Gran used to help. She’d guide Molly and she always loved her. She raised her from a little girl when Molly’s mom left. But then Gran got sick. And no matter how hard Molly tried, she couldn’t stop the inevitable: Gran died. Then the color drained from the rooms they lived in together. And now Molly is alone.
Alone is very difficult for someone like Molly Gray. This 20-something isn’t like everyone else. She can’t quite understand smiles and frowns. She can’t read the things that people really think and feel. She doesn’t see “the signals.”
It’s not that she’s slow or unobservant. Quite the opposite, really. But to Molly, a smile and sweet words mean that someone is good—even when they’re not. Gran always told her that a book and its cover can be two completely different things. A smile and a nice word can be mean from the wrong person.
It’s all quite confusing.
There’s only one thing that Molly truly understands, only one choice that holds no mysteries, no subterfuge: cleaning. To make the dirty clean, to scrub away a stain and return a room to its perfection, that is bliss. And that is what Molly does best.
Molly is a maid at the Regency Grand, a five-star boutique hotel that prides itself on “sophisticated elegance and proper decorum for the modern age.” Never in her life did she ever think she’d hold such a lofty position. But here she is, wearing her crisp, clean uniform; filling her housekeeping trolley with soaps and disinfectants; returning sullied rooms to perfection, over and over. When she enters the Regency Grand each day, the world turns Technicolor bright!
However, just like people, there are signals and things about the Regency Grand that Molly can’t quite understand. Wealthy people doing unscrupulous things. People being hurt, coerced and used. Bad things that you’ll only spot if you know where and how to look. But even though she’s right there in the midst, Molly doesn’t know. She doesn’t see them.
Molly the Maid will have to figure out some things soon, however. For unbeknownst to her, she’s been helping the wrong people; she’s been a part of something very wrong that she thought was very right; and she’s soon to be accused … of murder.
Gran would’ve understood. Gran would have helped Molly sort everything out.
But Gran isn’t here any longer.
And someone has to clean up this mess.