Unbeknownst のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 24

Julien told her on a Sunday, over the phone, the same careful, unhurried way he told most difficult things. He didn't share the details of the call with me afterward beyond the fact of it, that it was done, that Camille now knew I existed and that she had, in his words, gone quiet on the line for a long moment before saying only, "I see."She asked to meet Lucas the following weekend. She asked, separately, almost as an afterthought that wasn't really an afterthought at all, whether I would be there."I told her you would be," Julien said. "I didn't think it was fair to hide you from a room I was asking you to sit in.""Good," I said, and meant it, though I spent most of that week discovering new and inventive ways to feel nauseous about a Saturday afternoon.***She arrived alone. Théo, apparently, had agreed to wait at the hotel, a small mercy I hadn't expected and wasn't sure how to interpret. She stood on the doorstep in a coat that looked expensive in the understated way expensiv

The letter arrived on a Thursday, in a thick cream envelope with a law firm's name embossed across the top corner, and Julien read it standing at the hall table with his coat still on.I knew before he said anything. I watched his face do what it did when something landed that he'd been half expecting and had hoped, with some stubborn and private part of himself, would simply never be posted."Camille's lawyer," he said, and held it out.It was three pages of careful, courteous French. It expressed the client's sincere gratitude for Monsieur Castellan's cooperation to date. It acknowledged the extraordinary circumstances. It then proposed, in a series of numbered paragraphs, a formal arrangement: alternating weekends, overnight stays, a share of the school holidays, and a hearing before the family judge in six weeks should the parties be unable to agree.I read it twice. The courtesy of it was almost the worst part. Nothing in it was a demand. Everything in it was a polite inevitabili