All Chapters of Velvet Chains : Chapter 191 - Chapter 199

What Mercy CostsAlexander woke up properly on the fourth day, in a narrow hospital bed with a cast on his left leg, a brace around his ribs, and an elderly woman asleep in the armchair beside him. He lay very still for a while, looking at the ceiling. The room was quiet. Sunlight came through a half-open blind in long gold stripes. He could hear a faint hum of machines, the slow, steady sound of someone breathing, and, somewhere down the hall, a cart rattling over linoleum. He didn't move, in case it all went away. You're awake, said Delia. She hadn't opened her eyes. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and her chin on her chest, looking like a woman dozing in a church pew. But her voice was clear. I'm awake, Alexander said; it came out as a croak.Good. She opened one eye, and then the other, and looked at him with the stern, tender expression of a woman who had raised three children and buried a husband. Don't ever do that again.Do what? Run into a burning building. Get a bea

Three Empty ChairsThe morning of the ceremony came up clear and gold, with a light breeze off the water and not a single cloud in the sky. Vivienne woke before dawn. She lay for a while in the big white bed with the shutters half open and the first pale light creeping across the ceiling, listening to the soft sounds of the villa waking up around her. A door closed somewhere, a tray rattled, a woman laughed in the garden, low and happy, and a man's voice answered. Beside her, Damian slept on his stomach with one arm flung across her waist, his hair sticking up in all directions, looking about nineteen. She lay there for a long time, simply looking at him. It's today, she thought. It's really today. Then a small, warm, determined body climbed onto the bed, and a sticky hand patted her cheek, and a high voice announced, with great seriousness, Mama. Up Boats. Boats? Vivienne mumbled. Big boats. Out window. She sat up, laughing, and gathered Eleanor onto her lap. Through the open shutter

Marcus ThomasBreathe, said Damian. Breathe, love. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. I am breathing, Vivienne gasped.Then breathe more.She would have laughed if the next contraction had not seized her at that exact moment and squeezed her whole body like a giant fist. She dug her fingers into the bed rail and groaned through her teeth, and the white light of the labor room swam in front of her eyes. Snow was falling steadily beyond the window. Down in the street, the yellow lights of taxis crawled along Second Avenue in a long, slow line. It was ten minutes past three in the afternoon, and they had been at NYU Langone for exactly two hours and fifty-one minutes.That one was big, said the nurse, calmly, checking the monitor. Very good, Mrs. Voss. You're doing beautifully.I don't feel beautiful, said Vivienne. Nobody ever does, said Dr. Patel, from the foot of the bed. She was a small, brisk, serene woman who had delivered Eleanor two years earlier, and she wore the same e

Margaux's LettersSit, said Margaux. Please, I should like to say this once, properly, and I should like you to be comfortable.Vivienne sat down in the little armchair opposite, with her heart beating slowly and hard. The lamp threw a soft circle of gold across the carpet. Outside the window, the cove lay dark and still beneath a sky full of stars, and the low rhythmic sound of the tide came faintly through the open sash, in and out, in and out, like breathing.Margaux folded her hands over the writing case, and looked at her for a long moment. She was very small in the big chair. The shawl had slipped from one shoulder, and her white hair, loosened by the sea wind, lay in soft wisps around her thin face. But her eyes, in the lamplight, were as bright and clear and kind as they had ever been. I am going to die soon, she said.Vivienne's breath stopped.Not tonight, I think. Perhaps not this month. But soon, Margaux's voice was perfectly calm. Dr. Okonkwo-Reid told me in the spring.

Home, Little ShipEleven years later, on the first Saturday in August, the sun came up over Blackwater Cove exactly as it always had.It rose out of the sea as a thin line of gold, then a red arc, then a blaze, and spilled itself across the harbor in long bright ribbons. The water went from slate to rose to a deep clear blue. A gull cried, wheeled, and dropped out of the sky onto the weathered post at the end of the dock. Somewhere behind the village, a rooster crowed, and someone laughed, and the first smell of coffee drifted out through the open windows of the little gray cottage on the rise.SUSAN'S HOUSE, said the sign over the door, in fresh blue letters. It had been repainted every spring for eleven years. Nobody had ever suggested stopping.Vivienne stood on the porch in her bare feet, in an old paint-stained sweater, with a mug in both hands, watching the light come up. She was forty-seven now. Her hair had gone silver at the temples, and she wore it loose, because Damian like