Alle Kapitel von They Wanted Me Gone, So I Became Unforgettable: Kapitel 51 – Kapitel 60

Anastasia’s POV:“Mama, he took my crayon!”I did not look up from my laptop.“Zoe.”“He took the red one and he knows red is my favorite.”“Noah.”“I was using it first.”“No you weren’t!”“I was too!”I closed my laptop.They were sitting on the studio floor surrounded by enough art supplies to open a small shop and they were both looking at me with the expressions they had inherited from two different sides of the same stubbornness and I looked between them and thought about the meeting I had in forty minutes.“Noah,” I said. “Give your sister the red crayon.”“But—”“Now please.”He handed it over with the suffering expression of a four year old who had been deeply wronged by the universe and Zoe took it with the satisfaction of a three year old who had won something significant and they both went back to drawing and I opened my laptop again.My phone rang.Lucas.“I’m going to be late,” he said.“How late?” I said.“An hour. Maybe more. The Hong Kong call ran over and now Harlan

Anastasia’s POV:The restaurant Dean had chosen had white tablecloths and a sommelier who introduced himself and Simone looked at me across the table with an expression that said she was enjoying this very much.There were eight of us.Me and Lucas. Simone and Dean. Marcus, who had come alone and was handling it well. Adrian, who had become a quiet fixture in our lives over the past two years in the way that people did when they had been through something significant with you and simply never fully left. Isla, Dean’s sister, who had driven up from wherever she was currently living and arrived twenty minutes late with paint on her jacket and an unapologetic explanation about a piece she had been finishing. And Patricia, who Simone had insisted on inviting because she said Patricia needed to learn that dinner existed outside of federal buildings.Patricia had worn a dress.It looked like it had surprised her to put it on and she had not fully recovered.Lucas was in the navy jacket.I h

Anastasia’s POV:The client changed the brief three times in one meeting.I sat across from a woman named Sandra Ellison who had very strong opinions about her own taste and very little understanding of what that taste actually was and I smiled and took notes and redesigned the entire concept in my head while she talked and by the time she finished, I had something better than what she had asked for.That was the job.“So you understand what I’m looking for?” Sandra said.“Completely,” I said.Rosa was beside me taking notes with the focused efficiency of someone who had learned to translate client feeling into actual specification and she caught my eye briefly across the table and I saw her register that I had a plan and she relaxed slightly.We shook hands and left and in the elevator Rosa turned to me.“She changed the brief again,” she said.“She does not know what she wants,” I said. “She knows what she feels. Those are different problems and I know how to solve the second one.”

Anastasia’s POV:It started over something small.It always did.Lucas had a dinner. A client dinner, the kind that ran long because the client was important and the deal was significant and nobody at the table was going to be the person who looked at their watch first. He had told me about it on Monday. I had put it in my calendar. I had arranged for Mrs. Hartley to stay late.What I had not done was remember that Monday was also the night I told Simone I would come to her gallery opening for a piece Isla had in a new show and that I had promised weeks ago and had not written down because I was certain I would remember.I did not remember.I remembered at six fifteen on Wednesday when Simone texted.“See you at seven.”I stared at my phone in the kitchen while Noah was eating and Zoe was telling me something about her day that I was not fully absorbing and the particular feeling of having done this specific thing before settled over me like weather.I called Mrs. Hartley.She could n

Anastasia’s POV:Simone called me at seven in the morning on Thursday and I knew before I answered that something had happened because Simone did not call at seven in the morning unless something had happened.“He proposed,” she said.I sat up in bed.Lucas stirred beside me.“He proposed,” I said.“Last night,” she said. “After dinner. We were in the car outside my building and he just.” A pause. “He just did it. No restaurant. No speech. He said “Simone I love you and I have loved you since before I knew what to do with it and I would like to spend the rest of my life proving I deserve you and then he took out a ring.””“Simone,” I said.“It’s a very good ring,” she said.“What did you say?” I said.“What do you think I said?” she said.I looked at the ceiling.“You said yes,” I said.“Obviously I said yes!” she said, and her voice did the thing it did when she was feeling something large and had decided to let it happen. “Ana I said yes!”I got out of bed and went to the hallway so