Todos los capítulos de Too Late: She Is Gone With Your Baby: Capítulo 91 - Capítulo 100

Chapter 91ARIAThe costume fitting ran long.I stood on the small platform in the dressing room while the wardrobe woman pinned the hem of my dress, and I let my mind go somewhere else the way I always did during fittings, somewhere quiet, somewhere that was not the closing performance or the nine days or any of it.I had taken the ring off before she started.I always took it off for fittings. The stone caught on fabric sometimes, and I had learned to slip it off and drop it into the small pouch I kept in my bag, the same pouch I used for the few pieces of jewelry I traveled with, and I had done it without thinking this time, the way you did things you had done a hundred times before.The fitting finished. I thanked the wardrobe woman and got dressed and went back to the rehearsal room for the final full run before closing night.I did not think about the ring again until I was putting my things away at the end of the day.I opened the pouch to put it back on.It was not there.I lo

Chapter 93ADRIANThe jacket was still on the hanger by the door.I had not sent it to be cleaned. I told myself every day that I would, that I would hand it to the housekeeper or drop it at the place three streets over that had always dealt with my dry cleaning, and every day I walked past it and did not touch it and went to work instead.The stain had dried into the fabric now, a pale uneven shape across the front, faded from what it had been but still visible if you knew where to look. I knew exactly where to look. I looked at it most mornings on my way out the door, the way you looked at a bruise you were not ready to stop pressing.I did not examine too closely why I had kept it.Some part of me understood that it was the only physical evidence I had of a moment that mattered to me more than it should have. A five year old had looked at me with total, uncomplicated conviction and had made a decision about who I was, and the juice on my ja

Chapter 95ARIAI sat on the edge of Eli's bed with the ring cold in my palm and the folded page open across my knee, and I made myself read it properly, from the beginning, the way he would have wanted it read if he had ever meant for me to read it at all.The handwriting was careful at the top and got messier further down, the way his writing always did when his hand was moving faster than his thinking, and I understood, looking at it, that whatever this was, it had not been written calmly.Investigation. Final entry, it said, underlined twice.I read on.Evidence collected over six weeks. Jules not there Saturday mornings. Mum plays late at night, many marks in notebook. Jules stopped touching Mum's shoulder at the table. The man from the fan thing looks at Mum like something is happening. Mum's face when his name comes up.I recognized all of it. This was the log he had shown me himself, in pieces, over the weeks, the log I

Chapter 97ELIMum was holding me and I let her, even though part of me still wanted to pull back and hide the rest of what was inside me.I had not told her everything.The page said most of it. But there were things that did not fit on the page, things that lived in my body instead of in words, and I did not know how to give those to her, even now, even with her arms around me and her chin resting on the top of my head the way it did when she was trying not to cry.I decided to tell her anyway. Out loud. Because the page was already open and there was nothing left to protect by staying quiet."I woke up because of a bad dream," I said into her shoulder. "That's why I was awake. Not because I meant to listen.""I know," she said. "You don't have to explain that part.""I want to," I said. "It matters for the investigation."She made a small sound, almost a laugh, except it did not sound happy."Okay," she said. "Te

Chapter 99ARIARehearsal ran long that night.I kept the strings back after everyone else had gone. The phrase in the second movement was still not right, a small slide in the violas that landed a fraction late, and I made them play it again. And again. I heard it wrong each time and made them play it once more."Aria," my principal violist said, finally. "It's late.""One more," I said.We played it one more time. It was better. Not perfect. I let them go.I packed up my own violin slowly, my hands moving through the motions without my mind fully in them, and Eli sat on the floor by the door with his bag and his notebook, waiting the patient way he had learned to wait over five years of watching me finish things."Sorry, baby," I said. "I know it's late.""It's okay," he said. "I was doing an entry."I did not ask what the entry said. I had learned, since the night I read the folded page, to let him have the notebook without my eye