Suzy and I guess... I guess I deserve her more than you. You could say I’m jealous.” She raises her fingers to her lips in an almost cartoonish gesture, trying to shove the words back in. But then lets them drop, folds her hands in her lap, exhilarated and exhausted by that confession. She knows what will come next, that her own mouth has betrayed her, and she has sealed her demise.

But once again, those whispers latch to her ear, reassure her that nothing is going to happen, that her job is secure. That not even Mrs. Keller will want to disrupt Suzy’s life any more.

Mrs. Keller is staring at her, one drawn-on eyebrow arched, the ropy veins by her temple made translucent by the light pouring through the window beside the bed. “But why the lies? Wasn’t it enough to have my child while I was dying?” She takes a shaking hand and sips water from her plastic cup, almost knocking it over with her tremors.

Annie looks down at her fingers, picks at her cuticles. In some ways, this is worse than angry, abusive words flung at her, this quiet, deadly rasp of a sound coiling its way around their corner of the room. “The first time, it happened by accident. Another nanny saw the bruises from that one time you grabbed me, and she looked at me—really looked at me. No one has ever looked at me with that kind of concern before. It was addictive, I guess, being seen.” She can’t meet Mrs. Keller’s eyes then, but she can feel them. And the quiet stretches so long and loud that she forces herself to look up, and Mrs. Keller’s eyes are almost dewy, sympathy softening her face.