The Liar's Wife (Adam Levine Dark Romance)

Chapter 5: Rumour Has It

Jane crept up to the closed door and pushed it open slowly, cringing at the loud creak it emitted. Not that there was anyone else around to hear. She and Adele were alone in the house, and the little girl was napping soundly in her room.

Jane had already straightened up the playroom and the kitchen, and now boredom and curiosity had won out over her fear of being caught snooping. It was probably a bad idea, she knew. She was already on thin ice with this job, since Mr. Levine had clearly been expecting someone else. As soon as he came home and discovered the mix-up, he would probably put her on the next train to—where exactly? That was the problem. If this job didn’t pan out, she wasn’t sure where else she had to go. Her only hope was to do such a good job with Adele today that Mr. Levine would be convinced to give her a chance.

She continued pushing the creaky door open. As long as no one was home, better to distract herself with a little harmless poking around than to sit and dwell on her worries. She wished she had some idea when her employer might be putting in an appearance, but the only other person she’d seen around all morning was the gardener. What was his name? He hadn’t even bothered to tell her, she realized. Manners were clearly not his strong suit.

He’d been in the kitchen helping himself to a bowl of cereal when Jane had briefly left Adele in the playroom and gone in search of a toddler-friendly morning snack. They hadn’t spoken other than to nod briefly at each other before he set his empty bowl on the kitchen counter and headed out the front door. She’d been a little shocked at the way he’d helped himself and hadn’t even bothered to wash his bowl out afterward. Did he expect her to clean up after him? Then again, it seemed to fit his general demeanor pretty well from what she’d seen. One of those cocky pretty boys who thought a handsome face and a charming smile could make up for just about any misdeed.

As much as she wanted nothing to do with him, she wished that she’d forced herself to ask him more about Mr. Levine. She was completely in the dark, the way things stood. Could he be out of town? Maybe he wasn’t due back for days.

Jane peered now into the darkened room that lay behind the door she had just opened. It seemed to be some sort of combination library and music room. There was an upright piano and a couple of guitars in a rack at the far end, and the rest of the room was taken up with what must have been the largest music collection she’d ever seen. Whoever this Adam Levine was, she thought, he must be old. No one kept music on CDs anymore, let alone records. Maybe he was one of those 60 year olds who had a baby with some woman half his age as a way to ward off his own approaching mortality.

Jane thought back to what Adele had told her this morning about her mother. “She can’t come home ‘cause she’s very busy, but she misses me a lot.” It was a line that struck a familiar chord with Jane. How many times had she said the same thing about her own mother as a young girl? She misses me a lot. It was the lie that children liked to tell themselves – needed to tell themselves – when the most important person in their world chose to walk away.

Jane had been just about Adele’s age when her own mother told her to wait outside a fire station and never came back. She misses me a lot, Jane had told herself for years afterward. She’d grown up in a group home full of little girls, all telling themselves the same story. Yes, she knew well enough what lay behind Adele’s words, and she also remembered vividly how all of those little girls – every last one – used to long for any fragment of information about their mothers, any shred of a connection.

“My mommy is the most beautiful singer in the whole world,” Adele had told her earlier. Jane flicked on the light switch and stepped into the music room, wondering if she might be able to figure out something about Adele’s mother from the CD collection.