All Chapters of The Turned Table: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Five years is enough time to become someone new.I learned that the hard way through sleepless nights with a colicky infant who refused to sleep unless he was held upright against my chest, through building a design consultancy from my kitchen table with a laptop that overheated if I ran more than three programs at once, through turning down every well-meaning friend who tried to set me up on a date before I was anywhere close to ready. My son, Julian, was four now sharp-eyed, stubborn, prone to asking questions with a directness that reminded me, infuriatingly, of his father in ways I tried not to notice too closely.I hadn't spoken to Stephen since the day I signed those papers. I'd heard things, the way you always eventually hear things about people you used to love, filtered secondhand through mutual acquaintances who meant well but never quite understood how much each detail cost me. That his company, Voss Industries, had expanded into three new cities. That Priscilla's name occa

The walkthrough should have taken an hour, by any reasonable estimate. It took three.I told myself it was purely practical that the site was enormous, forty-two floors of raw, unfinished potential, and that Rufus kept raising questions that genuinely mattered to the design: sightlines from the executive floors, the way natural light would move through the atrium by season, how the flow of a space would shape the working lives of the people who'd eventually fill it. I told myself it had absolutely nothing to do with the way he stood a fraction too close whenever he pointed something out, or the quiet, focused way his attention made me feel seen in a manner that had nothing whatsoever to do with the contract on the table.By the third floor, I had stopped bothering to hide my genuine enthusiasm for the space pointing out where a living wall could soften the harsh corporate lines of the atrium, sketching quick notes about acoustic paneling that would keep the open floor plan from turnin

Waiting for what, exactly?" My voice came out harsher than I planned, my throat dried up after the last twenty minutes. "Was I supposed to wander into a records room and figure this out by accident? You could’ve just called, Rufus. Or shown up at my door, like you did this morning. You had five years and a hundred chances to tell me, but you stood back and watched me find out like this." "You watched my life fall apart." My cheeks were wet now and I hated it. "I know." He didn’t bother defending himself. Somehow, that stung even more. "Sit down. Please. You’re shaking, Eberta—you’re in tears. I can’t stand seeing you cry." I sat because my legs finally agreed with him, even if the rest of me didn’t. He dragged a chair over and faced me closely, almost close enough for our knees to touch. I could see the fine lines at the corners of his grey eyes; his eyes captivated me even if I tried to detach, he looked so tired. Unfair how I never noticed before. God, this was gett

After leaving the records room, I couldn’t stop shaking. My head was messed up with voices. Priscilla’s, the stranger’s, both warning me I should’ve left everything buried. Julian's laugh still echoed in my mind , and wasn't sounding right anymore. I tried calling Renata six times, fumbling the first two because my hands wouldn’t cooperate. She finally picked up. “Bee? You’ve called me five times, is..” “Julian. Is he with you? Please, just tell me he’s there.” “He’s right here. He’s fine, Bee. He’s literally in the living room building a fort out of the couch cushions. ” She paused, her voice shifted from her soft laugh to a serious tone. Listening to my breathing on the other end. “What is going on with you? You're making me nervous". I was washed with instant relief that made my legs weak. I held the counter and made myself breathe before I tried talking again. "I’m coming over. I need to see him.” “Bee..." “I’ll explain when I get there.” I hardly remembered driving a

"They do." Two words and everything shifted. The air felt heavier, like we'd both been holding our breath and neither of us knew how to let it go. Stephen dripped water onto my floor, and I couldn't bring myself to care about the mess, not with an envelope in my hands that might blow up my entire life. Neither of us knew what came next. Someone out there had found us. That was the only fact in the room that mattered. "We need to call somebody," I said. "The police, Rufus, anyone." Stephen rubbed his face, looking so bone tired I almost wanted to sit him down myself. "And say what? A file vanished from a locked archive and we got a note with two words on it? Nobody's rushing out for that. If without something real." "So we wait till morning." "I never said wait." "Then what did you say, Stephen? Because it sounded a lot like wait." "I said I don't know what calling does for us right now, tonight, at this hour." His voice had an edge now, frustration finally breaking through the