Chapter 6 - The Footprint on the White Sheet
He’d stepped out for less than a minute. I counted it by the hallway ice machine humming, then stopping.
The bedroom door stayed ajar, just wide enough for the warm light to cut a line across the dark marble wall. I hadn’t moved from where he’d left me, perched on the edge of the big bed with the empty glass still cold in my hands. My feet were bare against the floor, and the floor was cold enough to make my toes curl.
I told myself not to look. I told myself to get up, set the glass down, and walk out while I could still say I hadn’t snooped in Mr. Russo’s room.
But I looked.
From the doorway side where I sat, the bed told on both of us. The white top sheet was pulled back in a hard diagonal, like someone had yanked it down in a hurry. On his side, the pillow was dented deep against the dark headboard, the fitted sheet creased where he’d been reclining for hours. On my side, near the foot, the sheet was almost smooth — undisturbed except for one faint, dusty footprint.
My own footprint. I could see the heel smudge from my sock.
I stared at it because it was proof I hadn’t been lying there long. I hadn’t tossed. I hadn’t slept curled in. I’d sat up and scrambled back, exactly as my body remembered. That one mark was the only place I’d really touched his bed.
My breathing slowed a little. That was something I could hold onto if Marta or Mrs. Bell asked.
Then I saw the nightstand.
Next to where the glass had been, someone had folded my gray cleaning rag into a neat square. It wasn’t tossed. It wasn’t wadded the way I left it in my cart pocket. Four corners lined up, set deliberately beside the water ring on the wood. My stomach dropped, because I remembered shoving that rag into my back pocket when I came in to turn down the room.
I set the glass down carefully and reached for it without standing. The cotton was still damp on one side, sour-smelling. I pressed my thumb into the fold. Who folds a maid’s rag while she’s passed out?
The ice machine started humming again. I jerked my hand back.
“Don’t get up fast,” Mr. Russo said from the doorway.
He wasn’t in the bed anymore, but he hadn’t gone far. He stood with one hand on the doorframe, watching me lean toward the nightstand. His shirt was still unbuttoned, the dragon’s edge dark against his left chest, his watch catching the blue window light. He didn’t look angry that I was looking. He looked tired.
“I wasn’t —” My voice cracked. “I saw my rag.”
He stepped inside but didn’t come close to the bed. He left three feet between us, like he’d measured it on purpose.
“You left it on the bathroom floor,” he said.
I shook my head before I could stop myself. “I don’t remember a bathroom.”
“You wouldn’t.” He glanced at the bed, then at my bare feet. “You were on the floor by the tub. You were sick. You got it on your sleeve.”
I looked down at my gray uniform. On the cuff of my right sleeve, near the black trim, there was a damp spot I hadn’t noticed. I rubbed it and it smeared faintly white.
The hallway light shifted as someone walked past far down the corridor, a cart wheel squeaking once, then gone. Neither of us moved until it faded.
“Did I — did you carry me?” I asked. The words felt too big for the dim room.
He was quiet long enough that I heard the window air hissing faintly. He didn’t sit. He didn’t offer the water again. He just looked at the footprint I’d been staring at.
“The floor was cold,” he said.
It wasn’t an answer. It was a reason without the rest of it.
“You carried me to the bed,” I said, trying to make it a fact instead of a question.
He gave a short nod. “To the edge. You wouldn’t wake up when I called your name.”
My hands were shaking again, so I put them flat on the mattress beside my thighs. The white sheet felt cool and too soft under my palms. I wanted to believe him because the sheets backed him up — no tangle, no second dent on my side, just that one footprint where I’d scrambled. I wanted to not believe him because he still wouldn’t say why he hadn’t called for Marta or the front desk instead.
“Why’d you fold it?” I asked, nodding at the rag.
He looked at the little folded square for a second. “So you’d know I saw you working. Not —” He stopped, jaw tightening. “So housekeeping doesn’t write you up for losing it.”
That landed harder than I expected. He’d thought about my log sheet while I was out cold on his bathroom floor.
I picked up the rag and shoved it back in my pocket where it belonged. My fingers brushed the empty glass. The two things sat there together in my mind now, witnesses that didn’t match: a folded rag meant care, an unmade bed meant something I couldn’t name yet.
“I need to stand,” I said.
May you like
“Slow,” he said. “Bathroom first. Wash your face. Then go.”
He stepped back to give me room to the door, still not touching me. The footprint stayed on the sheet behind me as I pushed to my feet, proof I’d barely been there at all.
