All Chapters of Off Limits : Chapter 91 - Chapter 95

Chapter 91: Thursday arrived the way most dreaded appointments seemed to in this particular family's life — too slowly in the anticipation and then, once it finally came, far too quickly once they were actually sitting in the waiting room, watching the clock above the fish tank tick toward the appointed hour with a particular cruel indifference to the fact that two entire days of quiet, controlled dread had led up to exactly this moment.Mia had barely slept the night before, lying awake beside Jake long after his own breathing had finally evened into something resembling rest, running through every possible version of what Dr. Ferreira might say, cycling between reassuring scenarios she didn't quite trust and frightening ones she refused to fully entertain, until exhaustion finally, mercifully pulled her under sometime past two in the morning."You look like you didn't sleep," Jake observed gently, watching her over coffee that morning, Hope perched at the kitchen table beside them,

Chapter 93: "What do you mean, not as alone as we thought?" Jake asked, gripping the phone tightly, Mia leaning in close beside him to listen, both of them standing in the kitchen where so many of the family's significant conversations seemed to unfold, the late afternoon light slanting gold across the counter exactly as it had the day the first letter arrived."I found a series of payments in Eleanor's financial records," Mr. Fenwick explained, his voice carrying the particular careful measure of someone who had clearly rehearsed how to deliver this news gently. "Monthly, going back nearly forty years, made out to a private family services organization, and then, starting about twenty years ago, direct payments to an individual — tuition support, what appears to be a down payment on a house at one point, various other transfers over the years. The recipient's name is Grace Morrison.""Who is she?" Mia asked, leaning closer to the phone."I did some careful digging, given how unusual

Chapter 95: Eli's research, once it properly got underway, took a direction none of them had anticipated — not toward another hidden relative this time, but backward, deeper into the story of the woman whose careful cruelty had apparently shaped both Robert and Eleanor so thoroughly that its effects had rippled forward across three full generations."I found her marriage record," he announced one Saturday afternoon, spreading a collection of printouts across the kitchen table with the particular methodical precision he brought to every research project. "Our great-great-grandmother. Vivian Torres, maiden name Ashworth. She married our great-great-grandfather in 1958.""That's the mother from Eleanor's journal," Jake confirmed, studying the marriage certificate carefully. "The one who apparently made both her children's lives so difficult.""That's her," Eli said. "But look at this." He slid a second document across the table, a newspaper obituary, the print faded but still legible. "