All Chapters of The Day I Stopped Loving Him: Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

Maya's POV Sarah's call came at 11:15. I was at the cutting table with the charcoal wool when the phone buzzed and I almost didn't answer because I had the shears positioned and the line I was about to cut had been sitting in my head for two days and I did not want to lose it. I answered. "The orders," Sarah said. Her voice had the quality it took on when she was delivering something large and was trying to keep the delivery level so I would receive it rather than deflect it. "Triple the projection. Every buyer who was confirmed before Bouchard reinstated. Three new international accounts. The press is still running." I set the shears down. "All right," I said. "Maya." "I hear you." "Triple." "I heard you the first time." She made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and something else. "You cut a crooked line this morning because you were nervous about a signing and now you're all right about triple the projection." "I'm more comfortable with good news than with le

Chloe's POV The art room smelled of tempera paint and the particular sharpness of graphite when the pencil had been used hard against paper. The teacher was cleaning brushes at the sink, the water running, not paying attention to the door. Chloe was drawing the community centre. Not the old one. The new one. She had been to the site three times with Léo and she had the proportions right now, the south wall at the correct height, the entrance six metres east of where it had been, the garden in the south corner with enough space on the east side for the accessibility ramp that had been on the list for three years and was now being done properly. She was working on the east wall, which was the part that required the most decisions about where the windows should go, and she had been putting it off for two days because getting the window placement wrong would mean starting the page again. She heard the knock and looked up. Daniel was in the doorway. His coat was damp. His hair was not

Maya's POVThe signing was at 11. I stood at the cutting table with the shears in my hand, the metal cold against my palm. I wasn't cutting anything, just holding them the way you hold a steering wheel in a parked car, the grip without the purpose.Léo had left at six without waking me. A note on the kitchen counter in his handwriting read… *Today the war ends on paper. I love you.* I folded it into a square and put it in my back pocket, where I could feel the edge of it against my hip when I walked. Chloe left at 7:30. She'd known about the signing for a week. On Tuesday she'd drawn a picture at the kitchen table while I was cutting muslin, three figures at a table, one holding a pen, the other two watching. The figure with the pen had a small crack in its foundation, drawn in red pencil, circled, then crossed through. She'd pushed the drawing toward me without looking up from her second drawing, which was of a suspension bridge. I'd taped the first one to the refrigerator. The tape

Maya's POVThe signing took eleven minutes. Marcus explained each section in a flat voice. The window was open an inch. Traffic noise filtered in, a siren somewhere far away, then gone. Daniel's leg was bouncing slightly. I could see it in my peripheral vision, the knee moving up and down a few millimetres. He stopped it once, pressed his palm flat on his thigh. It started again thirty seconds later. He didn't seem to notice.I focused on Marcus's hands. He had large hands for a lawyer, the fingers squared off at the tips, the nails cut short, a small scar on his left knuckle. I'd never noticed it before. I'd been in this office four times over the past year and had never looked at his hands. Now I couldn't stop looking at them, the way they turned the pages, the way the pen fit between his thumb and forefinger, the way he set the pen down precisely parallel to the edge of the desk.Daniel signed first. His hand was steady. The Montblanc moved across the page. He turned the page, sign

Chloe's POVThe sketchbook was open on the kitchen table and the pencils were laid out in order from 6H to 8B because that was the way Léo had arranged them on the first day he sat down next to her with his own sketchbook. The 6H made light lines. The 8B made dark lines. Most of the drawing happened in the middle. She used the 4B for almost everything because it didn't smudge when you pressed hard.She was drawing the south wall. She hadn't seen it yet. Mama had described it on the phone. Grey. New. As tall as the old one. Stronger. Chloe had said she would draw it strong and Mama had said okay and that was the end of it.The wall on the page was a rectangle taking up most of the lower half of the sheet. She drew the edges first, two vertical lines and a horizontal base. Then she filled in the surface with horizontal strokes. Inside the wall she drew thin lines running across, the way Léo had drawn them for her on a napkin at the kitchen table one afternoon. She didn't know what the l