Too Late: She Is Gone With Your Baby의 모든 챕터: 챕터 41 - 챕터 50

Chapter 41JULIANI did not go far.That was the thing about deciding you were done. You still had to go somewhere, and the somewhere I chose was a bar three blocks from the hotel that I had passed every day of the tour without going into, a dark-fronted place with music coming through the walls and a sign that had seen better decades.I went inside.It was the kind of bar that did not require you to be anyone in particular. No one looked up when the door opened. The lighting was low enough to be forgiving and the music was loud enough to make conversation optional. I found a stool at the far end of the counter and sat down and ordered whiskey, which was not what I usually drank, but usual was not what tonight called for.The first glass went down quickly.I ordered a second and let it sit in front of me for a while, looking at the amber color of it in the dim light, and tried to think about something other than the look on Aria's face when I said I didn't know if we should get marrie

Chapter 43ARIAJulian did not come back in the morning.I had fallen asleep in the chair at some point before dawn, a shallow uncomfortable sleep that left me with a stiff neck and the particular hollowness of someone who had not actually rested but had simply lost consciousness for a few hours out of exhaustion. When I woke the room was gray and Eli was still asleep and Julian's side of the bed had not been touched.I sat with that for a moment.Then I got up and washed my face and went to make breakfast because Eli would wake soon and he would want food and he would want Julian and I needed to have at least one of those things ready.He appeared at seven fifteen, shuffling in with his blanket trailing behind him, his eyes finding the room in the automatic survey he did every morning, cataloguing who was present and who wasn't."Jules isn't back," he said."He had an early start," I said. "Come and eat."He came and ate, but he was quieter than usual, the way he was quiet when somet

Chapter 45ADRIANI had been eating breakfast alone when Ethan came in.That was not unusual. I ate breakfast alone most mornings, had done for years, the particular silence of a large house occupied by one person who had stopped noticing the size of it. The housekeeper left things on the kitchen counter and I ate them standing up or sitting at the island with my phone propped against the fruit bowl, reading through overnight reports and market updates and the accumulated correspondence of a company that did not pause because its director was having a difficult few months.Ethan knocked once and came in, which was his standard procedure when something needed to be said that could not wait for the office.I looked up from my coffee.His expression told me it was not a routine matter before he said a word."What is it," I said.He set a folder on the island beside my coffee cup. "Ms. Laurent did not return home last night."I set my cup dow

Chapter 47ARIAI came back to the hotel at four in the afternoon.The rehearsal had run long, not because I had pushed it the way I had been pushing things lately, but because the closing program genuinely needed the time and I had made myself stay present for every minute of it, made myself set down everything that was happening outside the rehearsal room and give the music what it was owed. It had cost me considerably to do that. My head had wanted to be somewhere else for most of the afternoon and I had kept pulling it back, bar by bar, passage by passage, until the session was done and there was nothing left to keep me there.I had not heard from Julian since the pavement outside the hotel that morning.He had said he would call Eli after lunch and I had spent the afternoon not knowing whether he had, not wanting to check because checking felt like surveillance and I had already used his location pin once in the past twenty-four hours and I was not goin

Chapter 49ARIAI woke before my alarm.The room was still dark and Julian was on his side of the bed, his back to me, his breathing the slow even rhythm of someone either deeply asleep or very good at pretending. I lay still for a moment and looked at the ceiling and thought about nothing specific, which was the only way I had learned to survive the first few minutes of mornings like this one.Then I got up and went to start breakfast.---Julian came out of the bedroom at seven.He was already dressed. Shirt tucked, jacket over his arm, the version of him that existed for the outside world fully assembled before he had spoken a single word to me. I noticed that. I noticed it the way you noticed small changes in a landscape you had been looking at for years."Morning," he said."Morning," I said. "Coffee's ready."He poured a cup. I finished cutting the fruit. We moved around the small hotel kitchen with the careful coordination of two people who knew each other's movements well enou