All Chapters of THE CEO ALREADY KNEW : Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

The house was mine now.Not legally — Tia Sofia held the title, would hold it until she died, just as Vovó Daphne had held it until she died. But I was the one who lived there. The one who woke each morning to the sound of the ocean, who made coffee for one, who sat on the porch and watched the garden wake.It had been three months since the funeral.Three months of sorting, cleaning, deciding what to keep and what to let go. The journals I kept — all of them. The letters I kept — most of them. The clothes I donated, except for one sweater, Vovó Celeste's favorite, the one she'd worn in the garden on cold mornings. I wore it sometimes, when I missed her."You're becoming a hermit," Hana said during a video call.He was twenty now, studying marine biology in Lisbon, spending his weekends on the water. He had their eyes — Vovó Celeste's eyes — and I saw her in him sometimes."I'm becoming a writer.""That's the same thing."---The book was taking shape.Not the memoir I'd planned — som

The third spring in the house, I stopped measuring time by anniversaries and started measuring it by blooms. The roses first, then the lavender, then the wild poppies that crept in from the field beyond the garden wall. Joana said they were weeds. I said they were survivors. We agreed to disagree, and let them grow.The fig tree was heavy with fruit that year. More than any season since Vovó Daphne died, as if the tree had been waiting for permission to thrive. Joana harvested the figs in the early mornings, while the dew was still on the grass, and we ate them on the porch, sticky and sweet, the juice running down our chins."You look like a child," she said."I feel like a ghost.""What's the difference?""Children have futures. Ghosts have pasts."She kissed my cheek, fig-sweet."You have both."---The Oracle Letters archive had found its audience.Not a large one — the work was quiet, academic, sacred. But every week, someone new found it. A student writing a thesis. A therapist

The fifth spring in the house, I stopped asking myself if I was doing enough.Not because I had achieved everything — because I had finally understood that enough was not a destination. It was a feeling. A choice. The ability to sit on the porch at dawn, coffee in hand, Joana beside me, and feel that this — this ordinary morning, this garden, this woman — was everything I needed.The roses were blooming. The fig tree was heavy with fruit. The stones under its branches were warm from the sun, the names worn smooth by years of rain and wind and the touch of hands that had long since turned to dust.Orwell. Pippin. Fig. Oak. Hana. Celeste. Daphne.I said their names every morning.It had become a ritual, the way Vovó Daphne used to kneel and speak to the stones. I didn't kneel — my knees were younger than hers had been — but I touched each stone, one by one, and I remembered."You're talking to ghosts," Joana said from the porch."I'm talking to my family.""Same thing."---Baby Daphne

The seventh spring in the house, I learned to love the rain.Not the soft spring showers — the hard, insistent rain of the off-season, the kind that kept you indoors, that made you grateful for fireplaces and wool socks and the quiet company of someone who didn't need to fill the silence. Joana and I would sit on the porch, wrapped in blankets, watching the garden disappear behind sheets of water.The cat — Fig — would curl on my lap, her gray fur damp from her adventures."You're becoming a rain person," Joana said."I'm becoming a still person.""What's the difference?""Rain is about weather. Stillness is about choice."---Baby Daphne was seven now.She had lost her front teeth, gained a freckled face, and developed a passion for drawing. She filled notebooks with pictures of the garden, the ocean, the fig tree. Her parents sent me the best ones, and I pinned them to the refrigerator, the way Vovó Daphne used to pin Iris's drawings."Vovó Iris," she said during a video call, "I dr

The ninth spring in the house, the fig tree produced more fruit than anyone could remember. Miguel said it was the soil—decades of compost, of fallen leaves, of the bodies of the dogs and the women who had been buried beneath its shade. Joana said it was the rain—the gentle winter, the warm spring, the perfect alignment of weather and patience. I said it was something else. Something older. Something that didn't need explaining. The children came to harvest. Daphne—the older one, Hana's daughter—climbed the branches, fearless as a cat. Her brother Celeste stood below, catching the figs in a basket, his quiet face lit with concentration. Mira, now twenty-two and working as a social worker in Lisbon, had brought a friend—a young woman named Eva, who was studying to be a therapist, who had never seen a fig tree before. "This is incredible," Eva said, watching Daphne shimmy along a branch. "This is ordinary." "That's the same thing." --- The letters continued to arrive. N