Library
Search
Home / Romance / Not The Man She Wanted / Chapter 189: Fabiola's Final Years

Share

Chapter 189: Fabiola's Final Years

Author: Sylvia
last update publish date: 2026-10-22 17:53:50

Every December, a battered suitcase appeared in our front hall, and the whole house changed its weather.

Fabiola was seventy eight now. His hair had gone fully white, and his shoulders had curved inward like a man leaning into a long wind. He walked with a cane he refused to call a cane. He called it a "survey stick." The airport staff in Atlanta knew him by name. A woman at the baggage counter once hugged him and he stood there stiff and astonished, then patted her back twice.

He split his yea
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Previous Chapter Next Chapter
Locked Chapter

Latest chapter

  • Not The Man She Wanted   Chapter 200: The Ending That Was Not The Beginning

    Macbeth's POVMy mother died on a Sunday morning, and for once in her life she did not have to be brave alone.I am the one telling this part. She would have wanted it that way. She always said the last page belongs to whoever is still holding the book.It was early spring. The window of her small bedroom stood open a hand's width, and the air that came through smelled of wet grass and dogwood. She lay propped against two pillows in her old gray cardigan, thin as paper, her hair white and loose on the pillow. The quilt was pulled up to her chest. The light was soft.She had told us the week before that she was ready. Not sad. Ready, the way you are ready for a long trip when the bags are packed.I sat on her left and held her hand. Joseph sat on her right and held the other. He had flown in the night before, still smelling of mountain air. His long fingers wrapped around hers, my grandfather's hands holding my mother's.Nobody spoke.She turned her head slowly toward me. Her eyes were

  • Not The Man She Wanted   Chapter 199: The Last Letter

    The woman I used to be sat in a cold office at twenty six, and I could still feel the pen shaking in her hand.It came to me on an ordinary Thursday in the small white cottage. I was eighty four. Rain tapped the porch roof, and the dogwood outside the window had dropped the last of its petals onto the wet grass. My tea steamed beside the lamp. I had not planned to remember. The memory simply walked in and sat down, the way old friends do.A gray room. A long table. Fluorescent lights humming like insects.A man slid a contract across the wood and told me where to sign. I remember the smell of carpet glue and burnt coffee. I remember my stomach turning over like a stone in a river. I remember thinking, I hate this room. I hate this chair. I hate that my hands are doing this while the rest of me stands far away and screams.I signed anyway.My name came out small and crooked. The pen skipped on the last letter. Nobody in that room looked at me. Nobody said, you do not have to. Nobody sa

  • Not The Man She Wanted   Chapter 198: A Quiet Day

    The dogwoods opened on a Saturday, and I did not do one single thing about it.I sat on my porch in the blue chair with a cup of tea warming my hands. It was April. I was eighty three. The air smelled of cut grass and wet petals, and the light came low and gold through the branches, laying small bright coins across the floorboards. A breeze lifted the white blossoms and let them drift down onto the lawn like slow snow.I had nowhere to be. I had earned that, too.The street was quiet. A neighbor mowed a lawn two doors away. A mockingbird practiced three different songs in the tree. My knees ached, my hands were thin as paper, and I could hear my own heart in the stillness, slow and steady, a clock that had decided to take its time.Then a door banged, and a small shape tore across the grass.Macbeth's youngest. Four years old. Hair flying, shirt untucked, feet bare and wet from the morning dew. She ran the way my mother once told me a child should run, with her whole body, no care at

  • Not The Man She Wanted   Chapter 197: The Sale Of The Lake House

    The stairs beat me on a Wednesday, and I sat down on the fourth step and laughed so I would not cry.I was eighty one. I had a laundry basket in my arms and a knee that had stopped taking orders. The house stood quiet around me, too tall and too wide. Light fell through the hall window in a long gold bar. Somewhere upstairs a floorboard ticked, though nobody was home. I sat there with the basket in my lap and looked up the staircase I had climbed ten thousand times.It was not the stairs. It was everything the stairs stood for.Four bedrooms. A real kitchen. A dock long enough for two boats, and I had not rowed in six years. The garden my mother planted needed hands I no longer had. Every room held someone who was gone, and I walked through them each morning like a night watchman, checking that the ghosts were comfortable.I called Macbeth that night."Mama," she said. "What is wrong?""Nothing is wrong. I have decided something."I told her I was giving her the house. Not selling it.

  • Not The Man She Wanted   Chapter 196: A Visit From Josh's Daughter

    The young woman on my porch had his eyes, and I forgot how to breathe.It was a bright April morning. Wind came off the lake, smelling of cut grass and wet earth. I opened the door in my cardigan with a cup of tea in my hand, and there she stood. Tall, dark haired, with a leather satchel on her shoulder and a recorder in her fist."Mrs. Alejandro?" she said. "I am Nora Whitfield. We spoke on the phone."She had his face. Not exactly. A softer line to the jaw. But the eyes crinkled at the corners before she even smiled. The way a man's had in tall grass, in a photograph I had framed on my desk.My tea trembled. I set it down on the railing."Come in," I said. "Please."She followed me into the kitchen. She was a journalist, thirty two, writing a long piece about the women at the center of the late century corporate scandals. She said it quickly, practiced. I gave her tea and sat across from her. Spring light lay across the table in pale stripes."I want to start with something personal

  • Not The Man She Wanted   Chapter 195: The Long Letter

    I turned seventy five on a Tuesday, and the first thing I did was reach for a pen.Gray light lay across the study. Rain tapped the window, and the lake beyond it had gone the color of pewter. I sat at the small desk by the glass with a stack of cream paper in front of me. My hands were thin now. The knuckles had thickened, and the two gold bands hung loose on my finger, held on with a bit of white thread, the way I had once taped Harry's.On the wall behind me hung every frame. A letter in blue ink. A certificate for mud. A mineral with my father's name. A photograph of a man laughing in tall grass.Nobody had come to the house yet. The party was at six. I had a whole quiet morning, and I knew what I wanted to do with it.I wrote the date at the top.To my grandchildren. To Megan, to Henry, and to anyone who arrives after. Open this when I am gone. Not before. I will know if you cheat.I laughed, and my eyes stung, and I kept going.I wrote for six hours.I told them everything. Not

  • Not The Man She Wanted   chapter 8 Mother's Lie

    I got into the passenger seat because I did not have the strength to argue. Fabiola slid behind the wheel of my own car as if it had always belonged to him, and the way he adjusted the mirror without asking told me everything I needed to know about the next three years of my life. He pulled out of

  • Not The Man She Wanted   chapter 5 The Marriage Clause

    "I had to rush in immediately when I got your call. Where's my mother? What happened to her?” Jenny questioned the cop after arriving at the station. "Calm down, Miss Jenny. You're getting yourself worked up,” One of the cops said, attempting to console her. "Don't you dare tell me to be calm?

  • Not The Man She Wanted   chapter 4 The Twist

    "Hey, watch your steps. Have you suddenly gone blind?” Fabiola yelled at Jenny for hitting him accidentally after she dashed out of Alvin's office angrily. "Speak of the ruthless devil. Bullshit,” Jenny hissed angrily and motioned for her duty post before Fabiola could counter her words. "What

  • Not The Man She Wanted   chapter 3 The Deal

    “Mom, what's happening? Why is no one talking to me?” At that moment, she was gradually losing it. Josh wasn't ready to disclose either. The situation was way beyond him. He remained mute, planning how to select his words carefully so as not to get Jenny more upset."It's fine. I'll do the talkin

More Chapters

You May Also Like

Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status