All Chapters of Once Discarded, Now Desired : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

105 Chapters

Five People

Lily had moved the drawing to the kitchen table.Not on the counter. Not on the windowsill beside the blue button. The table. Where people sat. Where things that mattered were placed. He had weighted the corners with objects he had selected carefully. A crayon. A small stone he had carried home from the park three weeks ago. His favourite blue block. The button Mei had given him.He was asleep by the time they got home.Sophie had fallen asleep on the sofa with her shoes still on and a half-eaten biscuit in her hand which was so completely Sophie that Nora stood looking at her for a moment before she took the biscuit and covered her with the blanket from the armchair.Ethan was standing at the kitchen table looking at the drawing.Nora came and stood beside him.Five figures. Lily's hand had worked harder on this one. More detail than usual. Each figure had a face. Simple circles with dots and curves but intentional. Each one is different.The tallest figure had a straight line for a

Seven O'Clock

She almost cancelled twice.Not because she did not want to go. Because wanting to go felt enormous in a way that made her stand in front of her wardrobe for twenty minutes doing nothing useful and then sit on the edge of her bed telling herself she was being ridiculous.Sophie appeared in the doorway.She looked at Nora sitting on the bed.She looked at the wardrobe standing open.She walked to the wardrobe, selected a deep green dress without deliberation and placed it on the bed beside Nora."That one," Sophie said."You did not even look properly," Nora said."I looked enough," Sophie said. "It is pasta at his apartment, not a state dinner. Stop thinking about it so hard."She left before Nora could argue.Nora looked at the green dress.She put it on.Lily was staying with Sophie tonight.He had been informed of this arrangement with the same briefing she used for all significant schedule changes. Clear. Direct. Full information.He had listened carefully.Then he had said: "Will

Mei

Ethan was already moving before the call ended.Jacket from the chair. Keys from the counter. The particular focused speed of someone who had learned recently what it meant to have a child and was still learning what it meant to be afraid for one.Nora stood from the table."Go," she said.He looked at her."Come with me," he said.She had not expected that.She had been preparing to call Sophie and go home and wait and not make this moment about herself when it was entirely about him and Mei and Elise and a hospital in Hong Kong that was eleven hours away by plane."Ethan," she said carefully. "Elise did not call me. She called you.""I know," he said. "I am asking you anyway."She looked at him.At the controlled urgency in his face and underneath it something that was not controlled at all. Something that had arrived the moment he heard Elise's voice and had not left.Fear. Clean and honest and entirely human."What happened?" she said. "Did Elise say?""Fever," he said. "High enou

The Second Line

She sat on the bathroom floor.Not dramatically. Not with her back against the wall the way people sat in films when the world had shifted. Just sat cross-legged on the cold tile with the test in her hand and waited for the three minutes the instructions specified with the particular stillness of someone who had learned that rushing the truth never changed what it was.Lily's voice came from the kitchen.He was talking to Sophie who had emerged from the spare room and was clearly being briefed on something important involving shoes and breakfast and what Sophie was and was not permitted to touch in the kitchen without supervision.Normal sounds.The most ordinary Tuesday morning sounds in the world.She looked at the test in her hand.She thought about it three weeks ago.A Tuesday evening. Late. She had been tired in a way that felt different from ordinary tiredness. The kind that sat behind the eyes and did not shift with sleep. She had noted it and filed it and moved on because the

Friday

Friday arrived the way important things always arrived.Without fanfare. Without the particular weight the days before it had carried. Just a morning that looked like other mornings until you remembered what it contained.Nora woke at six.Lily was still asleep. The apartment was quiet in the specific way it was quiet before he woke up. Complete. Unhurried. A silence that knew it had a limited lifespan and was making the most of it.She lay in the dark and thought about three days.Three days since the bathroom floor and the second line and Lily asking about curly hair with the casualness of someone discussing weather. Three days of carrying something privately that felt larger every morning and more real every time she looked at her son across the breakfast table and understood that his world was about to change again.She had not told Ada.She had not told Sophie anything further beyond what Sophie had already read in her face on Tuesday morning.She had not called Henderson or Grac

What Ada Knew

Nora called her mother back immediately.Ada answered on the second ring sounding entirely unsurprised to be hearing from her."How long?" Nora said."Two weeks," Ada said calmly. "You get a specific look when something significant is sitting in you. You have had it for two weeks. I noticed at Sunday lunch when you turned down the coffee and pretended you simply did not want any." A pause. "You always want coffee."Nora looked at the coffee going cold on the table in front of her."I should have known you would notice," she said."Yes," Ada said. "You should have."Ethan was watching her face from across the table with the quiet attention he brought to conversations he was only hearing one side of."Is Lily alright?" Nora said."He is in the garden inspecting the tomatoes with the seriousness of a government official," Ada said. "He has opinions about the ones that are not yet ripe." A pause. "He told me about the sixth figure. He explained the curly hair decision very thoroughly.""H

What Diana Knows

Nora did not hang up.She sat very still with the phone against her ear and the kitchen quiet around her and thought about a woman who was supposed to be facing additional charges from inside a facility and was somehow calling her on a Friday afternoon from a number she did not recognise."How are you calling me?" Nora said."The same way I have always managed things that people believed were not possible," Diana said. "Carefully and in advance.""You are supposed to be in custody," Nora said."I am cooperating with my legal team," Diana said. "Cooperating allows certain supervised communications. My lawyer has been creative with the definition of supervised." A pause that carried the particular quality of Diana being precise about something she had no intention of fully explaining. "That is not what matters right now.""What matters right now is that you are calling me from an unregistered number," Nora said. "Which Grace Alderton is going to want to know about immediately.""Call Gr

What Constance Knows

She waited until Ethan was focused entirely on the risotto. He had reached the stage that required constant attention. Standing at the stove with a wooden spoon, adding stock in careful increments, watching the pan with the concentration he brought to everything he took seriously. He would not look up for several minutes. She picked up her phone. She walked quietly to the bedroom and closed the door. She called Constance. Constance answered on the first ring. "Is he in the kitchen?" Constance said. "Yes," Nora said. "Tell me." A breath on the other end. The particular breath of someone organising information before delivering it in the right sequence. "When I was verifying Ada's financial documentation this week," Constance said, "my researcher ran cross-references across every name connected to Gerald's network going back twelve years. Standard verification process. Making sure nothing in Ada's material had been contaminated by Gerald's people before it reached Grace." "And?

The Name on the Page

The name was Marcus Cole.Nora stared at it on her phone screen and felt the particular cold of something arriving that had been moving toward her for a long time without her seeing it.Three sentences beneath his name.Subject has a familial connection to Marcus Cole through maternal line. Cole is the son of Ada Hayes's former business partner Raymond Cole who dissolved their partnership eighteen years ago following a financial dispute. Monitor for relevance.She read it twice.She looked at Ethan at the stove.She looked at the name again.Marcus Cole had worked beside her for weeks inside Ethan's company. He had brought her coffee she had not asked for. He had appeared in her office doorway on difficult mornings with the warmth of someone who asked nothing complicated and offered everything straightforward.He had never once mentioned that his father had been Ada's business partner.Never once said our families have history or I know your mother's name or anything that acknowledged

The Meeting

Ethan saw the message before she could decide whether to show him.He had come to stand beside her while Grace was still on his phone and he had looked at her screen and read it and his expression had shifted into something that required a moment to fully form.He ended the call with Grace.He looked at her."You typed where," he said."Yes," she said."Nora.""I know," she said. "But Marcus has information about what happened between our parents. Information Ada may not have. If there is something in that history that connects to everything else I need to know what it is before Grace closes this."He looked at her steadily."You are not going alone," he said."No," she said. "I am not."His reply arrived four minutes later.A coffee shop she knew. Fifteen minutes from the apartment. Public. Busy on Friday evenings. Tables visible from the street.She showed Ethan.He looked at the location."I will be inside before you arrive," he said. "Different table. You will not see me but I wil

...

5 6 7 8 9

...

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP