They Wanted Me Gone, So I Became Unforgettable의 모든 챕터: 챕터 101 - 챕터 110

Anastasia’s POV:Gerard arrived with the photograph and a bottle of wine and the particular careful energy of a man who understood that what was about to happen mattered and was trying not to make it feel like it mattered too much so the children would not be frightened off by the weight of it.He had understood the children correctly.Noah assessed him at the door the way he assessed everything, directly, with the full attention of someone who had not yet learned to pretend he was not looking.“Did you bring the photograph?” Noah said.Gerard looked at him.“Your father mentioned it,” Noah said. “He said you were bringing one of his father.”“I did,” Gerard said.“Can I see it?” Noah said.“Noah,” I said.“After dinner,” Gerard said. “I thought we would look at it together. If that is acceptable.”Noah considered this.“Okay,” he said. “But after dinner, not after dessert. I get tired after dessert.”“Noted,” Gerard said, and something in his face did the thing it did, the almost smi

Anastasia’s POV:Eve Mercer at nine months old had opinions.Not expressed in words yet but in the particular clarity of a person who knew what she wanted and made that known without ambiguity. She wanted to be held facing outward so she could see everything. She wanted specific people and would make her preference known when she did not get them. She wanted to be in the middle of whatever was happening and would protest with considerable volume if placed at the edge of it.She had Simone’s focus and Dean’s stubbornness and something entirely her own that neither of them could account for, a quality of attention that made you feel when she looked at you that you were being assessed and filed.Zoe recognized it immediately.The first time Zoe held her, about three months after Eve was born, she had looked at Eve and Eve had looked back and Zoe had said she is paying attention and Simone had said yes she is and Zoe had said good and had held her with the careful focus of someone who und

Anastasia’s POV:We were at her kitchen table when she said it.Eve was asleep in the other room and Dean was at a late meeting and the apartment was quiet in the way it got when Eve was down and neither of us felt like going home yet and Simone had opened wine and we were sitting the way we had always sat, without agenda, just two people who had been through enough together that sitting in the same room without doing anything was its own kind of good.She had been quieter than usual.Not sad. Not distant. Just turned inward in the way she got when something was moving through her that had not finished moving.I did not ask.She would say it when she was ready.She said it about an hour in.“I’ve been thinking about something,” she said.“What?” I said.She looked at her wine.“When Dean proposed,” she said. “In the car outside my building. He said he had loved me since before he knew what to do with it.”“I remember,” I said.“I did not say that back,” she said. “In the moment. I sai

Zoe’s POV:The problem with having parents who are a love story is that everyone knows about it.Not in the way where your parents are embarrassing at the school gates or kiss in front of your friends or say things like we just love each other so much in that voice that makes you want to leave the country. My parents are not like that. My parents are actually quite contained about the whole thing which makes it worse because the story gets out anyway and when it gets out it has the quality of something real which is considerably more difficult to recover from than something embarrassing.My mother designed the community center three blocks from our school.My father’s company is in the building everyone can see from the main road.There’s a painting in the corridor between the two community center buildings that is literally a picture of our family if our family were shapes and if you look at it long enough, you can see the gap at the bottom of the garden wall which I specifically hel

Zoe’s POV:Noah found out about Daniel on a Wednesday.I do not know how. I did not tell him. Clara did not tell him because Clara understands the concept of information security. Jess would not have told him because Jess and I have an understanding based on the fact that I once covered for her when she came home late from something she was not supposed to be at and she has owed me since.My best guess is Max.My best guess is always Max.Max is not malicious. Max does not have a malicious bone in his body. Max is just the kind of person who says things without first running them through the filter of should I say this and the answer to should I say this is frequently no but Max never gets there in time.Noah appeared in my doorway on Wednesday evening while I was doing homework.He leaned against the frame.He said nothing.I kept doing homework.He kept leaning.“What,” I said.“Nothing,” he said.“Noah.”“I am just standing here,” he said.“You are standing in my doorway with a fac