"Hey," Alexander said, smiling. "They know their place in a house."

Our animals disappeared into the kitchen. Surprised, we rushed there too. I stopped at the door. The countertops and a round dining table were loaded with tons of pizzas, chicken pies, salads, cakes, grilled meat, and fruits. Amid this abundance stood a British-looking man, holding a baking sheet filled with hot rolls.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," he said. "Where have you been the whole morning? I was about to eat it all myself!"

That's how I met Mark, my husband's butler.

Tired of eating and moving, we took a trip around the house. There was a huge kitchen with a sunroom, dining room, living room, library, sauna, and a fitness room on the first floor. On the second floor were a master bedroom, my office, my husband's office, and the girls' bedrooms. Four spare bedrooms comprised the third floor. To clean all those square feet, we hired a cleaning aide, a middle-aged single mom named Claudia, against Joe's advice about how dangerous it was to have other people in the house. According to him, there was a scam running through the cleaning community. They work for you two months, and then they sue you for bodily injuries and mental abuse. They see that you have money, and why not try to nibble on your bank account a bit? My husband usually listened to Joe like the old guy was his godmother, but this time Alexander ignored his advice. The first time in my life I wasn't doing housework and working for money. The first week I felt like a queen; the next week I caught myself watching soap operas at midday and having a second lunch. When, in the third week, Mark woke me up for dinner after my lunch nap, I took it as a real wake-up call and decided to start my own charity.

It was a late spring Friday. In anticipation of a nice long family dinner and a romantic evening with my husband. I made a mountain of sandwiches and went to drop some food at Joe's office. I wheeled into the parking lot with Joe's Ford and somebody's Honda parked there. I didn't want to interfere, just to come in, place a package with lunch on a kitchenette table and leave.

"Rachel? Come here this instant."

Joe, who spent part of his life in the Navy, had a booming husky voice that could reach you and stop you in your tracks from a block away. I entered his office and greeted him and his client, a short bulky woman with brown hair.

"Listen, you nincom… Rachel, this is Deborah. Mrs. Cooper, this is Rachel, my assistant and my right hand. Can you please repeat your story to her? I found it very important that she would hear it from you."

Deborah looked at me. Her slightly bulging eyes welled with tears.

"I had just started a new job and my co-worker accused me of stealing money and jewelry from her. She was leaving for a new location, and I was taking over her position. I waited for this position for four months," she interrupted herself, sobbing. I brought her a cup of coffee, and she told us her story.

Debbie Cooper was from a family of college professors and scientists. In her parents' house, people discussed numbers and laws of physics as if it was breaking news and weather updates. She had known the multiplication table since she was five, thanks to her uncle Bruce, who made it a routine when coming for dinner to play a numbers game with her he called Number of the Day. "You can't go wrong with math," he liked to say. Being a genius mathematician himself, he worked for years on Wall Street as a market analyst, and after retirement at thirty-five, he took a tenured position at Princeton. His sister-in-law Elizabeth, Debbie's mother, herself was a professor of physics at the community college. Debbie's father used to be a financial analyst for Vanguard Group, but died a year ago of pneumonia complications.

Debbie's love of numbers made it very easy for her to get an honorary scholarship at NYU. She graduated with a Bachelor of Finances and became the youngest woman to work as an accountant for Goldman Sachs. That is where she had met her husband, Pitt Cooper, working for the IT department. Ten years older, he was a big, forceful man who always knew what to do, and to her, a calm, scholarly girl, he looked like a safe haven. They had their share of city dating, which means fast, quick and in a hurry, before their roommate or parents showed up. They got married after sixteen months of dating, got a Tribeca apartment and had two children one after another. Debbie worked part-time, trying to concentrate on her sons, especially the oldest son, Matthew, who developed ADD at the age of four.

She had wanted to move to the suburbs, she said, and after seven years, God heard her prayers: Pitt became the Head of the IT department at Gordon's Electronics in Philadelphia. They bought a spacious house in Cherry Hill and moved. Relaxed and happy in her new life, Debbie gets pregnant again, this time with a girl. Pitt, forty at the time, was completely crazy over this `little angel,' as he called her.

Away from the New York intensity, Matthew seemed to outgrow his emotional problems. Life was perfect until Debbie realized Pitt had a drinking problem. She suspected him of having affairs: he was coming home late or not at all. The final straw was his moving in with his lover. Debbie filed for divorce.

"It was five years ago," she said, drying her eyes with a tissue. "We finalized our divorce only two months ago. It was all custody issues. He didn't want to give me the kids. He just tormented me."

Their family house was sold, and she and the kids rented a house. They couldn't stay in their family house because Pitt took it as a habit to come over every night, shouting and cursing her, and blaming her for their paradise lost. Deciding to buy a house, she took a full-time accounting and case-working job in the city with NOSE: The National Office of Services to Emigrants. She started on the 4th of May, and five days later, she was accused of stealing by her co-worker, a job developer, Mrs. Gamma Woods.

"I worked in the corporate world and I know the rules, so I filed an Irregular Incident Report the next day."

She opened a manila folder and read slowly, first, then faster.

"At the beginning of our conversation, Mrs. Gamma Woods notified me that she and her husband were coming at 8 pm to pick up the boxes with teaching materials from the office we shared for four days. When I told her that she was welcome to store her books and materials as long as it was convenient for her, she said that she wanted to pick up all her stuff on Monday night because she was concerned about the safety of her materials."

"She said, `My money and jewelry were stolen from my handbag on Friday May 8. I left my bag on the desk and was in and out of the office. Around lunchtime, I put the bag in the desk drawer. I took my bag from there around 8 at night and found that my money and jewelry were stolen. I thought that you would take care of my bag and look after it. I thought,' she said, `that you would constantly be present in the office, making your phone calls, and would watch my handbag. Now, $110 and my jewelry has been stolen from my handbag. I have been working here for twenty years and it has never happened before.'"

Joe listened, looking at Deborah with a funny expression on his face. His eyes were laughing.

"Did you see this damn handbag?" he asked, when Deborah stopped reading and reached for water.

"I did not see Mrs. Woods' handbag among her other belongings and teaching materials," she said firmly, as if he were a judge.

"Did she ask you to take care of her possessions?"

"She did not ask me to watch her bag. Why did she assume that her new co-worker was supposed to watch her bag?"