All Chapters of Once Discarded, Now Desired : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

105 Chapters

The Morning It Runs

Nora woke at five forty five. She had not set an alarm. Her body simply knew that something significant was about to happen and pulled her out of sleep twenty minutes before it did. She lay in the dim room of the apartment they had moved to and listened to Liam breathing in the next bed and watched the ceiling and waited. At six her phone lit up. A notification from the newspaper's app. The headline read: The Woman Ethan Blackwood Left Behind — And What It Cost Them Both. She opened it. She read it once quickly the way you read something you are afraid of. Then she read it again slowly. Anna Reyes had done exactly what she had promised. Honest. Accurate. Hard landing. She had written it with the particular restraint of someone who understood that the facts were devastating enough without embellishment. She had not reached for drama because the truth was already dramatic. She had written about the marriage and what it had been. She had written about the night the papers appear

What Comes After

The thing about wars was that they ended. Nora had spent so long inside this one that she had forgotten what the ending would feel like. She had imagined it many times in the quiet moments between the threats and the courtrooms and the mysterious messages and the darkness. She had imagined relief. She had imagined the particular exhale of someone who had been holding their breath for a very long time finally being allowed to breathe. She had not imagined it feeling like this. Like silence. Like sitting at a small kitchen table with cold eggs and a napkin with three figures on it while the city went about its morning and the legal machinery that had been grinding toward her family for weeks simply stopped. She had not imagined it feeling ordinary. Ethan arrived twenty minutes after his message. He knocked. She had given him the door code two days ago for security reasons and he had not used it without knocking first. She had noticed that. The careful way he moved in the spaces ar

The First Ordinary Day

The apartment Ethan took was on the fifth floor of a building with a pale grey exterior and large windows and a small balcony that looked out over the street rather than anything scenic. He moved in on a Thursday. Nora knew because Liam told her. Liam knew because Ethan had taken him to see the empty apartment two days before and Liam had assessed every room with the seriousness of a property surveyor and declared the balcony excellent and the kitchen adequate. Nora had not gone with them. She had stayed in her own apartment and told herself she was giving them space to build their own relationship and that was true. It was also true that she was not ready to stand in Ethan Blackwood's apartment three streets from her own home and feel whatever she would feel standing there. So she stayed home and let them go. When Liam came back he had a key on a small blue keyring. "Ethan gave me a key," he announced. "So I can come whenever I want." Nora looked at the key. "Did he,

The Cracks

The second Saturday was different from the first. Not worse. Just different in the way that second times are always different from first times because the novelty has settled and what remains is something more honest and therefore more complicated. Liam wanted the same park. Same climbing structure. Same coffee cart. Same formation walking there with both hands held. He was a creature of decided preferences and once he decided something was correct he saw no reason to vary it. Nora was fine with all of that. What she had not anticipated was running into Marcus. He was at the coffee cart when they arrived. Standing in the queue with his hands in his pockets looking like a man spending a Saturday morning the way uncomplicated people spent Saturday mornings. He turned when he heard Liam's voice announcing the arrival of the brown drink place and his eyes moved from Liam to Nora to Ethan and then back to Nora with the particular expression of someone absorbing a picture they had suspe

Singapore

She asked him on Monday. She had spent Sunday turning it over in her mind. Not obsessively. Just with the particular careful attention she gave to things that mattered. She had made breakfast and taken Liam to the park again, just the two of them this time, and watched him play and thought about an email from an unknown address and a word she had never heard Ethan use. Singapore. It could be nothing. An old business trip. A conference. Something entirely mundane that someone with unclear motives had decided to weaponise for reasons she did not yet understand. It could be something. She had learned over the past weeks that the things that arrived without explanation in her life usually had one. And that finding the explanation herself rather than waiting for it to arrive was always better. So she asked him on Monday. She texted first. Can you come by tonight? After Liam is asleep. There is something I want to ask you. His response came quickly. Seven thirty. He arrived at seven

The Trial Date

Chapter 26: The Trial Date The federal investigation moved faster than Henderson had predicted. Diana's lawyers had spent three weeks attempting to negotiate a settlement that would keep their client out of a courtroom. Henderson had watched the process with the patience of someone who knew exactly how it would end and had simply waited for the other side to reach the same conclusion. They reached it on a Tuesday morning. No settlement. Diana Blackwood was going to trial. Henderson called Ethan first and Ethan called Nora and she sat at her desk at work and listened to him explain what it meant and felt the particular weight of something that had been suspended finally beginning its descent. "When?" she asked. "Eight weeks," Ethan said. "The prosecution has been building the case since the fraud documentation was submitted. Combined with Patricia's testimony and Camille's evidence they are confident." "Will she go to prison?" A pause. "Henderson thinks a custodial sentence is

Preparation

Henderson prepared her the way good lawyers prepare witnesses. Thoroughly. Without mercy. With complete respect for her intelligence and zero tolerance for anything that was not precisely accurate. They met three times in the week before the trial. His office. Two hours each time. He walked her through every question the prosecution would ask and then walked her through every question Diana's defence team would ask and the second list was considerably less comfortable than the first. "They will try to establish that you have personal motivation to damage Diana," he said during the second session. "They will frame everything you say as the testimony of a woman with a grudge. A scorned ex daughter in law seeking revenge." "And how do I counter that?" Nora asked. "By being exactly what you are," Henderson said simply. "Precise. Calm. Factual. Every time they push for emotion you give them facts. Every time they suggest a motive you return to documented evidence." He looked at her acr

The Very Important Tree

Friday arrived with sunshine. Liam woke up at six fifteen and announced that it was the day of the performance and that he needed his hair done in a specific way that he could not fully describe but would know when he saw it. Nora did her best. He assessed the result in the bathroom mirror with the seriousness of a professional preparing for something significant. "It is acceptable," he said finally. She did not tell him she had been holding her breath. He ate his breakfast with focused efficiency and asked twice whether Ethan was coming and was satisfied both times with the confirmation that yes Ethan was coming and yes he would be there before ten and yes he knew where the daycare was. At nine forty five Liam was in his costume which was a brown tunic with green fabric leaves attached to the shoulders that Mrs Adler's team had constructed with impressive commitment to the concept. He stood very still while Nora adjusted the leaves. "How do I look?" he asked. "Like a very im

Ten Weeks

She told him that evening. Liam was asleep. Sophie had come and gone, leaving food and a look of quiet fury about Diana that expressed everything Nora felt but was too tired to articulate herself. Ethan was still there. He had stayed after Liam fell asleep without being asked and without making a point of it. Just still present at her kitchen table with coffee going cold in front of him when she came back from putting Liam to bed. She sat down across from him. "Ten weeks," she said. He nodded once. He had already called Henderson himself. She had known he would. "Are you angry?" she asked. He looked at his coffee. "I am beyond angry at my mother's methods. Anger requires a kind of surprise and I stopped being surprised by her a long time ago." He looked up. "But yes. In the specific sense of wanting this finished so that we can have our lives without her shadow in them. Yes." Nora wrapped her hands around her own cup. "Do you believe she is actually ill?" she asked. A pause.

The Dinner

Saturday arrived the way important things arrived. Quietly. Without announcement. Just then when she woke up, ordinary light came through the curtains and Lily's voice from the next room asking if today was the day Sophie was coming. It was. Sophie arrived at five with a bag that contained enough activities for three children and the energy of someone who had been looking forward to this evening almost as much as Nora had been dreading and anticipating it in equal measure. She stood in the hallway and looked Nora up and down with the comprehensive assessment of someone who had known her for twelve years. "You look beautiful," she said. "I look nervous," Nora said. "You look beautifully nervous," Sophie said. "It looks good." Liam appeared between them. He looked at Nora's dress. He looked at Sophie. He looked back at Nora. "You look different," he said. "Good or bad?" Nora asked. He thought about it seriously. "Pretty different," he decided. "Like when you wear the blue dres

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