All Chapters of When Winter Blooms: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

48 Chapters

Just Dinner

He asked me to dinner on a Wednesday.He came to find me in the afternoon, I was in the living room, Lily at nursery, the apartment quiet and he stood in the doorway in his work clothes and said:"Have dinner with me, saturday. Just dinner""Okay," I said, without thinking twice.He nodded and went back to his study, and I sat in the living room with my book open on my lap and not a single word of it going in, and thought about the fact that Ethan Cole had just asked me to dinner.Ms. Park arranged everything, I knew this because on Friday afternoon a car was confirmed for Saturday at seven and a reservation appeared in the household calendar under Ethan, dinner, bo venue named, no details offered. I did not ask. I texted Priya.Her response arrived in about four seconds. It was one word in capitals that accurately conveyed her position on the matter.I put my phone face-down on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a moment.Then I got up and dealt with Lily's bath, and the universe

Gerald‘s Position

Lily found out at breakfast. Lily had a radar for things that were different, and Sunday morning had a different quality to it than Saturday morning had, something in the air of the apartment, some shift in the texture of the ordinary, that she clocked immediately with the instincts of a child who had been paying close attention to the adults in her life for five months and had arrived at some conclusions.She looked at me when she came into the kitchen, looked at Ethan.She climbed onto her stool."Did you have a date?" she asked.The kitchen went very still.Ethan's back was to us, I watched his shoulders do something careful and controlled. I looked at my coffee mug with the focused attention of someone reading something very important in it."Where did you learn that word?" I asked."School," she said. "Prisha's mummy and daddy go on dates, she said they get dressed up and go out and it's because they love each other." She tilted her head. "You got dressed up and went out without

On The Record

Derek found out on Tuesday.I don't know how, maybe Ms. Park, the calendar entry, the simple fact that Derek Calloway appeared to have a network of information that functioned with the quiet efficiency of a well-run intelligence operation but the mechanics of it were less interesting than the result, which was Derek appearing at the apartment at eleven in the morning with the expression of a man who has been proven right and intends to be thorough about it.He brought pastries, Good ones, from the place three blocks away that I'd mentioned once in passing four weeks ago and had not expected him to remember.He remembered."I heard," he said, when I opened the door, "that there was a dinner.""Good morning, Derek.""Saturday night." He handed me the pastries. "Small restaurant, very good, apparently. Reservation under Ethan with no other details.""Ms. Park," I said."Ms. Park maintains appropriate discretion," he said, which was not a confirmation and was absolutely a confirmation. H

Too Close

It happened on a Thursday night.No special occasion, no charged preceding event. No gala or dinner or significant conversation to blame it on. Just a Thursday Lily in bed, the apartment quiet, the city doing its ordinary nighttime thing outside and me in the kitchen at eleven because I couldn't sleep and the kitchen was where I went when I couldn't sleep because it was the most settled room in the apartment, the one that felt most like mine.I was making tea, standing at the counter in my grey pyjamas, the old comfortable ones with my hair loose and the low light on and the city spread out silver and gold through the window.I didn't hear him coming.Usually I did, I had learned his sounds, the particular weight of his footfall, the way he moved through the apartment at night, unhurried and quiet. But this time I didn't hear him and then he was just there, in the kitchen doorway, and I turned around and found him closer than I expected.He was in a dark t-shirt and he had the look he

Properly Meant

Friday morning arrived almost too early, with the particular quality of a day that had no interest in giving you time to compose yourself before it started.I heard him before I saw him. The coffee machine, the particular sequence of sounds I could have reconstructed from memory in any order, the cupboard, the grind, the water running. I stood in the hallway outside my door for a moment and did something I hadn't done in months. I braced.Not against him. Against the version of this morning that I was afraid of, the managed version, the carefully professional version, the morning where we both performed a selective amnesia about Thursday night and the kitchen and five inches and a look that had gone somewhere it hadn't been before. I'd seen that version of Ethan Cole. I'd lived in the apartment with it for the first six weeks. I knew what it looked like when he decided something hadn't happened.I pushed off the wall and went to the kitchen.He was at the counter, he looked up when I

The Right Word

The school open day was a Saturday in March.Lily's new school, the one I'd chosen from Ethan's shortlist on a Wednesday night, a chance to see the classrooms and meet the teachers before September arrived and made it all real. Lily had been informed and was treating the occasion with the gravity it deserved, which meant Gerald had been briefed and was coming and she had selected her outfit three days in advance.We went as three, Lily between us, The school was in the West Village, a converted brownstone, warm brick and tall windows, the kind of building that looked like it had opinions about education and had been having them for a long time. There were other families in the entrance hall when we arrived, the particular atmosphere of these events, slightly formal, slightly anxious, everyone performing a version of themselves that was their best school-open-day self.Lily was unintimidated. She walked in with the composure of someone who had already decided she belonged here and was

Things Grow

Marco called on a Sunday.He called most Sundays, the check-in we'd settled into over the years, the rhythm of two people who had grown up responsible for each other and hadn't quite figured out how to stop. He was twenty-one now, finishing his degree, doing fine in the way that meant he was managing but I always listened for the underneath of it because I had learned, sixteen years ago, that fine sometimes needed a second pass.I took the call in my room, Lily was on the terrace with Ethan, engaged in what I understood to be a detailed project assessment of the sunflower situation."You sound different," he said twelve minutes in, after we'd covered his coursework and his flatmates and the thing with his landlord that had been resolved and the thing with his bike that hadn't."Do I," "Yeah you sound…" He paused, with the considering quality he'd had since he was small, the thing I'd always loved about him, the way he didn't rush toward a word if the right one needed a moment. "Settl

Household Staff

The letter arrived on a Wednesday.I didn't see it first, Ms. Park brought it in with the afternoon post. It was addressed to Ethan, I noticed it on the kitchen counter when I came in from collecting Lily from nursery, and then I noticed Ethan's face when he came home at six and saw it there.He knew what it was before he opened it. I could see it, the small stillness that came over him, a fraction of a second, the particular quality of a man recognising something he had been half-expecting and had hoped would not arrive.He picked it up, looked at it and put it in his jacket pocket without opening it and came and sat at the kitchen island and said: "How was Lily's day?"I told him. He listened. We had dinner the three of us, candles, the usual rhythms. Lily was in good form, full of information about a development in the classroom involving a boy named Oliver and a misunderstanding about whose painting was whose, a story that required significant nuance to tell properly and that she

Don't Be Polite At Me

The cold came back on Thursday.Ethan the managed version. The version I had not seen since before the carry, before the storm, before all the slow accumulated thawing of eight months in this apartment.I noticed it at breakfast, something in him was behind glass again. Present and absent at once, he answered Lily's questions, he drank his coffee. He did not look at me the way he had been looking at me.I noticed, I did not say anything. I had learned, in eight months, the difference between a distance that needed to be addressed immediately and one that needed to be given room. This one, I thought, needed room. He had received a solicitor's letter the night before threatening the custody of his daughter and naming his household staff as evidence of moral failing. He was allowed a morning of glass.But the morning became afternoon, the afternoon became evening. He went to his study after dinner, not unusual, he often worked evenings but the door was closed in the way it hadn't been cl

Getting Closer

The hearing was on a Thursday.Ethan's lawyer a precise, unhurried woman named Carolyn who I met once over a conference call, had spent two weeks preparing. She had documentation. She had Lily's school reports, her developmental assessments, the testimony of Ms. Adeyemi who had met Lily at the open day and had, apparently, significant things to say about her emotional health and security. She had eight months of evidence that a child was flourishing.I was not at the hearing. Ethan had offered and I had said non, not because I was afraid of what it meant to be there, but because I understood that my presence would hand Margaret exactly what she wanted: a visible target, a thing to point at, a face to put on the allegation. Carolyn agreed. The strongest version of the case was Ethan and his daughter and eight months of documented evidence that Lily Cole was loved and safe and thriving.I stayed home with Lily.We planted things.The sunflower shoot had been joined by two more in the w

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