Samuel's face went dark on the spot. He lunged for the underwear in a panic, clearly about to hurl it into the swimming pool nearby.
But Effie was faster. She snatched it away and had someone inspect it.
One look at the stains and her face went livid.
Her eyes dropped to my flat chest, and she backhanded Samuel across the face.
"I know every woman who's nursed my daughter. She is not one of them!"
"Who is this other woman?"
The ring on Effie's hand left a bloody scratch across Samuel's cheek, but he didn't dare show even a flicker of anger.
All he could do was fix me with a venomous stare and keep piling the filth onto me.
"Who says a woman has to be nursing to smell like that?"
"Some women are just born with it—milk in their bodies whether they've had a baby or not, and this sweet, strange scent coming off their skin."
"Doesn't matter how fussy the kid is. The second it gets close to a woman like her, it stops crying. Can't help but cling to her."
"She's barely out of her twenties and she walked in here pulling fifty thousand a month as a maternity nanny. Maybe that's exactly the edge she has."
"That underwear is hers."