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Chapter 2: The Empty House
publish date:
2026-07-23 19:22:37
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Too Late to Want Me Back Chapter 67: The Name Nobody Wrote Down
He answered on the second ring."Elena.""You knew it was me.""I've had this number saved for two years and you've never used it." A car went past on his end. "Say what you've rung to say.""I'm not accusing you of anything."Alexander was quiet for a moment."That's new.""I want to ask you about 1994. That's all. You can put the phone down whenever you like.""Ask.""Gerardo Tomassi."The pause was different this time. Not careful. Something else."Who gave you that name?""Piero Faranda. An hour ago, on tape.""Then Piero is braver than I gave him credit for," Alexander said. "And he'll be frightened tonight.""He is.""He's right to be."Elena leaned back against the tree."Tell me what he was.""He was the man you rang." Alexander said it without any weight at all. "Not a director, nothing you'd find on a filing. He came in under your grandfather and he stayed because everybody was used to him.""You worked for him.""Everybody worked for him. That's the part nobody understands
Too Late to Want Me Back Chapter 66: The Man He Was Afraid Of
"Sit down, Piero.""I've asked you to go.""You have. And I'm still here." Elena hadn't moved from her chair. "Sit down."He came back from the window and sat, and he was smaller in the chair than he had been an hour ago."I moved it on the Friday.""You've said that.""I want it said again because it's the only part I'm proud of." His hands were on his knees and they weren't still. "A yard with a hole in the fence and a girl of nine in the house. I moved it. That was me and I'd do it again tomorrow.""And the Monday?""No.""You knew there was a Monday. You said the house was shut.""Because I was told the house would be shut." It came out too fast. "That's not the same thing. Somebody said to me, the place will be empty from Monday, don't go near it, and I didn't go near it. I sat at home with my wife.""Who said it to you?"Piero looked at the carpet."Signor Faranda," David said, and put his phone on the table, screen up, red dot showing. "You've seen me do this before.""Yes.""I
Too Late to Want Me Back Chapter 65: Sunday Coffee, Again
"I'm outside.""How do you feel?""Cold hands.""Then put your gloves on before you knock," Damian said. "Ring me when you're back in the car."Elena looked at the gate for a second longer."All right," she said, and hung up, and her hands had stopped shaking.Piero opened the door in the cardigan."Elena. Three times now.""I know. You must be sick of me.""Never." He stood back. "Come in, come in. And your man there.""David.""I remember David." He was already turning for the kitchen. "Coffee?""That would be lovely."He stopped.It was very small, half a step, the sort of thing you'd miss if you weren't watching. Then he carried on."Two, isn't it?""You remembered.""I remember everything about that week," Piero said. "That's the trouble with me."They sat. He took the good chair."So," he said. "What is it this time?""The Friday.""Which Friday?""Three days after the crash." Elena wrapped her hands around the cup and didn't drink. "You drove her car to the house on Via delle F
Too Late to Want Me Back Chapter 64: The Night After
"You said the funeral.""The funeral was the Monday." Nella sat down carefully. "I opened the house the next morning, the Tuesday, at nine. The drive was empty.""Empty.""The car. The tape. The glass off the gravel. All of it, gone in the night."Elena sat down."You never told anybody.""Who?" Nella's hands went out. "Nobody ever asked me what was on that drive. If nobody asks you what was there, how do you tell them it isn't there any more?""You said on the phone you heard it.""I did. I was in the house.""At night?""Yes." Nella's chin came up a little. "And before you ask me why, it's nothing clever. I'd left my glasses."Damian looked up."I'd been there in the afternoon getting it ready, because the family said people might come back after the funeral. Nobody did." She smoothed the cloth. "I got home and I couldn't read the television guide and I was too proud to sit there squinting, so I got the bus back at half nine like an idiot.""What time?""I let myself in about ten pa
Too Late to Want Me Back Chapter 63: Ten Past Seven
They were at the stop at four minutes past."You're early again," Elena said."I'm always early.""You were early for our wedding. Forty minutes. My father thought something had gone wrong."Damian put his hands in his pockets and didn't answer that.Ten past came. The four didn't."He's never late," Damian said."You've done this once.""He told me he'd missed three visits in fourteen years and two of them were exams."At quarter past, Luca came round the corner at a run with his coat half on and a plastic bag swinging off one wrist."Don't," he said."I haven't said anything.""You're standing there being early at me.""What happened?""The biscuits." Luca held up the bag, breathing hard. "The ones she likes. The shop by the flat's shut on a Sunday and I forgot, so I went to the one by the station, and there was a queue, and a woman in front of me was arguing about a lottery ticket."Elena laughed out loud, and it startled all three of them, because none of them had heard her do tha
Too Late to Want Me Back Chapter 62: Lights Off
"Say it again.""A car at the bottom of the drive," Elena said. "Lights off. She walked down and got in and it drove away with both of them."Ruggeri didn't answer.She could hear him breathing on the line, and then something that might have been a chair."Signor Ruggeri.""Twenty-six years old," he said."What?""I wrote glass at twenty-six metres and a car facing the wrong way and I took it up the stairs myself." His voice had gone rough. "And a man behind a desk told me that a bend does what a bend does.""You were right.""I know I was right. I've known since I paced it twice." Something scraped again. "That isn't the part. The part is that I have sat in this house for thirty years being a man who might have been wrong, and I did that to myself because they wouldn't let me say it out loud.""I'm sorry.""Don't." He stopped for a second. "Get the timing done. That's what I'd do. Get the timing done and ring me back."David did the timing that night, on the kitchen table, with a roa
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