My Sister’s Substitute 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 101 - 챕터 110

Sasha showed up on a Sunday without calling first. Which was on brand.Irina heard the gate buzzer from the kitchen island and Mrs. Paulson answered it and came back with the expression she had when something had arrived that she hadn't been informed about in advance."Miss Sasha is at the gate," she said. "Let her in," Irina said.Two minutes later Sasha came through the front door carrying three paper bags that smelled like they contained something significant and wearing the expression of a woman who had decided to do something and was not inviting feedback on the decision.She looked at Irina.Irina looked at the bags. "What's in those," she said. "Food," Sasha said."What kind of food.""The kind I made," Sasha said, with the specific energy of someone who had done something they weren't entirely confident about and was covering that lack of confidence with forward momentum.Irina looked at the bags then at Sasha. "You cooked," she said. "I prepared," Sasha said. "There's a dist

It happened on a Sunday morning.Not a significant Sunday. Not a Sunday that had announced itself as the kind of Sunday where things happened. Atlanta doing its slow golden morning thing outside, the mansion quiet in the specific way it was quiet before Mrs. Paulson arrived and the day began properly, the light coming through the master suite windows in that warm unhurried way that made everything look like it had been lit by someone who cared about the composition.Irina was still in bed.Awake but not moving the particular horizontal contentment of someone whose body had decided that the transition from lying down to being vertical was a project that could wait. The baby had been keeping her up at odd hours and she'd learned to take the horizontal contentment when it was available and not feel guilty about it.Neo was already up.She could hear him — distant, somewhere in the mansion, the specific sounds of Neo being quietly operational before the rest of the world had caught up wi

The flight landed at six forty-two in the morning.Irina knew this because she'd been watching the arrivals board at Hartsfield-Jackson since six-fifteen, standing in the international arrivals hall with the alert stillness of someone trying to look calm and not entirely succeeding. Neo was beside her he had insisted on coming despite the fact that Dr. Reeves had opinions about how much standing around in airports was appropriate for someone at his stage of recovery, opinions he had filed and not acted on.He was standing beside her. She was glad.The arrivals hall was doing its early morning thing — families with signs, drivers with tablets, the particular energy of a place where people were about to be reunited with people and the anticipation of it was in the air like something physical."She might be scared," Irina said. For the third time. "She might be," Neo agreed. For the third time. "Patricia said she was excited but children who say they're excited are often also scared and

He went back on a Monday. Six weeks after the shooting. Dr. Reeves had said five, Neo had said four, they'd compromised on six in the specific way they compromised on things which was Irina stating a position and Neo recognizing it as correct and not admitting that immediately. She drove him. Not Curtis — she drove him herself, which he hadn't expected and didn't comment on, just got in the passenger seat with the specific composure of a man who had decided that being driven by his fiancée to his first day back at his company was not a thing that required comment. Atlanta in the morning. The commute crowd. The city doing its operational weekday thing. She pulled up outside McKinney Industries and looked at the building — all glass and steel and architectural confidence, the building that had made her feel small the first time she'd stood in front of it — and then at Neo beside her. He was looking at it too. "How does it feel," she said. He considered it honestly. "Different,"

Sasha planned it for three weeks.Irina knew this because Sasha was constitutionally incapable of doing anything without it being visible — the planning showed up in phone calls that ended suspiciously fast when Irina walked into a room, in a text thread between Sasha and Mrs. Paulson that Irina accidentally saw the notification for and pretended she hadn't, in Zara's barely contained energy every time the subject of the party came up which Zara referred to as the party in the tone of someone who knew more than they were telling."You know something," Irina told Zara one morning at the kitchen island. Zara looked at her pancakes."Zara.""I'm not allowed to say," Zara said, to the pancakes."Who told you that.""Sasha," Zara said. And then, realizing she'd given something away: "I mean. Nobody."Irina looked at her.Zara ate a blueberry."You're very bad at secrets," Irina said."Sasha said the same thing," Zara said. And then: "I mean—"Irina pressed her lips together.Neo, from behi