All Chapters of My Sister’s Substitute : Chapter 111

A year.It was a Sunday morning in December and Irina was standing at the kitchen island drinking actual coffee — real coffee, the altitude-asking machine, the good kind — because Anya had finally, definitively, conclusively stopped making her body hostile to coffee at around the four month mark and she had celebrated this development with a level of enthusiasm that Neo had described as disproportionate and she had described as completely appropriate.She was drinking her coffee.And listening.The mansion had a different sound now. Not a different structure — same marble floors, same chandelier, same three sitting rooms and formal dining room and library and east wing. Same Pete in the garden. Same Mrs. Paulson in the kitchen. Same iron gates at the end of the driveway that were still taller than her old apartment building.But the sound was different.On Sunday mornings specifically the sound was: Zara at the piano.She'd been having lessons for six months — a teacher named Mr. Kow