All Chapters of Rebirth; it’s too late, Dear ex: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

Kara’s POV. “You need to eat more than that,” Xavier said at breakfast on a Tuesday in February. “I’m eating,” I said. “You’re eating approximately half of what you should be eating,” he said. “I have been watching this for three weeks.” “You’ve been watching what I eat for three weeks,” I said. “Someone has to,” he said. I looked at the plate he had put in front of me. It was larger than my usual breakfast. More of everything. He had added fruit without being asked and the specific kind of bread I had mentioned once in passing that I liked and had not mentioned since. “You remembered the bread,” I said. “I remember everything,” he said. I looked at him across the table. “I know,” I said. “That’s still occasionally alarming.” “Eat the bread,” he said. I ate the bread. The pregnancy had changed certain things and not changed others. The work continued. The foundation continued. The training program for attorneys was in its early design phase. The second floor of the buildin

Kara’s POV. “Are you ready?” Xavier said in the waiting room. “I’ve been ready since December,” I said. “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I mean right now. This specific moment.” I looked at him. He was sitting beside me with his hands loose in his lap in the way he sat when he was genuinely calm rather than performing calm. The waiting room was ordinary around us. Other people, other appointments. A room that had held a thousand mornings like this one, each of them enormous to the person sitting in it and ordinary to the room. “Yes,” I said. “Right now. This moment.” He took my hand. We had been in this hospital before. Different department, different reason. The morning of the second life, the hospital room, Xavier in the doorway. That had been the beginning of everything. This was a different kind of beginning. “Tell me something,” I said. “To pass the time.” “You’re not anxious,” he said. “I’m not anxious,” I confirmed. “I just want to talk while we wait.” “Tell me w

Kara’s POV. “Grace is ready,” I said out loud. Xavier was already standing. He had heard the call. He had been at the counter and he had heard every word and he was standing with his keys in his hand and his jacket in the other hand and the expression on his face was the one from December again, the new one, the fully present one that had not existed before this second life gave us this. “Let’s go,” he said. We were in the hospital in twenty minutes. The room was ordinary and the staff was kind and the hours that followed were the hours that belong only to themselves, the kind that cannot be described fully because they exist in a different dimension from ordinary time. Xavier stayed beside me the entire time. Not hovering. Not performing. Just there. The specific quality of presence that meant I never once looked for him because I never once had to. He held my hand for four hours. He did not look away. At some point in the middle of it all he said very quietly: “You are the

Kara’s POV. “He names them,” I said. “Whitmore names the person who taught him.” “Yes,” Adaeze said. “The family found the letter in a box with other documents from 1946. It was written to a business partner. It describes the method in detail. And at the end he writes about where he learned it.” A pause. “Kara. He says he learned it from a man he worked for in London in the early 1930s. He names the man. And the man he names is not Edmund Holloway.” I went still. “Not Holloway,” I said. “A different name,” she said. “Someone who predates Holloway. Someone who was operating in London before Holloway’s 1921 records.” A pause. “Obi’s research team has been working through the night since I sent them the photograph of the letter two hours ago.” She paused. “The name Whitmore gives is a man called Bernard Ashwood. English. He operated between London and West Africa from approximately 1910.” 1910. Not the 1920s. A hundred and fifteen years. “Adaeze,” I said. “I know,” she said.

Kara’s POV. “Board level and above,” Adaeze said. “Yes,” I said. “This was a policy document. Not a criminal conspiracy in the dark. A formal written methodology approved at the highest level of a company.” I looked at the three pages. “They wrote it down.” “They wrote down how they took from people,” the second Ngozi said. “They wrote it down because they believed they were safe,” I said. “They believed no one would ever find it. They classified it. They distributed it only at board level.” I paused. “They did not know that a man who worked for them would give it to a woman who would keep it for forty-seven years and give it to her granddaughter who would keep it for twenty-two more.” I paused again. “They underestimated the builders they targeted.” The second Ngozi looked at the document. “My grandmother used to say: he came to her in the middle of the night,” she said. “The man who gave it to her. She said he was afraid. He said he could not stop what was coming but he could g