Part 1
The bucket hit me before my son reached the bottom stair, and dirty gray water ran from my hair into the collar of my faded uniform. Tabitha laughed as if humiliating an old housekeeper were the funniest thing she had done all week.
“You look completely disgusting,” she said, dropping the empty bucket beside my shoes with a loud clatter. “Someone clearly needs to wash the filth off you right now.”
I slowly wiped my face with the damp sleeve of the uniform I had bought from a secondhand shop in downtown Phoenix. Beneath the soaked fabric, my thumb pressed the tiny play button on the recorder hidden inside my pocket.
“Robin,” I called toward the grand staircase. “Could you come down here, please?”
Tabitha’s cruel smile flickered for a brief second.
Three weeks earlier, my son had announced his engagement to her. Robin was thirty-two, incredibly kind, highly successful, and painfully trusting toward the people he loved. Tabitha had entered his life like polished glass, looking beautiful and expensive, yet sharp enough to cut anyone who touched her carelessly.
She treated me perfectly whenever she actually knew who I was.
At dinner, she always called me Mrs. Harrington and endlessly praised the charitable foundation I had built after my husband passed away. She held my hand gently, asked sweet questions about my health, and insisted that she wanted a simple wedding because love mattered so much more than money.
However, our household staff told a completely different story behind her back.
“She calls us useless animals the second Mr. Harrington leaves the driveway,” Teresa, my house manager, whispered to me in confidence. “Just yesterday, she made Luis kneel on the cold floor to scrub a tiny footprint she made herself.”
Robin firmly refused to believe any of it.
“She is just under a lot of stress about the upcoming wedding,” he said defended her gently. “Please give her a fair chance to adjust.”
I understood his deep resistance to the truth. After losing his father when he was only sixteen, Robin had spent years trying to protect everyone around him. I did not want to choose a wife for him, but I desperately wanted him to choose his partner with his eyes wide open.
So I decided to give Tabitha one totally unguarded afternoon.
Robin told her that a temporary housekeeper would arrive while our regular staff attended a mandatory safety training seminar. I covered my silver hair with a dark wig, put on thick round glasses, stained my fingernails with dirt from the garden, and walked into my own house through the back service door.
Within an hour, Tabitha ordered me to carry six heavy garment boxes up to the second floor, openly mocked my slight regional accent, and accused me of stealing a expensive diamond bracelet that she had secretly hidden inside her own leather purse. When I easily found it right where she had placed it, she leaned in close and whispered, “People like you should be truly grateful that people like me even let you set foot indoors.”
Then she noticed a small muddy mark on the floor near the foyer.
She pointed down at it and ordered me to scrub it off immediately using my bare hands.
When I refused to follow her order, she marched into the utility closet and fetched the bucket.
Now Robin stood halfway down the sweeping staircase, staring down at the two of us in absolute shock.
Tabitha turned around quickly to face him. “Darling, this crazy woman was threatening me.”
I slowly reached up and removed the heavy glasses from my face.
Robin went entirely pale in an instant.
“Mom?” he whispered softly.
Tabitha’s face emptied of all its color, but I was not quite finished testing her yet.
