The Caretakers

A Novel

Amanda Bestor-Siegal

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780063138209
• eBook ISBN:
  9780063138223
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

“Bestor-Siegal switches perspective among a group of characters with tenderness and intimacy. . . . The writing is smooth as honey. . . It's utterly absorbing.” — NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“Thrilling and deeply moving, gorgeously written and intricately plotted . . . bold and brilliant." –ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN 

Recommended by New York Times Book Review • USA Today • Glamour • Business Insider • Popsugar • CrimeReads • The Millions • BookRiot • and more!

Set in a wealthy Parisian suburb, an emotionally riveting debut told from the point of view of six women, and centered around a group of au pairs, one of whom is arrested after a sudden and suspicious tragedy strikes her host family—a dramatic exploration of identity, class, and caregiving from a profoundly talented new writer.

Paris, 2015. A crowd gathers outside the Chauvet home in the affluent suburban community of Maisons-Larue, watching as the family’s American au pair is led away in handcuffs after the sudden death of her young charge. The grieving mother believes the caretaker is to blame, and the neighborhood is thrown into chaos, unsure who is at fault—the enigmatic, young foreigner or the mother herself, who has never seemed an active participant in the lives of her children.  

The truth lies with six women: Géraldine, a heartbroken French teacher struggling to support her vulnerable young students; Lou, an incompetent au pair who was recently fired by the family next door; Charlotte, a chilly socialite and reluctant mother; Nathalie, an isolated French teenager desperate for her mother’s attention; Holly, a socially anxious au pair yearning to belong in her adopted country; and finally, Alena, the one accused of the crime, who has gone to great lengths to avoid emotional connection, and now finds herself caught in the turbulent power dynamics of her host family’s household.

Set during the weeks leading up to the event, The Caretakers is a poignant and suspenseful drama featuring complicated women. It’s a sensitive exploration of the weight of secrets, the pressures of country, community, and family—and miscommunications and misunderstandings that can have fatal consequences.

“A deep, enthralling pleasure, as wise as it is lovely. I read it voraciously, desperate to discover the fates of its unforgettable characters . . . Magnificent.” – ROBIN WASSERMAN

April 1

Géraldine

When Géraldine was the same age as her students (a fact she can’t dwell on, or else she sees their bright faces in class and is overcome with pity, that scratch of desire to stop time), she became obsessed with improving her English. She could already visit London and order in restaurants, make small talk about her studies—but what she really wanted was to lose her accent: that immediate, inexorable giveaway that she was foreign. She pinned handwritten ads to the bulletin boards at the Sorbonne, at Descartes, at the unaccredited French school beneath her flat in Montmartre. Native French speaker seeks Anglophone for conversation practice. She had just started her master’s degree, was training to become a certified French language instructor. She listened to her foreign students’ accents in French all day, the Spaniards and Italians rolling their r’s, the Americans pronouncing each h-muet. She didn’t want to sound like them.

Adam was the first person to respond to her ad. He was a cheerful twenty-two-year-old from New York, newly graduated from college, spending the summer in France on his parents’ dime (a graduation present, he explained to Géraldine—which baffled her in its extravagance, like how Americans book entire skating rinks and bowling alleys for their birthdays). Adam wore cargo shorts and flip-flops. He had an embarrassingly loud laugh. He was taller than Géraldine: rare, even for men. Géraldine’s first meeting with him, scheduled for one hour, lasted eighteen.

“But what is it,” asked Géraldine, “that you like so much about Paris?”

They were speaking exclusively in English by then, because Adam’s French was abysmal, and because after two bottles of wine their desire to communicate transcended any language exchange goals. They were seated at their third café of the day, this one in the 7th arrondissement, a neighborhood Géraldine normally avoided, but Adam wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. Géraldine’s buzz evaporated upon opening the menu—twenty-six euros for steak-frites!—and she was relieved that Adam also fell silent upon seeing the prices. They split another bottle of wine instead of ordering dinner.

“What do you mean, what do I like about Paris?” asked Adam. “What’s not to like?”

“But you come from New York.” Géraldine had learned English partly by watching Friends. She longed for brownstones, restaurants in the West Village, Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

“All French people I meet keep gushing about New York,” said Adam. “But Americans love Paris.”

“But why?”

“Because of all this!” Adam waved his hand around, his cheeks the same color as the rosé. “The cafés, the wine, the history. You don’t realize how amazing life is here?”

“Shh. You’re too loud.”

“In New York, you go to a restaurant and the waiter comes over every five minutes to ask what you need. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of a conversation or if you’re crying or having a seizure or what, they’ll still interrupt to ask if you’re happy. In Paris, they leave you alone. You can stay hours after you’ve finished your coffee and no one tells you to leave!”

“I thought Americans didn’t like the service here. You think it’s too slow.”

“No, no, it’s you who’ve got it right. We all need to relax more. Take five hours to eat dinner, stop rushing everywhere all the time.”

He gestured to their table, as if they’d eaten dinner.

“Many French people do not like Paris,” said Géraldine. “They think it’s too cold, too busy. They describe it the way you describe New York.”

“Paris is calmer than New York. Believe me.”

“What’s it like?”

“New York?”

“Yes. Tell me in French.”

Adam opened his mouth, then closed it. Géraldine smiled. A small surge of power, her ability to suddenly silence him. To slide, fluid, between their languages—knowing he could not.

In French, Adam said, “Big building. Big noise. Light at night. Very good restaurant.”

“I’ve always wanted to go.”

“If you want to, you will.” A moment later: “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“That was a very American thing to say.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are very optimistic.”

Adam laughed. “No one back home would ever say that about me.”

“Perhaps because you are all the same.”

“Hey. Don’t generalize.”

“You generalize about French people, too. You think we don’t shower.”

“Actually, we think you ride around on bicycles all day, with baguettes in the basket. And that you all wear berets.”

“Nobody wears berets!”

“You should. It would look good on you.”

They held each other’s gaze for a moment. Then Adam’s eyes slid off of her, catching on something over her shoulder. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

She followed his gaze. The Eiffel Tower blinked behind her, as at the top of each hour, white lights that tickled the gold. The spastic sparkle always looked cheap to Géraldine, flashy and unnecessary, an effect created for the tourists. She turned back to Adam, opened her mouth to say something to this effect—but the look on his face stopped her. His eyes were fixed on the tower with an intensity that reminded Géraldine of a baby: the fascinated gaze of a newborn, recognizing an object for the first time. His mouth was slightly agape, smiling, unaware, and that was the moment—Géraldine thought then, and again the next morning, after they’d spent the night together, and again a decade later, after they’d divorced—when she’d fallen in love with him.

“You’ve never seen it light up before?” she asked.

“I’ve seen it,” said Adam. “But it’s so incredible, every time. It never gets old, you know?”

Géraldine did not know. She wanted to see France the way Adam saw it. She wanted him to see her the way he saw France. For a few years, he would.

Géraldine is enjoying Officer Lucas Rivoire’s company despite the circumstances. He sits at her kitchen table, pen poised. His face lights up each time she speaks. The possibility of insight, that any moment Géraldine might reveal exactly what he’s hoping for. It’s been a long time since anyone expressed such interest in her.

“It was only the one time,” she says, “Alena spending the night here.” She does not mention that Lou showed up two days later.

“So you thought Alena seemed isolated,” Rivoire says, jotting something down, “and you decided to offer her a weekend away from her family?”

“It wasn’t as planned as that.” It was impulsive, in fact, but the police don’t need to know this. Géraldine has thought about that morning many times since, has rewritten it to highlight how little choice she had inviting Alena over. It’s not like she enjoys running into her students in public. It happens frequently enough, the price of living in a small suburb, but usually, Géraldine turns and walks in the other direction if she spots any of them. She remembers the shock of running into her teachers as a child, buying their baguettes at the boulangerie, or worse, some kind of dessert. The disturbing realization that teachers, those god-like authorities, did something so normal and base as eat cake.

But when Géraldine ran into Alena at the Monoprix two weekends ago, she didn’t mind. She was even pleased. Alena was the most solitary of her students. She’d been a late arrival, joining the class a few weeks into the school year, appearing as silently and stealthily as if she’d always been there, like a glowering potted plant in the back corner of the room. She never raised her hand, never engaged with the other girls. Normally, Géraldine prides herself on her ability to draw hesitant students out of their shells. She knows how to dig into each individual, how to distinguish the ones she should push or praise, who she can tease without scaring them back to their home countries. Alena—withdrawn, morose Alena—was Géraldine’s challenge that fall. It was her annual game: how could Géraldine crack into her most reticent students, make them love her before they realized what she was doing? She made Alena sit in the front row. She heckled her for two weeks, praised her copiously for three. She gave her low notes on a paper and told her she could do better. Nothing worked. Alena remained the outcast of the class, perpetually hidden behind that sheet of dark hair.

The day before Géraldine ran into Alena, Géraldine’s boss—Jean-Claude, sixty-three years old, on the verge...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Prologue
• Before
• Lou
• Charlotte
• April 1
• Géraldine
• Before
• Holly
• Nathalie
• April 1
• Géraldine
• After
• Alena
• Now
• Lou
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher