All Chapters of Contractually His: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

They did not open the box that night. Julian carried it home on his knee in the back of thecar, both hands flat on the lid as though it might otherwise slide, and set it on the desk in hisstudy and stood looking at it for a long time. Then he went upstairs and sat on the floor ofthe nursery in the dark, with his back against Grace's crib, and stayed there until she wokeat ten and needed feeding.It was Sunday of the following week before he was ready. Tobi had taken Grace to the park.Amara sat with him in the study, on the leather sofa beneath the window, and Julian cut thekitchen string with a pair of scissors, carefully, as though he were defusing something.Inside, the letters were stacked in order, each one in a plain envelope, each envelopeaddressed in a child's handwriting to Mrs. Eleanor Cross, with an address that had beencrossed out and rewritten in a hand Julian recognized instantly and with a cold shudder: hisfather's. The rewritten address was a post office box in

Grace turned one on a warm Saturday in late spring, and Tobi treated the occasion with thegravity most people reserve for state dinners. He had been planning the cake for six weeks.Three tiers, sage green, with a fondant forest along the base that he had sculpted himself,one tiny fox at a time, at the penthouse kitchen counter after Grace was asleep. Amara hadoffered to help twice and been dismissed twice."You'll only distract me," he had said, not looking up from a fondant squirrel the size of athumbnail. "This is an artistic statement."By noon the terrace was full. Richard had arrived an hour early with a wrapped box the sizeof a suitcase and refused to say what was in it. Nia and Elias came with a sunhat for Gracethat she immediately pulled off and threw over the railing, to general applause. Hendricksand his wife had brought the quilt from the baby shower, now slightly faded from beingdragged across floors, and Hendricks's wife had noticed with obvious pleasure that it h

Priya's discreet check took four days and confirmed everything. Claire Cross, twenty-four,taught third grade at a public elementary school in a small town two hours north of the city.Gerald Cross's second wife, Denise, had died in March after a short illness. Claire was theonly child of that marriage. There was nothing in her record, her finances, or her life thatsuggested anything other than exactly what her letter said.They agreed on a Sunday and a neutral place, a quiet café with a garden in a market townhalfway between their homes. Julian had wanted somewhere public. Amara had wantedsomewhere with an exit. They found somewhere with both. Tobi took Grace for theafternoon, insisting that he had "a strategy involving trains and a very small hat," and Juliankissed his daughter's head for a long time before handing her over.Claire was already there when they arrived. She had chosen a table in the corner of thegarden, beneath a trellis, with her back to the wall, and she stoo

The dinner Tobi had promised took place the following Friday, and he treated it with thesame gravity he had brought to the birthday cake, spending two full days deciding on amenu before finally, at Julian's gentle insistence, simply cooking the pot roast he made bestand stopping second-guessing himself.Claire arrived on time, in a dress instead of the cardigan, visibly nervous in a new way notthe wary, braced nervousness of the café, but the ordinary nervousness of someonemeeting a family properly for the first time and wanting, very badly, to be liked. Nia and Eliasarrived shortly after, and Richard, and for a moment the apartment was full of the particularcontrolled chaos of a family gathering, Grace shrieking somewhere underfoot, Tobi shoutinginstructions from the kitchen, everyone talking over everyone else.Claire stood near the window for the first ten minutes, a glass of wine untouched in herhand, watching it all with the careful attention of someone cataloging someth

The invitation arrived exactly as Amara had come to expect from Julian by now quietly,without explanation, three weeks before the date itself, asking only that she keep theevening free and wear something she could dance in. Grace's second birthday had passedthe month before, another joyful, exhausting celebration, cake in another color this time(Grace had specific opinions now, and the opinion had been purple, and also I want to help),and Amara had assumed, given the recent flurry of family occasions, that this particularevening would be something similarly modest.It was not the rooftop terrace this time. Julian took her, blindfolded for the last ten minutesof the drive despite her laughing protests, to the same private club where the very firstboard dinner had taken place the dinner where Reyes had first tested her, all those years ago, and where Julian's hand had found hers beneath the table for exactly three seconds."You brought me back here," she said, once the blindfold