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.
She walked along one wall of the room, running her eyes along the rows of carefully alphabetized music and wishing for once that she had more than just the barest knowledge of popular music. They’d mostly had access to religious music at the home where Jane had grown up, and she’d only heard of a handful of the artists represented here. The Beatles, she knew of course. And Tony Bennett sounded familiar. But for the most part, she was completed lost as she made her way around the room.
She came to a stop in front of a shelf that seemed to be set apart from the others. It only had a few CDs on it, and they were out of alphabetical order. She flicked through the jewel cases with her fingers, and her eyes came to a rest on two CDs by a singer called Adele. Here, she thought, this might be something. She took the CDs down from the shelf and opened them to look at the liner notes. Both albums had been autographed, it seemed. And as she read through the notes, she saw that the text was peppered with British slang. “She lives in England,” Adele had told her earlier. Could this Adele be the little girl’s mother?
An idea was starting to take shape in Jane’s head, and she took out one of the CDs, popping it into the stereo. The first song began to play, and she glanced down at the liner notes again to see the title, Rolling in the Deep.
There's a fire starting in my heart,
Reaching a fever pitch, it's bringing me out the dark.
Whoever this Adele was, she had a beautiful voice. Jane’s own singing voice was a deep contralto, but the melody the woman was singing would fall comfortably within her range. The tempo of this song was too slow, though, for what she had in mind. Jane advanced the CD to track two, and stood listening to the next song.
“That should work,” she muttered to herself after listening through to the end. She’d always had a bit of a knack for music, and she sat down now at the piano, easily picking out the right chords to accompany the melody as she played the song through a second time.
***
Adam anxiously ran his fingers through his hair as he pushed the front door open and stepped into the house. He’d been startled to see how low the sun was already sinking in the sky during the drive back from the hospital. He’d stayed out longer than he had intended, and he knew the reason why. The coming conversation was not going to be particularly pleasant, but it couldn’t be avoided any longer.
He stood in the front hallway, listening for a moment to the sound of piano music intermingled with his daughter’s laughter. Her care-free giggling reminded him of that first year after she was born. She'd been a happy baby, always smiling and laughing the moment she caught sight of his face – completely oblivious to the dark cloud hanging over both of them. She was still so young now, but something in the timbre of her voice lately had begun to remind him of Jane’s laughter. Even at age three, Adele was the spitting image of her mother, and she seemed to grow more and more like Jane with each passing day. You’d think he would be used to it by now, but it still hit him like a punch in the gut sometimes when he looked into his daughter’s face and saw his wife’s eyes staring back at him.
In any case, he had more pressing concerns just now. He still hadn’t confessed to the nanny about his little white lie yesterday, and the longer he delayed, the worse it got. He knew he should have told her who he really was at breakfast this morning, but something had stopped him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. He had sensed an air of disapproval in the way she carried herself when she saw him there, standing with his bowl of cereal at the kitchen counter. At his kitchen counter. In his kitchen. In his house. Yet somehow, something in her bearing had made him feel like he didn’t belong.
The laughter was coming from the music room, and he paused now outside the door, listening. Was it a CD? It sounded like the piano, but whoever was playing could’ve passed for a professional musician. He shook himself. No more distractions. It was time to face the music.
Adele caught sight of him first, the moment he pushed the door open. “DADDY!!!!” she squealed, dashing across the room and throwing herself into his arms. “Daddy, Daddy, we’re learning a song for you! Look Daddy! There’s a dance too!” Adele began twirling and bobbing around the room, but Adam looked past her to the woman sitting at the piano. She was staring at him now with a shocked expression on her face, and he shot her what he hoped would pass for a suitably apologetic smile.
“Wait. You’re Adam Levine?”
“Surprise!” He was aiming for endearing sheepishness, but he could tell from her expression that he was coming off more like marginally unhinged – if not criminally insane.
Adele cut in before he had any chance to explain further. “Daddy, Daddy watch me!”
“That’s good dancing, little girl,” he told her, tearing his eyes away from the nanny and back to his daughter. “Did Amy teach you that?”
“Jane,” the nanny corrected.
“Right. Sorry. Jane. Got it.”
“Play-the-song-play-the-song-play-the-song!” Adele began to chant.
The nanny stopped glaring at him and sat back down at the keyboard, her hands moving fluidly over the keys. Damn, she knew her way around a piano. He couldn’t help but admire, in spite of the awkwardness of the situation. Adele had taken up a position standing next to her, frozen in a pose with one leg extended and one arm above her head, waiting for her cue to begin the dance routine they had concocted. She burst into movement as the nanny began to sing.
She, she ain't real.
She ain't gon' be able to love you like I will.
He recognized the song. An Adele song. That was when he glanced at the stereo and saw the open jewel case next to it. His breath caught in his chest at the sight of it. That CD. She had to pick that one, out of all the music in this room? That CD had a little too much history for comfort.
She is a stranger.
You and I have history or don't you remember?
The lyrics barely pierced his consciousness as he stood paralyzed, willing her to stop singing. He shut his eyes for a moment, feeling slightly dizzy.
Bless your soul, you got your head in the clouds.
She made a fool out of you and, boy, she's bringing you down.
She made your heart melt but you're cold to the core.
Now rumour has it, she ain't got your love anymor—
“Stop!” He finally found his voice to speak, but the sound came out harsher than he intended. “Stop it!”
The music stopped abruptly on a discordant note, and Adele’s wild dancing halted with it. She was looking up at him now with big eyes, bright with tears. Oh God, he knew those eyes. He knew he should comfort her, but he couldn’t look at her. He was going to lose it right now if he looked at her. Why did she have to pick that CD? Out of all the hundreds of albums in this goddamn room?
He balled his hands into fists, digging his fingernails into his palms, feeling both their eyes upon him. He couldn’t quite manage to meet either of their gazes, but he knew what he would see there if he did. Pain and hurt in Adele’s eyes. And in the nanny’s – even worse – would be disapproval. Accusation.
He stared at a spot on the far wall instead. “It’s not an appropriate song for a child,” he managed to grind out, wincing at the coldness in his voice. Another lie, but it couldn’t helped – not if he meant to hold it together. He forced his eyes back to where the nanny had been sitting, but she was no longer looking at him. She’d knelt down by Adele, pulling his daughter into her arms, and he watched for just a moment as his little girl buried her face in that flaming red veil of hair.
Then he turned on his heel and strode out of the room, closing the door behind him, but not able to shut out the sound of his little girl’s disappointed sobs.