LOGINShare
Chapter 56: Not in the File
publish date:
2026-08-17 14:57:08
Latest chapter
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
Too Late to Want Me Back Chapter 61: The Woman Who Opened the Gate
The door opened before Elena's hand reached it."You're the daughter.""Signora Serra.""Nella." She stood back. "Wipe your feet, the carpet's older than you."The flat was small and warm and smelled of oranges. There were two chairs and a table with a cloth on it and a photograph of a man on the shelf who had clearly been dead a long time."You've had this flat since 1988," Damian said."Since Aldo died, yes. I've never moved and I've never changed the number." She sat down slowly. "Thirty years, and the only people who ever came to this door were men with folders. Insurance, that first year. Somebody from the family in ninety-six who didn't get out of the car.""Nobody asked you anything?""They asked me to sign things." Nella's mouth went thin. "Not the same as asking."Elena sat down on the edge of the chair."I don't know how to start.""Then don't start with the road.""What?""Everybody starts with the road." Nella folded her hands. "Ask me about your mother instead. Nobody has
Too Late to Want Me Back Chapter 60: The Call He Made
"Come with me."Damian looked up. "To your father?""Yes.""You've done every one of these alone. Ferrero, Ruggeri, Piero on a Sunday with nobody knowing where you were.""I know.""So why this one?"The phone bill was folded in her coat pocket and she hadn't taken it out since eleven the previous night."It isn't because I think he did it," she said."Then what?""Because if the answer is bad, I don't know what I'll say to him." Her voice stayed level and her hands did not. "And I'd like somebody in the room who'll stop me saying it."Damian got his coat.Marco was at the desk with the lamp on."Both of you," he said. "That's new."Elena put the sheet down in front of him."August 1994. Your line. Outgoing calls."He put his glasses on slowly."Nine forty-one at night. The night she died. Four minutes." Elena's finger stayed off the paper. "From that phone, in this room."Marco didn't move."You've told me for thirty years that somebody rang you at eleven. That the lamp was on and yo
Too Late to Want Me Back Chapter 59: Where the Car Went
"Read it out," David said."Via delle Fontane, eleven.""That's not a yard.""I know it's not a yard." Elena had the carbon flat on the table with a lamp pulled over it. "Find out who owned it in 1994."It took David forty minutes.He came back into the room and didn't sit down."Say it.""It's yours," he said."What?""The house on Via delle Fontane was held by a Marchetti trust from 1971 until it was sold in 1998." He put the printout down. "Your grandfather bought it. Your father inherited the trust in ninety-one."Elena's hands went cold on the table edge."It was empty," David said. "That's the part I can tell you. Nobody had lived in it since eighty-nine. It was on the books as a maintenance liability.""They sent her car to our own empty house.""They sent it somewhere with a gate and no neighbours and a family name on the deed." David sat down at last. "Elena, that's not hiding a car. That's parking it.""For how long?""Nobody signed it out again. There's no scrap record, no
You may also like
Addicted to Loving You: The Paranoid and Domineering Boss's Convicted Wife
Gu family's Little Bamboo690.5K viewsWatch Out, CEO Daddy!
Wine Warms The Flowers1.4M viewsYour Uncle’s My Husband Now—Back Off, Ex!
June2.1M viewsRude Awakenings
Turquoise Grace1.1M viewsWrong Bride, Perfect Wife
LonelyPen58 viewsTHE HEIRESS THEY NEVER WANTED
Patty Lily 110 viewsA CONTRACT SIGNED IN BLOOD AND DESIRE
Mimi's Pen30 viewsThe Sickly Crown Prince And His Fierce Wife
Mide_writes23 views
