Semua Bab The Billionaire Ex's Secret Baby: Bab 101 - Bab 110

Noah POVSamuel gave me my instructions in the car, in the same voice he used for bedtime rules. “Dad, there are three things. One, don’t look at the trees. Two, don’t whisper about the trees. Three, don’t make a face about not looking at the trees.”“What kind of face?”“The one you make when you’re trying not to make a face.” He pointed at me in the mirror. “You’re doing it now.”Tracy laughed so hard she had to put her hand over her mouth. I rearranged my expression into something I hoped looked relaxed. Samuel studied it for a moment and sighed.“Better. But still a little much.”At Alder Park, the carousel was already turning, and the morning sun slanted gold across the lawn. On the far side, where the path curved toward a line of old maples, a wooden bench stood empty, and I knew without being told that Tracy had left Samuel’s note on it twenty minutes earlier, tucked under a small flat stone. She had walked there alone, set it down, and come back without once turning her head.

Noah POVSamuel had been talking about the second-best pillow for two weeks. On Tuesday night, he finally asked me the question I had been trying not to ask myself.“Dad, when is Elias coming to our house?”“I don’t know, buddy. It isn’t up to us.”“Who is it up to?”“Ilse. And Elias.”He thought about it with his chin on his fist. “Then you should ask.”I had already picked up my phone twice that day. The old version of me would have sent a car, a card, and a very polite letter on heavy paper. I typed the message four times and deleted it each time. In the end, I wrote: Would you and Elias like to come to dinner on Thursday? A quiet evening, nothing more. Samuel has prepared the second-best pillow.Ilse’s reply came within two minutes. Yes. He will not sleep tonight from excitement. Neither will I.Tracy read it over my shoulder and kissed my cheek. “You asked.”“I asked.”“It looks good on you,” she said.Elias arrived at six on Thursday in his green sweater, holding Ilse’s hand. At

Noah POV“Yes,” Tracy said. Her voice was steady, though her hand had gone tight in mine. “Please come closer.”I kept my eyes on the grass, as I had promised, and watched the brown shoes take three slow steps through the fallen leaves. They stopped about six feet away. Across the path, I heard a small, strangled sound, and I risked a glance to the side. Daniel had frozen in the middle of the walkway with a sandwich halfway to his mouth, staring very hard at the sky. The sandwich slid out of his fingers and landed on his shoe.“I didn’t see anything,” he told the clouds.“Nobody asked,” Marisol called back.The woman let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “You may look now. I’d rather you did. I’ve spent a long time being a pair of shoes.”Tracy lifted her head. I lifted mine.She was smaller than I had imagined. She wore a plain gray coat and a wide straw hat that shaded most of her face, and her hands were folded at her waist with the knuckles pale. Under the brim I saw a thin, t

Noah POVTracy was at the kitchen island at six in the morning, with her phone face-up and her tea untouched. I had slept badly, and I could tell from the shadows under her eyes that she had slept worse. She looked up when I came in and pulled out the stool beside her.“I have an answer,” she said. “I want to read it to you before I send it. If it’s cruel, I need you to say so.”“I’ll tell you.”She held the phone in both hands and read slowly. “I’m not ready for a room. I can do a doorway. On Saturday week, Elias will play in the music room at the quiet house. You may stand in the hallway outside, with the door open a hand’s width. I will be inside. You won’t speak and neither will I. After that, we’ll see.”I let the words settle. “That isn’t cruel.”“It feels like it.”“It feels like a door,” I said. “That’s different. A cruel person closes it.”She breathed out. I felt the old pull rise in my chest, the one that wanted to build a plan around her words. “I could have two men at the

Noah POVNobody spoke for a while after Mr. Abel closed the green ledger. The dryers turned in their long row, and a single sock tumbled round and round behind a porthole of glass. Tracy stood with her hand over her mouth. Samuel, who understood more than he ever let on, slipped his hand into hers and said nothing at all, which was not like him.I felt the old reflex move before I could stop it. My hand went to my inside pocket, where I kept my checkbook, and my mind had already started working out a number. A new roof. New machines. A pension for a man who had kept the dryers warm for a stranger. Tracy’s fingers closed gently around my wrist.“Ask him,” she said, very quietly.I took my hand out of my pocket. “Mr. Abel, what does this place need?”He considered the question as though nobody had put it to him in thirty years. “A new belt for number three,” he said. “She squeals. And somebody to teach my grandson to fold a fitted sheet. He’s fifteen, and he thinks it’s a rumor.”“A rum