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"You mean those older kids? Across the river, right?"

She gave a decisive nod. "Right."

Well, that was strange.Going for a joke, I said, "So, do they swim across or what?"

"Nah. They have a dinghy. It's their dad's, but they use it when he's not home. They're not supposed to, but they still do."

From what I'd seen so far, those kids did a lot of things they weren't supposed to do. Happily, this was Livia's problem, not mine.

Still, I got to my feet, intending to answer the door and be done with it.

Willow spoke up. "Oh, you don't have to answer."

I paused. "Really?"

She nodded. "If you do, they'll just run away. They do it all the time."

I'd been living here for months now, but this was the first time anyone had knocked on the rear door. "Seriously?"

"Oh yeah. But mostly in the summer."

If nothing else, this explained the lack of knocking until now. I asked, "And they always run off?"

"Almostalways," she said. "But this one time, they hit the nanny with a water balloon." Her eyes brightened. "Except it wasn't filled with water."

"Oh?" I was almost afraid to ask. "So, whatwasit filled with?"

"Milk, I think." She leaned forward to announce, "And it wasn'ttheirnanny either. It wasmynanny."

I frowned.Well, that was ominous.

"Oh?" I repeated.

Willow nodded. "But it was okay, because she wasn't very nice."

I hesitated. As the only adult in the room, it was probably my responsibility to tell Willow that whether someone was nice or not, they still didn't deserve to be hit with a milk balloon.

And yet, I couldn’t help but recall my encounter with Veronica, back in that school parking lot. She'd bothered Willow. Andthen, she'd stomped on my foot.

I felt my eyes narrow.Boy, what I wouldn’t have given for a nice milk balloon then.

As I envisioned it, my thoughts strayed to the other nannies. At least two of them had tried to get all naughty with Mason. The recollection bothered me more than it should've, even in spite of the fact that I was in no position to judge.

Still, I decided that if one ofthemhad been hit with the milk balloon, maybe this wasn'tsoterrible.

In fact, I sort of liked the idea.

What did that say about me?

Nothing good, that's for sure.

Just then, I heard the knocking sound again, except this time it was a whole lot louder.

Willow said, "Yup, it's them, alright."

I asked, "How can you be sure?"

"Because they always do that," she said. "They start out quiet and get louder if you don't answer." She smiled. "But then they go away."