InClean, a Girl Is Dead and Secrets Will Come Out: Read an Excerpt Here (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Lorena Palavecino; Riverhead Books

Zerán’s latest follows Estela, a country girl who wants to make enough money to care for her mother back home. For seven years, she cooked, cleaned and raised the family’s daughter. And — as domestic help so often does — she has also “kept their secrets, witnessed their fights and frictions, heard the rats scrabbling in the ceiling, saw the looks the señor gave the señora, knew about the poison in the cabinet, the gun, the daughter’s rebellion as she grew up, the mother’s coldness [and] the father’s distance,” as the book’s synopsis reads.

So when tragedy hits and Estela finally breaks her silence, the dominos begin to fall.

Read an exclusive excerpt from the “gripping, incisive exploration of power, domesticity and betrayal,” below.

Riverhead Books

Housemaid wanted, presentable, full-time.

They gave a telephone number, which quickly became an address, and it was to that address that I set off, dressed in a white blouse and this very black skirt that I’m wearing right now.

They met me at the door, the pair of them. I’m talking about the señor and señora, the houseowners, the employers, the relatives of the deceased. You’ll come up with your own name for them, I’m sure. She opened the door, pregnant, and as she went to shake my hand she looked me up and down, taking in my hair, my clothes, my still-white tennis shoes. A thorough inspection, as if that would reveal to her some important detail about me. He, on the other hand, didn’t so much as look at me. He was texting on his phone and, without even glancing up, just pointed at the kitchen door.

I couldn’t reproduce their questions for me word-for-word, but I do remember one quite curious detail. He was clean-shaven and there was a wisp of bright shaving foam just below his right sideburn.

Hello? What is it? The maid can’t use the word ‘wisp’?

I thought I heard laughter, and not the friendly kind, on the other side of this wall.

As I was saying, that mark on his skin unsettled me. It was like a tiny piece of skin had been torn from his face, but underneath, instead of flesh and blood, was something white, artificial. The señora noticed that I couldn’t stop staring at him, and when at last she spotted the foam, she licked her thumb and wiped it away with her spit.

You’ll be wondering: how is any of this relevant? It isn’t, that’s the answer, apart from that I clearly recall his reaction, the way he removed his wife’s hand, reproaching her for that display of intimacy in front of a perfect stranger. A few weeks later, I was making the master bed when the señor suddenly appeared out of the bathroom. I thought he’d already left for work, but there he was standing stark naked in front of me. He didn’t jump, he wasn’t even flustered. Without batting an eyelid he went to get a pair of underpants, returned to the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Now you explain to me what happened between our first meeting and that one.

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They needed someone to start as soon as possible.

The señor said:

Ideally on Monday.

The señora:

Ideally today.

Stuck to the fridge was a piece of paper listing all the jobs I’d be expected to carry out. This way they wouldn’t have to ask their eventual maid outright if she could read, if she was capable of writing the shopping list or taking down phone messages. I went over, read the list, took down the piece of paper and put it in my pocket. Neat, assertive, a sufficiently educated maid.

I can start on Monday, I said.

They accepted right away, without even requesting references. I later learned that everything happened against the clock in that house, although what the great hurry was I never understood. Haste makes waste. That’s what my mama used to say whenever I flew out of the house late for school and cut across the vegetable garden. You’ll never beat time at its own game, she’d warn me. That race is fixed from the day we’re born. But I’ve been sidetracked … I was telling you about how there were never enough hours in that family’s day, and how few days were left before the birth of their first daughter.

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I know what you’re going to ask me, and the answer is no. I didn’t have any experience with children, and I didn’t lie to them about it. My mama had told me on the phone: Don’t lie to them, Lita. You never lie on the first day. So I told them, quite openly:

I don’t have any children. I don’t have any nieces or nephews. I’ve never changed a diaper.

But they’d made their decision. The señora had liked my white blouse, my long, neat plait, my clean, straight teeth and the fact that at no point had I dared to hold her gaze.

As soon as the questions were over, they showed me the rest of the house:

This is the broom cupboard, Estela.

The rubber gloves, the mop.

Here’s the first aid kit.

Sponges, bleach, detergent, fresh linen.

Here’s the ironing board, the laundry basket.

The soap, the washing machine, the sewing basket, the tools.

Nothing should be left to go moldy, Estela.

Don’t let any food go out of date.

Deep clean on Mondays.

Water the garden in the evening.

And never, under any circumstance, open the door to anyone.

I don’t remember much else from that day apart from one thought, which has stayed with me. As I made my way down the hallway, running my eyes over the bathrooms, looking into each of the rooms, as I took in the living room, the dining room, the outdoor terrace and the swimming pool, I thought, very clearly: this is a real house, with nails hammered into the walls and picture frames hanging from those nails. And that thought, I don’t know why, brought on a pain between my eyes.

Like a flame burning me in this space right here.

source: people.com