Tempted by my brother-in-law. 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 111 - 챕터 117

Chapter 110GIFTPOV: NikolaiWe drove back to the estate without finishing the formalities with the agent.She had looked confused when I explained, briefly, that the purchase was being handled differently than expected, and had said she would follow up once the transfer details came through from Edinburgh, and we had thanked her and left and gotten in the car and Hazel had not said much on the way back because there was not much that fit into words yet.Fifteen years.Vera had bought the house fifteen years ago.She had been holding it that long, paying whatever it cost to maintain an empty house on a ridge, waiting for a reason to give it to someone, and she had found that reason in us without either of us knowing the house existed until this morning.We found her in the garden.Not the library. The garden, standing near the bench in the late morning light, looking at the roses that were apparently early this year, the same conversation she had had with Hazel on a different morning

Chapter 112COORDINATESPOV: HazelWe left at four.Not first light. Not after dinner. Four in the afternoon with the coordinates on Nikolai's phone and three hours of daylight left and the mountain two hours out of the city.Kaden said he would handle dinner. He said our father could wait one evening, that he was not going anywhere, that the mountain had waited forty years and was apparently still waiting and we should go before the light went.I kissed my mother on the cheek on the way out.She handed me a jacket."It is cold up there," she said."I have a jacket," I said."That one is warmer," she said.I took hers.Nikolai drove fast without being reckless, the way he did everything, and the city fell away behind us and the roads opened and the mountain appeared on the horizon the way it always appeared, large and indifferent and entirely itself.We did not talk much.That was the thing about us on long drives. We had learned early that silence between us did not need filling and

Chapter 114DINNERPOV: HazelThe estate was lit from every window when we pulled through the gate.I noticed that first. The specific quality of a house that had people in it who were actually present rather than occupying separate rooms at a careful distance. Every window. Even the ones that were usually dark.We went inside.The noise hit immediately.Not loud exactly. But the layered sound of multiple conversations happening in proximity, which was something I had not heard in this house in all the months I had been in it. It had always been a house of careful silences and managed distances and now it sounded like something else entirely.I followed it to the dining room.My mother had expanded dinner to the large table.The one that had been set for two when Kaden had tried to have a careful conversation with me about things he was not ready to say directly. The one that seated twelve and had been used for formal family occasions and had never felt like a room where people actual

EGGSPOV: NikolaiMy father had opinions about eggs.This was the first thing I learned about him in a domestic context and it was both completely surprising and immediately recognisable in the way things were when you had been away from someone long enough that their specific qualities became new information even though they had always been there.He believed eggs should be cooked slowly.Lena believed they should be cooked at the right heat which was not low.They were standing on opposite sides of this question at the kitchen counter when Hazel and I came in and the specific quality of the disagreement was one I recognised from the workshop, the unhurried certainty of a man who was used to doing things at his own pace, except that Lena was also unhurried and also certain and neither of them was going to be moved.I stood in the doorway.Hazel stood beside me."He has been like this since six thirty," she said quietly."What time did he arrive," I said."Six fifteen," she said."He