The House Sitter

Chapter 1 — The Gig

The ad had been sitting in her drafts folder for three days.

Maya Torres read it again, phone light washing her face in the dark corner of the laundromat, the dryers thumping behind her like a second heartbeat. HOUSESITTER WANTED — HOLLYWOOD HILLS — 3 WEEKS, OCTOBER. Compensation: enough to cover one semester at USC. She’d done the math fourteen times. It still came out to a miracle.

She was twenty-four, six months out of her undergraduate degree, already accepted to the architecture master’s program with no way to pay for it. Her portfolio was good. Her bank account was a joke. She’d been sketching other people’s dream houses in a sketchbook held together with a binder clip, renting a couch in a Koreatown apartment where the hot water gave out every morning at six.

She answered the ad at 1:17 a.m. on a Tuesday.

The reply came before the laundromat’s closing announcement.

Richard Ashford wrote like someone who’d never had to wait for anything in his life. “We leave for Europe on the second of October,” the email said. “The house needs a warm, responsible presence. You have an architecture background — the house is itself a kind of architecture, and we think you’d appreciate it. Can you come by tomorrow at four?”

She’d gone straight from her barista shift, still smelling like espresso and oat milk, and stood at the foot of a driveway so long it had its own weather system.

The mansion sat above the canyon like something that had decided to become part of the landscape rather than sit on top of it — glass and pale stone, cantilevered decks, a pool that caught the last of the light and held it. A man in his late fifties opened the door before she could knock. Silver hair, perfectly cut. The kind of watch that doesn’t tell time so much as announce it.

“Richard Ashford,” he said, and shook her hand with both of his. “And this is Evelyn.”

Evelyn Ashford appeared from the hallway as if she’d been waiting just out of sight, which maybe she had. She was fifty-five and looked it the way expensive things look old — on purpose, beautifully. Dark hair pulled back, a silk scarf knotted at her throat, no jewelry except a thin gold band worn so long it had become part of the finger.

“Oh,” Evelyn said, and her hand stopped halfway to Maya’s. “Oh, Richard.”

They both just looked at her.

Maya had been looked at before — by professors, by landlords, by men on the metro — but this was different. It was the kind of looking that searched. Richard’s eyes went over her face the way she’d seen appraisers go over a painting, not for beauty but for something underneath. Evelyn pressed her fingertips to her own mouth, and for a half-second Maya saw something raw move across the woman’s face before the polish slid back over it.

“You look just like —” Evelyn started, then stopped. “You remind us of someone. Forgive us. It’s the light in the hallway, probably.”

“Someone lovely, I hope,” Maya said, and the Ashfords laughed a beat too late and a beat too hard.

The tour took forty minutes. Richard showed her the kitchen (“the good knives, please never in the dishwasher”), the study with its wall of architectural monographs (she nearly wept at a first edition of a Calatrava monograph, and Richard noticed, and smiled), the infinity pool, the guest suite where she’d sleep — “the good suite,” Evelyn said, “with the view of the city.” Evelyn showed her the thermostat, the alarm code, the emergency contacts, the folder labeled IN CASE OF ANYTHING.

“Where did you grow up?” Evelyn asked, as they stood in the upstairs hall. The question came out of nowhere, casual the way a held breath is casual.

“Here. LA. I was adopted when I was five — my parents are from the Valley.” Maya shrugged, because it was just a fact, like her shoe size. “I don’t remember much before that. Records fire, foster shuffle, the usual story.”

Something crossed Evelyn’s face then — not pity, not surprise, but a stillness so complete it was like watching a pond freeze. Richard, who had been examining a light switch with great interest, went very still too.

“Five,” Evelyn repeated softly.

“Ancient history,” Maya said, and laughed, because it felt like the room needed it.

“You’re twenty-four,” Evelyn said, not a question.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you’re in school?”

“Starting my master’s in the spring. If I can —” Maya stopped. “That’s why I’m doing this. To cover tuition.”

Richard and Evelyn exchanged a look. The searching look again, but softer this time. Knowing.

“Three weeks,” Richard said. “October second through the twenty-third. We’ll pay half up front. There’s a car in the garage if you need it — the older one. Insurance covers you.”

Maya’s throat closed. The amount they’d named — she’d already wired half of it, in her head, to USC’s bursar.

“Is there a reason you’re not hiring through an agency?” she asked, because she’d learned to ask.

“We prefer a person,” Evelyn said simply. “An agency sends a professional. We want someone who’ll live here. Someone the house can…” She trailed off. “The orchids need watering at seven every morning. Exactly seven. And there are a few rules. Richard will go over them with you when you come to get the keys.”

The rules. Maya’s stomach did something small and uncertain.

“Nothing strange,” Richard said quickly, reading her. “Every house has its rules. Ours are just particular.”

They walked her to the door. On the threshold, Evelyn took both of Maya’s hands. Her hands were cold.

“You’re a good girl,” Evelyn said. “I can tell. We can both tell.”

In the driveway, Maya sat in her dented Civic for a full minute, hands on the wheel, staring up at the house. The pay was real. The couple was kind, if odd. Everything in her that had learned to be careful — growing up, working double shifts, counting change for laundry — was trying to raise its hand.

But tuition was tuition. And the guest suite had a view of the city.

She started the car.

Behind her, from the highest window of the mansion, someone was watching. She didn’t look back. If she had, she would have seen the curtain fall closed, and Evelyn Ashford’s hand pressed flat against the glass, as if she were touching something she couldn’t reach.