The Housemaid Is Watching (The Housemaid, #3)

by Freida McFadden

“Will you please be careful, Enzo?” I say. He looks up at me, and when he grins, I melt. Is that normal? Do other women who are married to somebody for over eleven years still get wobbly in the knees over them sometimes?

The only thing he won’t eat is Italian food. He says that no restaurant does it right, and it’s always a disappointment. But he’ll eat delivery pizza. Because that’s not actually Italian food, in his assessment.

I don’t like Suzette, but if we can be friends with the Lowells, it’s a step up. It means I have finally achieved the normal life I always dreamed of. The life I’d do anything to get.

I can be hotheaded, but he thinks things through. When he assaulted that man, he didn’t do it in a fit of passion. That man was his brother-in-law and used to beat his sister regularly until he finally killed her. He found the man, beat him to a bloody pulp, then hopped on a plane to LaGuardia that evening. Enzo knew exactly what he was doing. He was exacting revenge.

But it’s extremely hard to sleep when another woman’s perfume is tickling your nostrils.

Becoming a wife and mother has made me soft.

For a moment, I allow myself to imagine the proper, efficient woman I came to know in my house being married to this man. It doesn’t seem like a good fit, but I’ve learned that people change a lot after they say “I do.” What was it like for her to go home to this man every night?

“I think,” I say, “that a person can do bad things and still be a good person. As long as they were doing the bad thing for the right reason.”

The third in a series usually isn’t that great, so it’s not his fault.

There was a time in my life, like when I was a little kid, when it was easy to sleep. I don’t remember lying awake when I was in kindergarten. But now it seems like every night, I can’t sleep. I just stare at the ceiling every night.

I suppose nobody ever suspects the housemaid.