Novels by Fanny S

Weston━━❖━━I adjourned the board, and nobody had the nerve to object.I had a plan for that room. It had been a reasonable plan for about forty minutes. I had meant to let the board ease her off the launch, politely and fast, so she would be home by noon with her feet up and nobody asking anything of her. I couldn't order it myself. She would have refused me to my face and asked why, and I had no answer I could give her. After that I had meant to put the access log in Ashford's hands, have a word with Hale, and have the board's belief that she had done it corrected, in plain language, by evening.The card I had not seen coming.They went out in twos, Vasquez first with his chin up, like a man leaving a restaurant he intended to review. The other director went last and glanced back at the small plastic rectangle on the mahogany as if it might bite.Hale remained. Hale sweats when other people fight, and he had gone the color of a boiled egg."I rang your grandfather when the agenda c

|•Marin• |He hadn't said a word.I kept returning to that in the back seat of my car, with the city sliding past the window and my phone face down on my knee. A four-year-old had raised a finger and made a small, frightened sound, and nobody in that ballroom had needed him to say anything more. They had finished the sentence for him.His finger. That was one picture. It came whenever I closed my eyes.Weston getting up off his knee with the boy in his arms and walking to the door with Serafina at his side, and not once turning his head. That was the second.Alfred's hand on my elbow, and his voice, tired and gentle. 'Go home, Marin. I will see to this.' Guests moving apart for me as I left, like water around a stone, and the photographers on the lawn already lifting their cameras.Foster had met me at the door. Mr. Vane had taken the boy to the hospital to be examined, Mrs. Vane, and had not said when he would be home. He had not come home. He had not called, or sent a line, or a mes

The amber strips came on along the baseboards almost as soon as I had understood the dark, a dim light the color of weak tea, and the corridor came back in pieces. I turned and ran.The sitter was in the morning room doorway with a folded blanket in her arms, her eyes fixed on the couch. The cushion still carried a dent where he had sat. The rabbit was gone."I only went for a blanket," she said. "I was two minutes, Mrs. Vane. He was asleep, he was—"“Tell Mr. Vane's men. The east wing, the terrace, every stair.” My voice came out strained. “Go.”She ran. Behind me the lounge door opened on a footman's torch, and Alfred came out leaning on his cane."Marin. That was a child's name.""Eli's gone from the morning room. I put him on the couch a minute ago."He glanced at the empty couch and back at me, and he asked no second question. "Go to Weston," he said. "I'm behind you."The east door let me out beside the stage, and the ballroom had been rebuilt in the dark out of small lights. Am

"Forgive me," he said. "I've lost the end of the sentence."The tables laughed, the tension easing around them, and he went on with the thanks.He had thanked me for building my own exit, in front of every guest. Weston Vane had never lost the end of a sentence in his life. He had lost this one with his eyes on me, and I had no idea why.Serafina slipped back into her chair while the laughter was still going.The fish came. Pike introduced the recipient of the scholarship, a girl of nineteen in a borrowed dress, and she took the podium with both hands."My father has worked the Vane docks all my life," she said. "He told me the company is the only thing that ever remembered his name. I'd like to say thank you for remembering mine."It was the only speech of the night that had been written to be true. The applause felt warmer than anyone in the family had been shown, and Damien, at a table by the east wall, clapped with his eyes on me.Cedric rose while the applause was still going, be

|•Marin• | Weston's hand did not leave my back. It had never done that. At the top of the front steps, with the whole drive lit below us and the photographers shouting from behind a rope, it arrived for the flashes as it always did. The press sat on the lawn beyond the rope, held back by Weston's men in dark coats, who passed for guests until you counted them. "Mr. and Mrs. Vane! Together!" they shouted. I knew that hand. It arrived, it posed, it left. I had measured a whole marriage by the seconds it lingered. Tonight it pressed in and kept pressing after the flashes ended. "Are you all right?" His eyes were on the drive. In his other hand the phone went dark and lit again. "It's a receiving line, Weston. I'm standing in one." "Tell me if it stops being one." He had never said that to me with a lens on us. I put it down to nerves and kept smiling, and my back leaned into his palm without asking me, and I straightened it. The first cars brought the people who arrive early so

Weston━━❖━━The Tokyo consortium had flown in for the signing. Eleven people sat in the best chairs the company owned, Hale at my right, and I was on the third page of the term sheet when the phone moved against my ribs.Two short pulses and a held one.Their heads turned toward me, eleven at once. Nobody said a word.I took the phone out and read the screen. I read it again.Then I put it face down on the term sheet."Excuse me," I said.I was on my feet and nobody had answered. Behind me, the Tokyo side said something low to Hale, in the tone of people who've been handed a decision with nobody to make it. I pulled the door shut.Hale caught me at the elevators. He had the term sheet in his hand, which meant he'd taken it off the table on his way out."Mr. Vane, the signing is—""Move it.""To when?""I don't care when." My thumb had hit the call button twice. "Tell them what you like. If one of them asks where I went, you don't know.""Sir—""You don't know, Marcus."The private el

The engines went quiet at six. The hull met the pier. The crew moved above us. River light came through the porthole, grey and silver, crossing the ceiling in slow panels. She was on her side facing me. Her hair across the pillow. Her mouth softly parted in the way that belonged only to sleep. I

Edward’s POV The hull rose and settled with the slow pull of the river. I lay in the dark with my jacket on the floor and my shoes beside it and listened to the boat. The timber. The joins. The engine below running its low faithful count. The porthole showed clouds. The moon behind it traced the

"I fell off a bicycle when I was seven," I said. "Broke my arm. The left one." "You're afraid of the dark," he said. "You sleep with the curtain open so the street light comes in. You never told me directly but I worked it out in the third month." I set down my wine. "You remember that." "I remem

Alicia's POV The dress arrived at four. I found the box on Elena's table. Black paper, no ribbon, his handwriting stark on the card: The water. Inside, folded in tissue, was the black silk from the wardrobe at the estate. The one I had left hanging there. I showered. I pinned my hair up. At seve

Edward's POV The grey light filled the room. Alicia's leg lay across mine, heavy with sleep. Her hair spread on my shoulder, across the pillow. Her palm rested on my chest, rising and falling with my breath. The arm beneath her had gone numb hours ago. I flexed my fingers until the pins and needl

Alicia's POV He was on the floor. I looked at him until the silence found its shape. He looked back. The full version of him. Just Edward on the floor, his eyes on mine, waiting without arranging what he was waiting for. "We never chose each other," he said. "Let me choose you." "Then start,"