Martha Hayes had worked for the Thompson's since before Anna died.
She was a broad, quiet woman in her forties with flour permanently on her apron and a habit of humming while she worked.
Cecilia treated her like part of the furniture, which turned out to be a useful thing to be. Furniture sees everything.
Martha saw the way the little girl ate her dinner standing up. She saw the way Clara kicked Lily's school bag across the floor and Evelyn laughed. She saw Cecilia lock the pantry on Fridays, saying the girl "had gotten greedy."
One night, when Lily was eight, Martha found her sitting alone on the back stairs, holding her stomach.
"I'm not hungry," Lily said at once.
"I didn't ask."
"Mrs. Thompson says I shouldn't be."
Martha looked at the thin wrists and the hollow face, and something in her chest tightened until it hurt.
"Wait here," she said.
She came back with a bowl of warm chicken soup and a slice of bread, still soft from the oven. She sat on the step beside Lily, close enough to be a wall against the draft.
"Eat slowly," she said. "Nobody is going to take it."
Lily ate with both hands wrapped around the bowl. When she finished, she was crying and did not seem to know it.
"Why are you being nice to me?"
"Because you're a child," said Martha. "And a child should never have to ask."
After that, it became their secret. When Cecilia went upstairs to rest, or took the girls to the salon, or hosted a dinner party that kept her busy until midnight, Martha would slip leftovers into a paper bag and hide it in the laundry room.
A fried egg sandwich. A bruised apple. Once, a slice of birthday cake, with a candle stuck in it.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart," Martha said, on the day Lily turned nine. She lit the candle with a kitchen match. "Make a wish."
Lily stared at the flame for a long moment.
"I wish Papa could see."
"See what, child?"
"Everything."
Martha said nothing, because there was nothing she could say that would not be a lie.
But she put her arm around Lily's shoulders, and for the first time in her life, Lily leaned into somebody who did not pull away.
It became a ritual. Martha taught her to bake bread, to chop onions without crying, to hum when she was afraid. In return, Lily read to Martha at night, because Martha had never learned to read well and was too proud to say so.
"You are going to be somebody someday," Martha told her, folding laundry beside the lamp. "I can feel it."
"I'm just Lily."
"That is not nothing. Don't let them tell you it is."
But Martha could not do much more than feed and comfort her. She had a sick husband at home, a small salary, and a mistress who could fire her with a single word. She had seen what happened to the last maid who talked.
So she fed the child in secret, and watched the years go by, and hoped that someone would come.
Nobody did.