ห้องสมุด
ค้นหา
หน้าหลัก / Romance / The surrogate wife / บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

บททั้งหมดของ The surrogate wife : บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

14

Chapter one

CHAPTER ONEMara's Pov "You have to sign the birthday card, Lily. We don't just draw a cat on it and call it done.""But the cat is the present.""The cat is a drawing of a cat.""A good drawing."I looked down at my three-year-old, who was holding a crayon with the seriousness of a surgeon and absolutely zero intention of writing her name. The birthday card for her daycare teacher was now mostly an orange cat. There was barely a corner left for anything else."Fine," I said. "Help me write your name right here. This tiny space.""L," she said, pressing the crayon down so hard it almost tore through. "I. L. Y."Close enough.I sealed the envelope before she could add another cat, packed her lunch, wrestled her into her jacket, and had us out the door by seven forty-three. Seven minutes behind my personal target. Not bad for a Tuesday.This was my life and I had made peace with it.That's not me being dramatic. I mean it genuinely. I was thirty-two years old, a junior partner at Hargr
อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Chapter two

CHAPTER TWOMara's Pov I let him in because it was the right thing to do, and I have spent my entire life doing the right thing even when it cost me.I didn't offer him anything. No water, no coffee, no invitation to sit down. He stood in my living area and I stood near the kitchen counter with my arms crossed and my wine glass somewhere behind me, and we looked at each other like two people who had once made a very large decision together and were now standing on opposite sides of it."How long have you known?" I asked."About the diagnosis? Three weeks.""And you came here now.""Yes.""Why not three weeks ago?"He looked at the floor briefly, then back at me. "Because three weeks ago I was hoping she'd get a second opinion that said something different. She didn't."I understood that. The waiting period before you accept something is real. I'd had my own version of it after Claire died, those first few days where I kept thinking someone would call and tell me there had been a mist
อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREEMara's Pov I didn't sleep.I lay in bed staring at the ceiling until two a.m., then gave up and made tea and sat at my kitchen table with my phone face down in front of me. The city outside was quiet in the way it only gets after midnight, and I sat in that quiet and thought about Marcus Voss.I had met him exactly once. At Claire's funeral. He was Elias's younger brother, shorter, louder, the kind of person who fills a room without trying. He had hugged me at the reception even though we had never spoken before, and he had said, *Claire talked about you all the time. She said you were the most loyal person she knew.*I had held myself together until I got to my car.That was the last time I saw him. But I knew who he was in the way you know the shape of a thing without touching it. Elias was the kind of man who carried his grief quietly and kept it personal. Marcus, from everything Claire had ever told me, was the kind who made grief into action. He didn't sit with thi
อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Chapter four

CHAPTER FOURMara's Pov I chose a coffee shop twelve minutes from my office. Public, neutral, busy enough that neither of us would make a scene. I got there first, took a table near the window, and ordered black coffee because I needed the clarity more than the comfort.Elias arrived at nine exactly. He spotted me before I waved, which meant he'd been looking. He ordered at the counter and came to the table and sat down, and for a moment neither of us said anything."Marcus called a lawyer," I said. No preamble."I know.""Who?""A family attorney named Bryce Callahan. He does custody and visitation work." He wrapped both hands around his cup. "I found out last night after I messaged you. He didn't tell me he was doing it. He told me after.""Does Marcus understand what he's doing?""Marcus understands exactly what he's doing. That's the problem." He looked at me steadily. "He's not doing it to hurt you. I want you to know that. He genuinely believes Lily should know the Voss family,
อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Chapter five

CHAPTER FIVEMara's Pov Marcus showed up on Thursday.I was home by six, Lily was in the living room arranging her stuffed animals into what she called a meeting, and I was in the kitchen pulling dinner together when the knock came. Firm. Confident. The knock of someone who had decided they had every right to be at this door.I knew before I looked.I opened it without the chain, which in hindsight was optimistic, and Marcus Voss stood in my doorway looking exactly like a man who had rehearsed this and was pleased with how he looked doing it. He was broad-shouldered, dark-eyed, with Claire's same energy of someone who walked into rooms expecting to be received well. That detail hit me somewhere old and sore."Mara," he said, like we were friends resuming a conversation."Marcus." I stepped into the doorway, not back from it. "Elias told you not to come here.""Elias tells me a lot of things.""And you're here anyway.""I am." He smiled, but it didn't reach far. "I'm not here to fight
อ่านเพิ่มเติม

chapter six

Chapter Six Elias POVMarcus called me at seven-thirty that morning.I let it go to voicemail. Then he called again. Then he texted: “I went to see her.”I sat with my phone on the kitchen counter and read that sentence three times before I responded.“I told you not to.”“I know. She handled it well. Better than I deserved.”That was it. No apology, no elaboration. Just Marcus being Marcus, doing the thing he decided to do and then reporting back like that was the same as asking permission.I should have been annoyed. I was. But underneath the annoyance was something else, something I didn't want to look at directly, which was the fact that he had seen her and I hadn't, and that bothered me more than it should have.*******************Saturday came faster than I wanted it to.I pulled up to the address at exactly two o'clock. Not early, not late. I sat in the car for ninety seconds doing nothing in particular and then got out before I could talk myself back in.She answered the do
อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Chapter seven

Chapter Seven Mara POVDorothy Voss was not what I expected.I had built her in my head as formidable. Elegant, yes, but cold in the way money made people cold. What walked through my door, slowly, with a cane she clearly resented, was something else entirely. She was small, sharp-eyed, and she looked at Lily the way starving people looked at food. Like she had been waiting a long time and was trying very hard not to show it.Lily, who trusted no one quickly, walked straight up to her."Are you sick?" she asked.Dorothy looked down at her. "Yes.""Mommy said. Are you going to get better?""No.""Oh." Lily processed this with the bluntness of a three-year-old. "That's sad.""It is," Dorothy agreed. "But I'm here now. That's something."Lily took her hand and led her to the couch like she owned the room, and I stood in my own hallway watching this woman I had never met get exactly what she came for, and something in my chest went very quiet.Elias appeared beside me. Not close enough t
อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight Elias POVShe texted me on Wednesday, not about Lily. Not about Dorothy. Just: "Lily asked me today if stars have names. I said yes. She asked if they knew their own names. I had no answer. Though you should know this is what parenting is." I read it at my desk in the middle of a call I should have been paying attention to. I read it twice. Then I typed back: “Tell her the stars probably do know. They've had a long time to figure it out." Three minutes passed."She accepted that. You're useful." I put the phone face down and looked at my screen and did not think about the fact that I was smiling.Marcus walked in twenty minutes later, saw my face, and said nothing. Which meant he was storing it for later.Thursday she called instead of texted. I picked up on the second ring and then wished I had waited for the third so I didn't seem like I had been holding the phone."Vanessa contacted my office," she said. No greeting. She was in lawyer mode, voice clipped and contr
อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Chapter nine

Chapter Nine Mara POVHe was seven minutes early on Saturday. But I had been tracking the clock in the way I did when I was trying to pretend I wasn't, and when the knock came at one fifty-three I felt something embarrassingly close to relief.Lily got to the door before me."You came back," she said, with the satisfaction of someone whose predictions had been proven correct."I said I would," Elias said."People say things," Lily told him, and I heard my own words from last week come out of my three-year-old's mouth and had to turn toward the kitchen so he wouldn't see my face.I heard him laugh. Low and brief, like it surprised him. I had not heard him laugh before. I added it to the list of things I was not making a list of.We sat at my kitchen table with the guardianship draft between us while Lily watched something in the living room at a volume she considered reasonable and I considered aggressive.He read carefully. He was the kind of reader who went still when he concentrat
อ่านเพิ่มเติม

Chapter ten

Chapter Ten Elias POVMarcus asked me on Monday how Saturday went.I said fine. He looked at me the way he looked at quarterly reports that didn't add up and went back to his coffee without pushing. Which meant he was storing it. Marcus always stored things and presented them later when they would have the most impact. I had known him long enough to dread that moment.The guardianship papers were filed Monday afternoon. Mara texted me at four seventeen: “Done. You're officially on record." Then, after a pause: “How does that feel?”I sat with that question longer than a simple answer required.*Like something I should have done three years ago*, I typed back." You weren't ready three years ago”, she replied. " “Neither was I." I read that twice. The honesty of it, the way she just said true things without softening them into something easier — it did something to me every time. I was not used to people who said exactly what they meant. I had spent years in rooms full of people who
อ่านเพิ่มเติม
ก่อนหน้า
12
สแกนรหัสเพื่ออ่านบนแอป
DMCA.com Protection Status