They Wanted Me Gone, So I Became Unforgettable의 모든 챕터: 챕터 81 - 챕터 90

Anastasia’s POV:It came up because of a form.Not a dramatic conversation or a planned moment or even a bad day that created the opening. A school enrollment form for Noah that asked for both parents’ names and their relationship status and Lucas was filling it in at the kitchen table and he looked at the form and then at me and said we should probably do something about this.I knew what he meant.The divorce papers that had never been filed sat in a legal grey area that Dean had been quietly maintaining for three years, a situation that had its own particular absurdity given that we lived together and had two children and had exchanged rings twice and had been through more together than most people went through in a lifetime and were technically still married in the way we had technically been still married the entire time.“What do you want to do?” I said.“I want to do whatever makes it real,” he said. “In the way it’s supposed to be real. Not technically intact because someone n

Anastasia’s POV:Noah wanted to know if we were different now.He asked it at breakfast, directly, the way he asked everything, with a piece of toast in one hand and his juice in the other and the expression of someone who had been thinking about this since last night and had decided morning was the right time to raise it.“Different how?” I said.“You got married again,” he said. “So are you different?”“We were already married,” I said.“But now you are even more married,” he said.Lucas looked at me over his coffee.I looked back.“We are the same people,” I said. “Just with a day now.”Noah thought about this.“Like how Max and I have been friends since school started,” he said, “but his birthday party was the day it felt real.”I looked at my son.“Exactly like that,” I said.He appeared satisfied and went back to his toast and I looked at Lucas and he was looking at me with the expression he wore when something had landed perfectly and he was not going to make a production of it

Anastasia’s POV:Marcus punched a man at a charity gala.Not hard. Not in a way that caused lasting damage. But hard enough that the man sat down suddenly and Marcus stood over him with the expression of someone who had been waiting to do that for considerably longer than the evening and had finally found a reason.I found out from Lucas who found out from Dean who was there and had to talk to the venue’s security team for forty minutes afterward.I called Marcus immediately.He picked up on the second ring.“Tell me,” I said.“The man said something about Elena,” he said.“What did he say?” I said.“It doesn’t matter what he said,” he said.“Marcus,” I said.“He said something about the federal case,” he said. “About her cooperation. He called her something I’m not going to repeat and I hit him.”I sat down.“Who was he?” I said.“Someone connected to the Meridian Group cases,” he said. “A business associate of someone who was indicted. He has been making noise in certain circles abo

Anastasia’s POV:Sandra Ellison called to fire me.She did it politely, in the particular way of people who had decided something and wanted to seem reasonable about it, and she said she had been thinking about the direction of the project and she felt it was time to take it somewhere else and she appreciated everything I had done so far.I listened.I said I understood.I hung up and sat at my desk for a moment.Then I called her back.She answered on the third ring with surprise in her voice because people who fired you did not expect you to call back immediately.“I would like fifteen minutes,” I said. “Before you make the final decision. Not to argue. Just to show you something.”A pause.“Okay. Fifteen minutes,” she said.I went to her.She lived in a building on the west side that had been renovated in the nineties and never touched since and her apartment was full of expensive things that did not talk to each other and a view of the city that she had clearly paid significantly

Anastasia’s POV:Lucas turned forty and did not want a fuss.He said this clearly and without ambiguity on three separate occasions in the two weeks before and I listened to him say it and I nodded and I said okay and then I called Simone.“He said no fuss,” I said.“I heard,” she said.“So,” I said.“Small fuss,” she said. “Contained fuss. Fuss with boundaries.”“That’s still fuss,” I said.“Everything is fuss if you look at it the right way,” she said. “The question is what kind.”We planned something small.Not a party. Not a room full of people. Just dinner at the house with the people who mattered, the kind of evening that arrived without announcing itself as a significant occasion even though it was.Lucas came home on the evening of his birthday and walked into the kitchen and stopped.Simone and Dean were there with Eve who was in her carrier on the kitchen counter looking at everything. Marcus and Elena. Victoria who had driven twelve minutes from her new house, which she had