Library
Search
Home / Romance / THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out / Chapter Four: "Thursday"

Share

Chapter Four: "Thursday"

Author: NayJayK
last update publish date: 2026-04-29 19:39:36

ZARA

Thursday, 3:51pm

She read the addendum twice Wednesday night then put it under the Mount Sinai envelope and didn't touch either of them again.

Not because it was devastating. Because it wasn't and that was the problem.

Isla had handed her nothing. And spent twenty-two minutes making it feel like everything.

She understood what Isla had meant. Not the reason. The timing.

Zara took the train Thursday. Got off two stops early and walked the rest October cold, hands in her pockets, auburn hair pulled back tight the way she did when she needed to feel contained. She passed the restaurant without looking at it. Kept walking.

She buzzed up at 3:58.

Marguerite's voice on the intercom warm, immediate, already expecting her.

The apartment smelled the same. Earl Grey and shortbread and something underneath both that Zara couldn't name. She stood in the doorway and felt it settle around her like something familiar. Which made no sense. She'd been here once.

Marguerite took her coat. Held both her hands for a moment not greeting. Something more deliberate.

"You look tired," she said.

"I'm fine."

"I know you are." She turned toward the kitchen. "That's not what I said."

Zara followed.

Tea already made. Shortbread on a plate. A small vase of white flowers on the windowsill that hadn't been there Monday. Marguerite moved around the kitchen with the efficiency of someone who had done everything in this room ten thousand times and stopped needing to think about it.

"Sit," she said.

Zara sat.

"He'll be here shortly. He was held up. He's always held up and always arrives before he said he would." Marguerite poured without looking up. "Controlled."

"I was going to say efficient," Zara said.

"I know." She set a cup down in front of her. "There's a difference."

Zara picked up the cup. Looked at the white flowers.

"He told me you're an actress," Marguerite said.

"Trying to be."

"What's the difference between an actress trying to be and an actress?"

"A part."

Marguerite smiled not the full one. The considering one. "And while you're waiting?"

"Coffee shop. Dog walking. Whatever comes through."

"And this." Marguerite's eyes stayed on her cup. Not an accusation. Not a question. Just and this.

Zara's hands stayed still. "And this," she said.

The kitchen held the quiet between them. Outside the window October light went gold over the rooftops. Zara thought about Isla's final line as she'd stood to leave the restaurant.

Thursday matters more than you think.

She heard the front door.

CALLUM

Thursday, 4:06pm

He heard them before he reached the kitchen.

Not words the particular quality of a silence between two people comfortable enough not to fill it. He stood in the hallway for three seconds.

He went in.

Zara looked up when he entered. Something in her face shifted small, contained, gone in under a second. He wouldn't have caught it two days ago.

She was different.

Not performance-different the warm smile she gave him was identical to Monday's. Same angle. Same timing. Flawless except that it was too identical. She'd calibrated it. Which meant she was thinking about what she was showing him.

Which meant something had happened between Monday and now.

It wasn't Daniel.

Which left one other variable.

He kissed his grandmother's cheek. Sat. Accepted the cup she already had waiting.

"You're four minutes early," Marguerite said.

"Traffic cleared."

"It always clears for you." Said like a personality flaw.

He looked at Zara across the table. She was looking at the white flowers on the windowsill. He'd sent them Tuesday Marguerite had mentioned once, years ago, that white flowers in October made a room feel less like it was waiting for something. He'd remembered. He didn't examine why he'd remembered it this particular week.

Zara turned from the flowers. Found him looking. Held it one second then reached for the shortbread.

He looked at his cup.

"She tells me you walk dogs," he said.

She looked up. "Four on Thursdays."

"You have a favourite."

Something real crossed her face quick, unguarded, there and gone. "Morris. Thirteen years old. Moves at exactly his own speed."

"You respect that," he said.

"Enormously."

Marguerite was watching them from a slight angle the look she'd been giving him since he was nine. The one that said: I know exactly what you're not saying.

He picked up his cup. Said nothing.

ZARA

Thursday, 4:31pm

The conversation moved Marguerite asked, Callum answered in the short complete sentences she was starting to recognise as his natural rhythm, and Zara filled the spaces in ways that felt almost easy.

Almost.

She was watching him differently now. Not for what Isla had said but for the places where his controlled version pressed against something underneath.

She found one.

Marguerite mentioned a board meeting and something crossed his face a tightening, fast before he answered smoothly. Nothing wrong in the answer. But the tightening had been real.

He was managing something beyond the contract. Beyond this room.

She filed it. Said nothing.

"I want to ask you something," Marguerite said.

The kitchen shifted. Zara felt it the quality of the air changing the way it does when something real is about to be said.

She looked at the old woman.

Marguerite's blue eyes were steady. Unhurried. The eyes of someone who had decided to stop waiting for the right moment and simply make one.

"I've been watching you both for an hour," she said. "And I want an honest answer. Not kind. Not careful." She looked at Zara. Then Callum. Then back. "Are you real? The two of you. Is any of this real."

The kitchen went very still.

Zara felt the question land in her chest and spread outward in rings she couldn't stop.

She didn't look at Callum.

She looked at Marguerite at seventy-nine years behind those eyes, at the woman who had ordered white flowers for October and made shortbread when things mattered and held Zara's hands in a doorway like she already knew the answer and was asking anyway.

She opened her mouth.

CALLUM

Thursday, 4:33pm

He had prepared for many versions of this conversation.

Are you real was not one of them.

He looked at Zara.

She was looking at Marguerite. Hands around her cup. Auburn hair catching the late light from the window. Something moving behind her jade eyes not the calibrated version from when he'd walked in. Something underneath that. Something that looked less like an actress finding her line and more like a woman finding something she hadn't expected to find.

He should speak. Redirect. Give Marguerite something warm and controlled that satisfied without revealing.

He said nothing.

He wanted to hear what Zara said first.

That was the thing he hadn't prepared for. Not the question. That.

Zara took a breath.

"Some of it," she said quietly. "Some of it is very real."

The kitchen held the words.

Marguerite looked at her for a long moment. Then at Callum the look that said: I know exactly what you're not saying and we will discuss it later.

She picked up her cup.

"Good," she said. "That's enough for now."

The conversation moved on. He listened and said nothing and thought about some of it is very real and what she'd meant and whether she knew what she'd given away.

At five-fifteen Marguerite stood to clear the cups. Waved him off. Sat back down. Which meant stay. With Zara. Which was exactly what she'd planned.

He sat back down.

Zara was looking at the white flowers.

"She ordered those Tuesday," he said. "The flowers."

She looked at him. "How do you know?"

"I sent them."

Something shifted in her face real, unguarded, there and gone. She looked back at the flowers. Said nothing.

From the kitchen Marguerite moved unhurried. Giving him space she'd already decided he needed.

He looked at Zara.

She turned.

That half-second again something unguarded in her jade eyes before composure arrived. Different from this morning's calibration. Different from Monday's performance.

He didn't know what to call it yet.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

He didn't check it.

Then again. And again. Three times Daniel's pattern for things that couldn't wait.

He took it out. Read the first line of the first message.

Set it face-down on the table.

Looked at Zara.

She was watching him now jade eyes reading his face the way he'd been reading hers all afternoon. Precise. Patient.

"Everything alright?" she said.

"Fine," he said.

Smooth. Controlled. Nothing attached to it.

But his hand on the phone pressed flat against the table slightly harder than necessary.

And Zara looked at his hand.

Then his face.

Said nothing.

Which told him she'd seen it.

Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Latest chapter

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Twenty-Seven: "Four Hours"

    ZARATuesday, 11:18amMarcus Webb was at a standing desk near the window when they found him. Headphones around his neck. A coffee going cold beside his laptop.He saw them coming from across the room.He didn't try to leave.Zara pulled a chair from the nearest empty desk and sat across from him. Callum stayed standing slightly behind her.You know who we are?Yes.We're not here about what you processed. We know you processed scheduling overrides using credentials that weren't yours to initiate. We know you didn't know what they were for. We know you're a conduit not a source.Marcus looked at his laptop screen. His coffee cup. His hands on the desk.We need one thing. The person who gave you the instructions directly. Not through the system. The person who spoke to you.A pause.Not a short one.If I give you a name, what happens to me?We're going to the regulator today, Callum said. Your name is already in the access logs. How it reads depends on what you do in the next four hour

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Twenty-Six: "Contingency Two"

    ZARATuesday, 10:31amHer mother called at 10:31.Not from the neighbour's number. From her own phone. Which meant she'd gone back to the house.Zara answered before the second ring.Mum. Why are you on your own phone.Silence for a moment.Someone left something, her mother said. At the house. This morning. Before I got here. On the doorstep.Zara stood up from the hotel lobby chair.What is it, she said.An envelope, her mother said. My name on the front. No stamp. No return address.Zara looked at the window. Lexington Avenue going about its Tuesday.Don't open it, she said.I already opened it, her mother said.Zara closed her eyes for one second.What's inside, she said.A document, her mother said. And a note. The note says. She stopped. It says if I don't sign the document and return it to an address in New Jersey by five o'clock today they'll release everything. All of it. Your name. My name. The custodial arrangement. Everything connected to your father.Zara crossed the lobb

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Twenty-Five: "Contingency"

    CALLUMTuesday, 9:14amGeoffrey Marsh had an office on the thirty-eighth floor of a building in the Financial District that he had occupied for eleven years.Callum had been in that office many times. Quarterly meetings. Drinks after difficult quarters. Conversations that started professional and ended personal because thirty years of knowing someone does that eventually.He knocked once. Opened the door without waiting.Geoffrey was at his desk but not working.The document in front of him was closed. His hands were folded on top of it. On the corner of the desk a glass of whisky, barely touched, at nine in the morning. His lawyer's business card was beside the phone with a number written on it in fresh ink.He didn't look up immediately.When he did there was nothing in his face that resembled surprise.Sit down, he said.Callum sat.You found the document, Geoffrey said.Yes.Richard brought it.Yes.Geoffrey nodded once.How much does she know, he said.Everything.He absorbed tha

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Twenty-Four: "The Name"

    ZARAMonday, 11:47pmSix blocks. Neither of them said anything.Richard was in a car somewhere behind them. His idea. Separation. Three people leaving together told a different story than two people on foot.Her bag on her shoulder. Inside it thirty pages and her mother's handwriting. Your father asked me to.She'd been keeping herself moving since the hotel room. Making herself look at the street ahead and think about where they were going and not think about page fourteen and not think about her mother packing quietly in the night and not think about a man she'd never met who had moved money through three holding companies between 2001 and 2003 and died before she was born.She was doing it successfully.Then Callum's hand found hers.Not saying anything. Just there.She let herself stop.She stood on the pavement in November with the city going past and let herself feel the weight of it for exactly thirty seconds.Her father had been in it. Not peripherally. As a principal.Her mot

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Twenty-Three: "Eleven O'Clock"

    ZARAMonday, 11:03pmThe hotel was the kind that had existed since the fifties and stopped trying to be anything other than what it was. Dark wood panelling. Carpet that had been good once. A bar off the lobby that served decent whisky and didn't ask questions.Richard Arch was already there.Third floor. A room booked under a name that wasn't his. He opened the door when they knocked and stood back without saying anything.Small room. A desk, a chair, a bed that hadn't been touched. On the desk a glass of water and a manila envelope, thick, sealed, placed there with the care of something carried a long way.Richard looked at them both.He looked older than he had at the West Village restaurant. Not in the way of a man who had aged. In the way of a man who had put something down that he'd been holding upright for a long time and the effort of it was now visible.Sit down, he said.They sat. Richard stayed standing.He looked at the envelope.I've been deciding how to begin this for tw

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Twenty-Two: "The Investigator"

    ZARAMonday, 7:48pmHer name was Helen Marsh and she worked out of a one-room office on the fourth floor of a building on West Forty-Fourth Street with no directory listing and a door with no nameplate.Callum had called ahead from a payphone two blocks away.She was waiting when they arrived.Mid-fifties. Dark hair threaded with grey. The same woman Zara had met weeks ago when she'd gone to read the Reyes addendum. She registered that without showing it.Helen looked at both of them. Then at the door behind them.Come in, she said.The office was small and deliberately so. One desk. Two chairs across from it. A window facing a brick wall. A filing cabinet with a combination lock. On the desk a legal pad, a pen, and a manila folder placed there recently enough that the edges were still crisp.They sat.Helen sat across from them.She looked at the folder. Then at Zara.I was going to call you tomorrow, she said. I've been sitting on something for nine days.Nine days, Callum said.Sin

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Sixteen: "The Archive"

    ZARAMonday, 6:47amShe was at the kitchen island at six with her sketchbook open and nothing drawn in it.The voice note had played in her head all night. Your name was already in that file. Before the placement existed. She'd lain in the dark until four and then stopped trying and got up.His off

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Thirteen: "Saturday Morning"

    ZARASaturday, 8:31amShe woke up to the smell of coffee.Not unusual anymore. What was unusual was the smell of something else underneath it. Something warm and slightly burnt and optimistic.She put on her robe. Went to the kitchen.He was at the stove.Back to her, tea towel over one shoulder, t

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Eleven: "She Wasn't Performing"

    ZARAFriday, 8:14amShe hadn't planned to think about the text.She thought about it all morning.Unknown number. Three words. No context, no follow-up, nothing. She'd turned her phone face-down and chosen the moment over the message and she didn't regret that. But the morning had arrived with it s

  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Ten: "What He Can't Cook"

    ZARAMonday, 7:18amHe couldn't boil pasta without watching it.She found him standing at the stove staring into a pot of cold water with the focused attention he usually gave legal documents."It's not going to do anything interesting," she said."It hasn't boiled yet.""It'll boil faster if you s

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