Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW THE LULLABY
Three days later, I found Elise asleep in the nursery chair.
It was nearly dawn. The twins were sleeping in their cribs, their small faces turned toward each other. Elise sat with her head tilted against the chair, one hand resting near Rosie's blanket. A children's book lay open on her lap.
I should have woken her. Instead, I stood in the doorway and watched.
She looked younger asleep. The careful expression she wore around me had disappeared. There was a faint crease between her brows, as though even her dreams required concentration.
I noticed a paper tucked between the pages of the book. It was a handwritten schedule: feeding times, naps, medicine instructions, and small notes about what calmed each child.
Beside Maisie's name, Elise had written: Likes the window. Watches the leaves.
Beside Rosie's: Settles when someone hums. Doesn't like sudden light.
At the bottom, she had written: Both girls look for each other when frightened.
I picked up the paper.
“Mr. Caruso?”
Elise startled awake and nearly dropped the book.
“I'm sorry,” she said, sitting upright. “I didn't mean to fall asleep.”
“You've been here since yesterday afternoon.”
“I was waiting for them to settle.”
“You could have gone to the staff room.”
“They were having a difficult night.”
“You are allowed to rest.”
She looked at the twins. “I know.”
I placed the schedule on the table. “You wrote all this?”
“I thought it might help everyone stay consistent.”
“Everyone?”
“The other staff. If I'm sick or need a day off, someone should know what works.”
I studied her. “You plan to stay?”
“If you'll have me.”
The question was quiet, but it carried something I hadn't expected. She had no reason to trust me. I had treated every nanny as temporary, every kindness as a risk, and every suggestion as a challenge to my authority.
“You can stay,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“On one condition.”
Her shoulders stiffened.
“You tell me when you're exhausted. I don't want you falling asleep in a chair because you think asking for help will cost you your job.”
She looked genuinely surprised. “All right.”
At noon, Marco brought me a report from the agency. Elise's references were excellent. She had worked at a pediatric rehabilitation center, then as a private caregiver for a family in Evanston. There was nothing suspicious in her record.
But one detail caught my attention. Before entering childcare, she had studied music therapy for two years.
“Why didn't you tell me?” I asked her that afternoon.
She was folding tiny socks. “You didn't ask.”
“You could have mentioned it.”
“I didn't want you to think I was trying to treat your daughters like patients.”
“Are they patients?”
“No. They're babies. They need care, routine, and affection. Music can help with soothing, but it isn't a cure for grief.”
“Why did you leave the program?”
Her hands paused. “My mother became ill. I needed to work.”
I nodded. I knew something about putting a life aside because someone needed you.
That evening, Elise brought the music box to the sitting room. “Would you mind if I wound it while the girls are awake?”
“Why?”
“I want to see if they recognize the melody.”
I hesitated, then handed it to her.
She turned the key. The small wooden birds trembled as the tune began.
Maisie immediately turned her head. Rosie kicked both legs.
Elise smiled. “There.”
I sat beside them, listening.
“Did Sofia sing this often?” she asked.
“Every night.”
“Then they may associate it with being settled.”
I looked at her. “You sound certain.”
“I'm not certain. I'm hopeful.”
There was a difference. I was beginning to understand that Elise lived inside that difference.
Later, I asked Marco to bring Sofia's old phone from the safe. It had been turned off after her death. I had kept it because I could not bear to erase it, but I had never charged it.
The battery took an hour to respond.
When the screen finally lit, dozens of messages appeared. Most were ordinary: grocery lists, photographs, reminders. Then I found a voice recording labeled For the girls.
My thumb hovered over the play icon.
Elise was in the doorway. “You don't have to listen now.”
“I know.”
I pressed play.
Sofia's voice filled the room.
“Hello, my little stars. If you're hearing this, you're probably old enough to know that your father thinks he can do everything by himself. He can't. Don't tell him I said that.”
A laugh followed. My laugh, faintly, from somewhere behind the phone.
Sofia continued. “Your daddy is brave, but sometimes he forgets that being gentle takes courage too. So if he gets quiet, ask him to dance. He is terrible at it, and I love him anyway.”
The recording ended with a kiss against the microphone.
I couldn't move.
Elise lowered her eyes. The twins had gone quiet, listening to the voice they could not understand but somehow recognized.
I replayed it. Then again.
At the bottom of the phone's gallery, I found a photograph I had never seen. Sofia stood outside a small music studio, holding a paper cup. Beside her was a woman whose face was partly turned away.
On the back of the printed copy, in Sofia's handwriting, were the words: Elise — thank you for helping me find the song.
I stared at the name.
Elise.
The next morning, I asked her about it.
She went very still when I showed her the photograph.
“I knew your wife,” she said.
The room seemed to tilt.
“How?”
Elise folded her hands. “Not well at first. She came to the rehabilitation center where I volunteered. She was helping organize music sessions for children whose parents were receiving long-term treatment.”
“You met her before she died?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn't tell me?”
“I didn't know if you wanted to hear about her from someone you had just hired.”
“What did she tell you?”
Elise looked toward the twins. “That she wanted her daughters to grow up in a house where laughter was louder than fear.”
I felt anger rise, then falter.
“Why did you come here?”
“Because I wanted to help.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“No,” she said quietly. “It isn't.”
For the first time, I realized Elise had a story she was afraid to tell.
And I was no longer certain I wanted her to keep it from me.
I asked Elise to tell me everything she remembered about Sofia, even the ordinary details. At first, she seemed uncertain. Then she told me about the rehabilitation center's old upright piano, which had three keys that stuck whenever the room became humid. Sofia had insisted on playing it anyway. She told the children that the piano was not broken; it was merely dramatic. Elise described the way Sofia had knelt beside a boy who refused to join the music session and offered him a choice between tapping a spoon against a cup or conducting the entire room. He chose to conduct.
I could picture her perfectly. Sofia had always believed people should be invited into joy, never ordered into it. I remembered arguing with her about the center because I thought the work was too demanding while she was pregnant. She had told me that being careful with her body did not mean becoming careful with her heart. I had apologized, but I had never understood the sentence until Elise repeated it in another form.
“Did she talk about me?” I asked.
“Sometimes.”
“What did she say?”
“That you made her feel safe, even when you were difficult.”
I gave her a look.
“She said you loved with your whole heart,” Elise continued. “But you sometimes tried to protect people by deciding what they were allowed to know. She wanted you to trust her with the hard things.”
The words settled between us. I thought of all the times I had told Sofia not to worry about a problem because I would handle it. I had believed I was sparing her. Perhaps I had been shutting her out. I asked Elise to keep talking, and she did, until the twins woke and the moment passed. I was grateful for the interruption. Some truths needed time to be heard.
I asked Elise why she had chosen to work for the Caruso family after volunteering at the center. She told me that the agency had called with an urgent placement. The previous nanny had resigned, and the girls needed someone immediately. Elise had recognized Sofia's name on the family profile and nearly declined. She worried that working in the house would make her grief harder, not easier. Then she remembered Sofia's letter asking her to meet the girls someday. She decided to accept the interview, but she had not expected to be hired.
“You could have told me at the interview,” I said.
“I could have. But I wanted you to decide whether I was right for the job because of how I cared for them, not because I had known their mother.”
I considered that. “And if I had asked?”
May you like
“I would have told you.”
I believed her. That surprised me. Trust had become a language I understood only in theory. With Elise, it was beginning to return through small, ordinary choices. I asked her to show me the music therapy exercises she used with the girls. She demonstrated a simple rhythm using her fingertips against the side of the crib. The twins watched her hands, fascinated. I tried the pattern myself. Maisie smiled. It was the smallest applause I had ever received, and I wanted to earn it again.
