I try to settle the fear that’s bubbling in my stomach. I worry what the other maids will think and if they’ll have to pick up the slack. Usually, by this time in my workday, I’d have cleaned at least a full floor of rooms, but not today. I must say, I am concerned to be running so behind on my room-cleaning quota, not to mention on my tip collection. I’m so thankful for my job that I pinch myself every day. I know we’re all supposed to aspire to become doctors and lawyers and rich real-estate tycoons. I know others think differently, that a maid is a lowly nobody. Never in my life did I think I’d hold such a lofty position in a grand hotel. I’m as white as the sheets that I take off and put on, take off and put on, all day long in the twenty-plus rooms that I make up for the esteemed guests at the Regency Grand, a five-star boutique hotel that prides itself on “sophisticated elegance and proper decorum for the modern age.” I have pointed cheekbones and pale skin that people sometimes marvel at, and I don’t know why. i part my hair in the middle-the exact middle. I’ve got simple, dark hair that I maintain in a sharp, neat bob. Gran said my mother thought Molly was a cute name for a girl, that it conjured apple cheeks and pigtails, neither of which I have, as it turns out. Before I took the job, Molly was just a name, given to me by my estranged mother, who left me so long ago that I have no memory of her, just a few photos and the stories Gran has told me.

I’m a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, and my name is Molly.

It was not ridiculous before I took this job four years ago. CHAPTER 1Īm well aware that my name is ridiculous. A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different-and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.

The Maid by Nita Prose