LOGINSilas POV I visited Marcus.Clara did not ask me not to. She did not try to talk me out of it. She simply looked at me when I told her and said: "Be careful what you carry back with you."I understood what she meant. Some visits left residue.The facility was an hour outside the city. I drove myself. The building was institutional in the way these places always were, designed to be functional without being either cruel or comfortable, and the meeting room they placed us in was small and had the particular flat air of a space where difficult things were said regularly.Marcus came in looking older than I expected.It was strange. He had always been such a specific physical presence. Large and certain, filling rooms with the confidence of a man who believed himself to be the most important person in them. What sat across from me now was still him but diminished, the way a building looks when you see it for the first time without its facade.He looked at me for a long moment. Then he sa
Clara's POVLuke's card arrived on a Wednesday.I recognized the handwriting on the envelope before I opened it. That looping careful script. I sat at the kitchen table and opened it and read it twice.I hope the baby is kind.I pressed the card flat against the table with both hands for a moment. Then I went to find Silas.He read it. He was quiet for a moment.“He is a good boy," he said.“He always was," I said. "He just needed better circumstances to show it in."I put the card on the shelf in the room we had begun to think of quietly as the nursery, though we had not started any preparation yet. The room had a window that faced the garden and a particular quality of afternoon light that I had noticed on the first day and that had made me point at it when Silas asked which room felt right.Luke's card sat on the shelf and the afternoon light hit it and I stood in the doorway of that room, and thought about everything that had found its way to me through the second chance I had b
Clara's POVAdrian Luther came to dinner on a Friday evening in the fourth week after our first meeting.Cassie had spent Thursday afternoon cooking and then left me very precise reheating instructions written on a notecard in her slanted handwriting, which I appreciated even though I would never admit out loud that I needed them.He arrived with a bottle of wine he had clearly researched and a slight awkwardness that was the genuine kind rather than the performed kind. He stood in the entrance of our home and looked around with the specific expression of someone who grew up without money seeing how people who have always had it arrange their private spaces, and I recognized that look because I had worn it myself once."Come in," I said. "It is not as formal as it looks.""It looks good," he said. "Just unfamiliar."“Most things are, until they are not," I said.Silas came from the kitchen with the focused efficiency of a man who had decided that cooking was a task and tasks were man
Clara's POVTwelve weeks in I had a scare.It was a Thursday morning. I was at the foundation when it happened. A cramp that was different from the usual low-grade discomfort I had been managing, sharper and more insistent, and then a moment that sent me directly to my phone.Silas was in a meeting and his phone went to the quiet mode he used in board sessions. I called twice and then I called Cassie.She answered immediately. By the time I had finished two sentences she was already moving. "Do not drive yourself," she said. "I am coming. Sit down."She arrived in fourteen minutes. She drove me to the hospital with both hands on the wheel, and her face set in the particular expression of someone who is frightened, and has decided that frightened is not useful right now.Silas arrived at the hospital twenty-two minutes after that. He came through the door of the waiting area with his jacket undone, and his phone still in his hand, and found me sitting with Cassie and the particular
Clara's POVThe morning sickness arrived with the tenth week like something that had been politely waiting in the anteroom and had now decided it was time to come in.I was not prepared for the specific way it targeted mornings in the office. There was something about the particular mix of coffee from the machine down the hall and the cleaning product used on the corridor floors that sent me to the small bathroom near the boardroom twice before ten-thirty on Tuesday morning.Silas came to find me after the second time. He stood in the corridor outside the bathroom with a glass of water and the expression of a man who had been doing research and was trying not to make it obvious.“Crackers," he said, handing me the water.“Pardon?"“Plain crackers. Before you get up in the morning. Apparently that helps." He said it with the matter-of-fact delivery he applied to quarterly reports.I drank the water. "How do you know that?"“I read a book," he said.“You read a book about pregnancy."
Clara POVI told Cassie about the pregnancy before we announced it to anyone else. She came to the house on a Saturday and I told her at the kitchen table and she looked at me for exactly three seconds before she burst into tears.`"Happy ones," she said immediately, pressing both palms against her face. "Obviously happy ones. Stop looking at me like that.”"I am not looking at you like anything," I said.“You are looking at me like I am going to make this about myself," she said, which was fair because historically she would have. "I am not. I am just crying because this is wonderful and because Mum would have absolutely lost her mind over this in the best way and I want to cry about both of those things at once."`I handed her a tissue and let her cry for a minute.`,When she had composed herself she looked at me with her eyes still bright."How far along?""Eight weeks.""How do you feel?""Tired," I said honestly. "And certain."She nodded. "That sounds right." She looked at her
Clara's POVAs I stared out to windscreen the sky was a cocktail of Orange and the other colors sending the message that it will soon be night time, I was in Mr Luther's car after a brief argument of him telling me to go back home and rest but I said I wanted to return back to the office and at lea
Clara's POVAs we all stepped out of the school building into the parking lot everyone headed to their own respective cars the officers went into their own cop car and Nick was heading toward his which look like luxury on the surface but you needed a million difference fixes because of one major re
Clara's POVThe office went dead quiet. Mr. Luther entered the office, and his aura completely occupied it, competing with the weight of the accusations that were being thrown at me. He stood confidently at the threshold, arms crossed, eyes drawn down into daring slits."Is nobody going to answer m
Silas POV"Good morning, Mr. Luther." Her voice was more lukewarm than the coffee she handed to me, easing out like an automated response from a machine rather than my enthusiastic secretary."Morning, Miss Moore. How was your night?""Fine, sir. And yours?""Well..."I kept up with the small talk







