The Babysitter

Chapter 1 — The Job

The Callahans’ house looked like the kind of place that came with its own lighting crew.

Jess Miller stood at the bottom of the driveway at 6:45 on a Friday evening, duffel bag over her shoulder, and took it in: two stories of gray stone, black shutters squared with the windows like they’d been measured with a ruler, a lawn striped from that afternoon’s mowing. Every light in the house was on, warm and golden, and through the front windows she could see a chandelier — an actual chandelier — hanging over what had to be the dining room.

Her own house, three streets over, had a porch light that flickered and a mailbox shaped like a fish. This was a different universe.

She rang the bell. It played actual chimes.

Sarah Callahan opened the door, and she looked exactly like the kind of woman who lived in a house like this: blonde hair in a low ponytail, cream-colored sweater, jeans without a single wrinkle in them. She was smiling before Jess even said hello.

“Jess! Come in, come in.” She stepped back, and the smell hit Jess first — lemon cleaner and something sweet baking. “Tommy has been asking about you all day. Mark! She’s here!”

Mark Callahan appeared from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel, and shook Jess’s hand like she was a colleague instead of a seventeen-year-old with a duffel bag. Polo shirt, easy grin, the faint smell of aftershave. “Our regular sitter moved to Pittsburgh,” he said. “Tommy’s been lobbying for you specifically. Apparently you’re a legend at the elementary school pickup line.”

“I once read The Very Hungry Caterpillar with full dramatic voices,” Jess said. “Word travels fast.”

That got a real laugh out of both of them, and some of the new-job tightness in Jess’s shoulders loosened. She’d been babysitting since she was sixteen — a dozen families, a whole taxonomy of them — and she had a system: learn the house in the first ten minutes, learn the kid in the first twenty, and always, always locate the snacks.

The house, it turned out, was even better inside. The kitchen had a marble island the size of a compact car and a bowl of limes on it that nobody was ever going to eat. The living room had a white couch — a white couch, with a six-year-old in residence, which Jess filed away as either extremely brave or extremely telling. Family photos lined the hallway in matching white frames, every one of them the kind where the whole family is laughing at the same time, like laughter had been scheduled in advance.

Jess noticed things. She always had. It was what her dad teased her about — “You’ve got a detective’s eyes, kiddo” — and it was what made her good at this job. She noticed that Sarah straightened the same photo frame twice without realizing she’d done it the first time. She noticed Mark check his watch while Sarah was still talking. She noticed there was no clutter anywhere. No mail pile. No stray shoes. No crumbs. It was a house that had been cleaned for company, and then cleaned again to meet the standards of the cleaning.

“Tour,” Sarah announced, clapping her hands together. “Kitchen — lasagna’s in the fridge, twenty minutes at three-fifty. Help yourself to anything. Bath at seven forty-five, teeth after, one story — he’ll negotiate for two, don’t let him. Actually, it’s Friday, let him. Bed at nine sharp. One episode of TV, max. No allergies, no meds. Our numbers are on the fridge, and the Delgados next door are home if it’s a real emergency.”

“Which it won’t be,” Mark said.

“Which it won’t be,” Sarah agreed. And then a small person materialized in the hallway.

Tommy Callahan was six, all knees and elbows, with a gap between his front teeth you could have parked a bicycle in. He’d been using Mark’s leg as a shield, but now he stepped out and studied Jess with enormous seriousness.

“Do you know the dinosaur names?” he asked.

“Most of them,” Jess said. “I might need coaching on the obscure ones.”

He considered this the way a judge considers evidence. Then he nodded once. “Okay.”

Her phone buzzed. Dad: *Have fun. Text me when they’re home. Home by 11:30.*

*yes sir 🫡* she thumbed back.

“Your dad’s a detective, right?” Sarah asked, glancing at the phone. “Mark’s cousin is on the force in Allentown. Small world.”

“Yeah,” Jess said. “He mostly does paperwork and tells extremely boring stories about it.”

On the kitchen counter sat an envelope with her name on it in looping handwriting, a little heart dotting the i. *For Jess — thank you!!* Inside: five crisp twenty-dollar bills, the kind of crisp that meant they’d come straight from an ATM that morning.

A hundred dollars. For one Friday night.

Jess did the math before she could stop herself — that was twenty bucks an hour, basically, and the kid would be asleep for half of it. The used Honda Civic she’d been saving for, the blue 2012 on Craigslist with ninety thousand miles and one careful owner, suddenly felt one Friday night closer.

*Easy money,* she thought.

Sarah was already herding Mark toward the garage, purse over her arm. Tommy launched himself at his mother’s legs for one more hug. Mark ruffled his hair. “Be good for Jess.”

“I’m always good,” Tommy said, with the bottomless confidence of a six-year-old who had never once been good in his life.

The garage door rumbled. Headlights swept the driveway. And then they were gone, and it was just Jess and Tommy in the big golden house, and the quiet that settled after the door closed was so complete that Jess could hear the refrigerator humming.

At the door, Sarah had paused — half-turned, one hand on the frame — and her smile had gone a fraction too bright.

“Oh — one more thing,” she’d said. “If Tommy starts in about the closet, don’t encourage it. Six-year-old imaginations. They find monsters in every shadow.”

Mark had laughed. Too loud, and a half-second too fast.

The door had closed.

Jess stood in the perfect hallway, breathing in lemon and sugar, and thought: *that laugh was too loud for the joke.*