All Chapters of Anna and Jonathan: The Arranged Marriage : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

JONATHAN'S POVI do not remember collapsing, only the sensation of the hallway tilting sideways before a nurse caught my arm and guided me into a chair, her voice distant and muffled as she called for someone to check my blood pressure. Shock, they told me afterward, compounded by exhaustion and the particular strain of watching two people die in the same devastating month. They kept me overnight for observation, an IV taped to the back of my hand, the steady beep of a monitor marking time in a room that felt entirely separate from the life I had woken up inside only yesterday.The hours between admission and that first moment of waking blurred together into something I could not fully reconstruct afterward, fragments of a doctor's voice, the pinch of a needle, the particular quality of institutional light that makes everything feel slightly unreal. I remember being grateful, in whatever hazy state I occupied, for the temporary reprieve from having to think clearly about anything at a

ANNA'S POVThe funeral drew more cameras than I expected, given how carefully Jonathan's family usually managed the boundary between private grief and public spectacle. Lucas's family had insisted on a public service, unwilling to let the murder be reduced to a quiet, hushed affair, and I understood their reasoning even as I dreaded what it meant for the day ahead.The morning had arrived gray and cold, fitting weather for what waited ahead, and I had stood at my bedroom window for a long while before dressing, watching the clouds gather over the estate grounds and wondering how a sky could look so ordinary on a day that would forever mark itself apart from every other day in my life.I stood beside Jonathan in the front row, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched, both of us dressed in the careful black the occasion demanded, and I felt the weight of dozens of eyes settling on us the moment we took our seats. The press had gathered at a respectful distance, though respectful

JONATHAN'S POVI found the box of old photographs by accident, searching through a closet in my study for a contract I had misplaced weeks earlier, and once I found it, I could not make myself put it away again.The box itself was unremarkable, plain cardboard gone soft at the corners, the kind of thing easily forgotten in the back of a closet for years at a time. I nearly closed the lid without looking inside at all, distracted by the contract I still needed to locate, before something made me pause and lift the first photograph out instead.Lucas and I at fourteen, grinning at the camera with matching black eyes after a rugby match that had gone badly for both of us. Lucas and I at nineteen, standing awkwardly in ill fitting suits at my father's insistence, the two of us clearly more interested in whatever joke had just passed between us than the formal portrait we were supposed to be taking seriously. Lucas at my side during every difficult season of my adult life, my father's hear

ANNA'S POVI did not have the luxury of sitting with the uncertainty as long as I wanted to, much as some part of me had hoped for a little more time before facing what came next.Three days after the test, Doctor Ellison's office called to confirm my long overdue physical, the same appointment I had been putting off since before Lucas died. I almost canceled it, telling myself I could reschedule once I had more time to think, once the rest of my life felt less like a series of collapsing walls. Something made me keep it instead, some instinct telling me that avoiding a doctor's office would not make any of this less true.The clinic felt too bright and too ordinary for what I was walking in carrying, magazines fanned neatly across a coffee table, a fish tank bubbling quietly in the corner, other women in the waiting room chatting easily about names and nurseries as though pregnancy were a simple, uncomplicated joy rather than the tangled question currently sitting in my chest, heavy

JONATHAN'S POVI answered on the third ring, my heart already pounding before Doctor Reyes said a single word. Something about the timing itself, so far outside the window we had discussed, told me this was not a routine follow up call at all."Mr. Clarkson, I do apologize for calling outside our scheduled window. Some bloodwork from Anna's last visit came back with results I would prefer to discuss in person rather than over the phone. Nothing necessarily alarming, but I would feel more comfortable if you both came in this evening for a proper ultrasound.""What kind of results?""Elevated markers that can indicate several possible things, most of them entirely manageable. I do not want to speculate further until we have imaging in front of us. Can you come in within the hour?"I told him we could, and ended the call to find Anna already standing, her face pale, the earlier warmth between us replaced instantly by the same cold dread I felt spreading through my own chest."What is it?