The Housemaid Summary & ending explained

The detective hasn't opened his notebook yet. Somehow that's worse.

He sits across from me in the Winchesters' living room, his knees almost touching the glass coffee table, and asks his questions in a soft, patient voice. When did I come home. What did I hear. Why did I go up those narrow stairs to the attic.

Upstairs, behind a small door at the very top of the house, there's a body. I'm the one who found it.

I keep my hands folded in my lap so he won't see them shake. I know how this looks. I've already pictured the handcuffs.

Then footsteps on the stairs. A young officer leans over the banister, pale.

"Detective Connors? You'll want to come upstairs. Now."

Three months earlier.

I'm sitting on a white sofa in a white living room, in the only blouse I own that doesn't have a stain, and I'm praying the woman across from me never thinks to run a background check.

Nina Winchester is blonde and glossy and dressed head to toe in white. She talks fast and laughs at odd moments. The house is enormous: marble floors, a staircase that curls up like a ribbon, windows so clean they look like open air.

"Cooking, cleaning, laundry, picking my daughter up from school," she says. "It's a lot. Could you handle it?"

"Absolutely," I say. I'd scrub the driveway with a toothbrush.

What I don't say: I've been sleeping in my car for a month. I got out of prison not long ago, after ten years. I went in as a teenager. My parole officer would like me to have a job and an address, and every employer who sees my record shows me the door.

Nina asks a few questions and barely listens to the answers. She doesn't mention a background check. She doesn't ask about the gap in my work history. She just looks at me, head tilted, as if she's measuring me for something.

I'm sure I've blown it. Women like Nina don't hire women like me.

And then, somehow, she does.

"You'll live in," she says, beaming. "There's a lovely little room upstairs. When can you start?"