“She’s the nanny,” Freya answered. “My husband and I are with the baby most of the time, but we have some professional obligations. We wanted to make sure all of Maggie’s needs are met.”

“Why isn’t she dressed?”

Again, Freya responded. “We were changing her when the doorbell rang.”

“She’s very upset,” Britney observed.

I took this one. “Colic,” I said.

This seemed to satisfy Ms. Chin, and she moved into the kitchen. Luckily, Max had done the dishes and stocked the fridge upon his return. She’d find nothing incriminating there. Freya trailed after her, snarling at me as she passed. “Get Maggie dressed and calm her down.”

I took the baby back to the living room, where her onesie was discarded on a chair. Dressing her would set her off again, so I swaddled her tightly in a blanket, and bounced her on my shoulder. Over her dwindling snivels, I could hear Freya and Britney moving to the main-floor nursery. After several minutes there, they climbed the stairs to the upstairs bedrooms. I had snooped through Freya and Max’s master bedroom on more than one occasion. It was simply too tempting when I was left to my own devices. There was a lot of lingerie, a few run-of-the-mill sex toys, but nothing that would condemn them as parents.

And then, they were headed to my basement quarters. My heart pounded against Maggie’s little body as I heard Freya and Britney descending the stairs. It was a disaster in there. I never made my bed or picked up my dirty clothes. But it wasn’t embarrassment that had me trembling, it was fear. Because I had things to hide. Serious things.

There was a small bag of weed, but it was concealed in a rolled-up pair of wool socks, buried deep in a drawer. I wasn’t a big stoner but sometimes a toke helped me through a long, dull day of babysitting. There was a lighter and rolling papers, too, but they were also well hidden. If discovered, they would be damaging. They might even get me fired. But if they found the photographs, my entire world would come crashing down around me.

Most of them were on my phone, and I was pretty sure Britney Chin did not have the authority to make me enter my passcode so she could search the device. But I had asked Thompson to print a copy of each photo, so I could hold them, touch them, stroke them. He had complied, handing them over to me with a disturbed look on his face. Under my mattress were five four-by-six photographs of Freya and Max making love on the living room floor. No . . . they weren’t making love. It was too intense, angry, and violent to be called that. They were photos of them fucking while Freya periodically hit, bit, and scratched him.