Novels by Amiable

Aurelia didn’t react immediately but her expression stayed fixed for a second too long, as if her mind had briefly gone elsewhere.Liota noticed almost instantly. She had been speaking, but stopped mid-sentence when she saw her sister’s attention drifting away.“Aurelia?”There was no response.Liota followed her gaze down and realized Aurelia was staring at the necklace on her chest. A small smile appeared on Liota’s face as she instinctively held it lightly between her fingers.“Oh,” she said softly, almost proudly. “You’re looking at this.”Aurelia blinked and finally seemed to return to the present. Liota continued before she could speak.“It’s custom made.”She lifted it slightly. “For me and my fiancé.”She paused then looked at her sister. “And his name is Rhys.”That was when Aurelia’s expression shifted and she looked up properly now.“Oh really,” she said, her voice controlled.Her face had gone noticeably dull, though she tried to mask it. She blinked a few times in quick s

Aurelia wasn't expecting Dr.Soren at her house since he hadn't told her he was coming. The man laughed and caught Milo easily."Hey, buddy."Milo wrapped his arms around his neck."You came!""Yes. I did."Aurelia stopped a few steps away and stared at the familiar face."Soren."The man smiled at her."Hello, Aurelia."Dr. Soren had barely changed over the years. He was still tall, still calm and still had the same reassuring smile that had helped her survive one of the darkest periods of her life."What are you doing here?" she asked.Soren adjusted Milo in his arms."Is that any way to welcome a guest?"Aurelia rolled her eyes and stepped aside."Come in."The moment Soren entered, Milo immediately began dragging him toward the living room."Look what I built!""What is it?""A dinosaur city."Soren looked at the pile of toys."Damn! It looks dangerous."Milo nodded seriously."Yes."Aurelia couldn't help laughing. For a while, the apartment felt lighter and a few minutes later, th

"Milo Quinn!"A burst of laughter echoed through the apartment. Aurelia looked up from her laptop just in time to see a small figure race past the living room."Milo!"The little boy giggled and disappeared behind the couch.Aurelia sighed."You know I can still see you, right?"Milo didn't say anything at first. Then his tiny head slowly popped up."No, you can't."Aurelia raised an eyebrow."Oh really?"Milo immediately ducked back down. A second later, he peeked out again and this time he was holding a toy dinosaur.The sight almost made Aurelia laugh but she wasn't about to let him think she wasn't serious right now. She still had work to finish."Come here."Milo hesitated, then shook his head."No.""What?"Milo folded his hand with a slight frown."I don't want to clean up my toys."Aurelia blinked."So you already know?"Milo nodded once with his eyebrow still furrowed. Aurelia shook her head, closed her laptop and stood up. The moment she did, Milo gasped dramatically and ran

Rhys stood in the kitchen humming Aurelia's favorite song, All of Me by John Legend while he stirred a pot on the stove.The smell of food filled their small apartment. He had taken the day off work just because Aurelia had mentioned a particular dish she was craving the night before. For the past week, she had been craving everything in sight.Rhys shook his head with a smile and tasted the sauce."Hmmm...nice but not quite there yet."Just as he was about to add more seasoning, two arms wrapped around his waist from behind and his smile widened instantly."Sweetheart?"Aurelia rested her cheek against his back and inhaled deeply."Yes baby. That smells amazing."Rhys chuckled and lowered the stove heat before turning around to face her."Didn't I tell you to stay in bed?" Rhys asked, caressing her face that was quite swollen from pregnancy.Aurelia pouted. "Yes but I missed you already.""Really?"Aurelia nodded in quick succession making a cute face at him and Rhys couldn't help bu

Five Years After Release August The summer Isabella turned nineteen, she came home for a week between her first and second years of law school and slept until ten every morning, which told me more about how hard she had been working than anything she said directly.She had her father's ability to appear composed regardless of what was happening underneath, and she had spent a year exercising that ability in rooms full of people who were smarter and better prepared than she had expected them to be, and she had not flinched and she had not failed and she had not called me any of the three times she had told herself she wouldn't call me before she called me. I had answered every time without mentioning that she had said she wouldn't.Some things you learn to hold without saying.She slept until ten and ate everything in the kitchen and sat on the back porch in the afternoons reading things that were not case law, which I took as a sign of genuine recovery. On the third day of her visit

Marissa POV Four Years After Release (August) Von found me in my office at noon, which was later than he usually appeared on the days he worked from home."You've been in here all morning," he said from the doorway."I was reading the manuscript.""The finished one?""Yes."He came in and sat in the chair across from my desk, the one that Isabella used to take when we had our serious conversations in this room, the one that Sofia occasionally climbed into sideways when she wanted to think out loud at me. It was a good chair for conversations. It had absorbed a great deal over the years."How does it feel? Reading the finished version?"I thought about how to answer that honestly. "Like something that has been in motion for a very long time coming to rest," I said. "Not stopping. Coming to rest. There's a difference."He nodded slowly. "What do you want to do with it?""I don't know yet. Dr. Walsh says to let it rest before I decide.""She's usually right.""Yes." I looked at the clos

Marissa POV Four Years After Release (August) Four years.I had been counting without meaning to not the way I had counted in the cell, with the desperation of someone measuring the distance between themselves and something they weren't sure they would reach, but the way you count something you want to remember. The way you mark time not because it is passing but because it matters that it passed.Four years since the night I came home through the back door of our house in the dark, Von's arms around me, three children asleep upstairs who would wake in the morning to find their mother returned from the dead.Four years of waking up in my own bed. Four years of breakfast before school and dinner after. Four years of ordinary Tuesday evenings and difficult conversations and the slow, nonlinear, permanent work of healing. Four years of a life that was mine again, not the same life, not the life I would have had if none of it had happened, but mine. Genuinely, completely, irreversibly mi

Marissa POV Three Years, Ten Months After Release (June) We drove to Cambridge in a convoy of two cars, because the boxes required it and unloaded everything into the dormitory room that would be Isabella's home for the next year. Her roommate arrived while we were still arranging furniture, a girl from Georgia with a quick smile and an immediately obvious capacity for friendliness that seemed to delight and slightly overwhelm Isabella in equal measure.Sofia approved of her immediately and told her so directly.Mateo carried the heaviest boxes without being asked and arranged them where Isabella pointed with the cheerful compliance of someone who understood that this was his contribution and was glad to make it.Von assembled the shelving unit with the focused silence of a man who had learned long ago that furniture assembly was his primary love language.I made the bed with the sheets Isabella had chosen plain white, because she had always found patterns distracting and smoothed th

Marissa POV Three Years, Ten Months After Release (June) The morning Isabella left for Harvard, I woke up at five.Not because of anxiety or not only because of anxiety. More because I had been moving toward this morning for months in the way you move toward something you have been simultaneously anticipating and dreading, and when it finally arrived my body apparently decided that sleep was no longer a reasonable use of the time available.I lay in the dark for a while listening to the house. Von breathing beside me. The early summer birds outside the window, beginning their rehearsal. The particular quality of silence that comes from a house in which everyone is still asleep but the day is already pressing against the edges of things, insisting on being begun.At five thirty I gave up and went downstairs.I made coffee and sat at the kitchen table in the early light and tried to locate what I was actually feeling underneath the obvious things the pride, the love, the logistical anx

Marissa POV Three Years, Seven Months After Release (March) That evening I told Von about the letter. Not what was in it that was between me and a dead woman and the empty space where she used to be but that I had written it. That Dr. Walsh had suggested it and I had resisted for six weeks and then done it, and that it had helped in exactly the way she said it would.He listened without interrupting, which was one of the things he was best at."Good," he said when I finished. Not elaborating, not asking questions, not offering perspective he hadn't been invited to offer. Just: good. The word as acknowledgment and endorsement and quiet support all at once."I want to do something else," I said. "For Victoria. Something tangible. I've been thinking about a scholarship not in her name publicly, because her name is complicated and would invite the wrong kind of attention. But something funded in her memory, for women who are trying to exit situations like the one she was in. Legal aid, r