She knew what Gaby was getting at. There was a hierarchy among the staff—at the top, those with titles like Dawn and Erin and Mark; next Zanne and the executive assistants; then the IT guys in their cubicles, and the swings, hired to do literally anything; then the landscapers with college degrees followed by the unschooled Mexican laborers with whom they worked; and last, in their pink scrubs, the housekeepers. Zanne thwarted that hierarchy when she could—having lunch sometimes with Chuy and Carlos out by the fountain, cleaning up her own messes instead of emailing Letty—but Gaby’s questions stuck with her. All of the staff were expected to get their hands dirty when the task required and most wore comfortable clothes they could move in, but only Flora and Letty, one Guatemalan, one Salvadoreña, wore a separate color and used separate names for their bosses. Why hadn’t this bothered Zanne before?

“You know she thought I was Flora’s daughter? Because I’m Mexican—get it?”

“Wait, what?”

“I don’t recognize you here. It’s like you make yourself so small, as small as that notebook hiding in your pocket. Running around saying ‘Happy to help!’ to anything, like some always-obliging robot, ready to throw yourself off a cliff for these people.”

“Jesus stop.” Zanne was Suzanne again, eighteen years old, getting paid to stand there and look pretty while the men gawked. “Just...enough. Okay? I get it.”

She reached into her front pocket and pulled out the keys to her truck. “Here,” she said, handing them to Gaby. “Go find something to wear tonight, and please come back. We can talk about all of this later.”

Gaby just stood there.

“Please,” Zanne said again. Gaby put her hand out and Zanne dropped the keys into her palm. She kissed Gaby lightly and left.

Outside the cottage, she glanced at her watch. There was still half an hour to go on the reel Ted was watching. She had time to check in with James and let him know that she was zeroing in on a doctor for Nikole.

She found him in his office in the garage, a storage room that had been converted for this purpose. Over the years, he’d acquired a big mahogany desk with two Bloomberg monitors, an Aeron chair for the desk and an Eames chair under the window, a dark Persian rug that didn’t show the dirt. The room’s one window was narrow and useless for ventilation, so a split unit A/C had been installed. Next to the monitors, there were framed photographs of Nikole and their children, and a humidor. His office was small but, in some ways, it was the only truly comfortable room on the estate. His suit jacket was draped over the back of the chair. He had WebMD pulled up on his computer and didn’t bother to hide it.

“Hey,” Zanne said.