All Chapters of The Other Mrs. Cross : Chapter 91 - Chapter 93

Isla POVI got down off the table because my body needed somewhere to go, and I walked the length of the print shop with the long tape in my hand before I trusted myself to say anything at all. The concrete was cold through my socks, since I kicked off the muddy boots by the door out of an old habit from site walks, and when I reached the far wall I turned and held out the tape's brass hook across forty feet of bare floor."Take this."Dorian looked at the hook, then at me, and came down the room in his good shoes and took it without a single question. He had rolled his sleeves to the elbow somewhere on the way, which I took to be a sign of intent."Stand on the first mark by the column. I'll walk it back.""You've measured it. Forty-one and a half.""With my feet, and I'd like it checked by something less biased." I crouched, pressed the case against the baseboard, and paid the tape out along the floor. "Hold it flat. If it sags

Isla POVThe sign painter was a stooped man named Ottis who arrived with a ladder, a rag, and a coffee can full of brushes, and he didn't say a word until the first letter was on the glass. Then he stepped back with his head tilted and asked whether I wanted the ‘I’ plain or fancy."Is there a fancy?""Some people like a flourish." He waved a brush at the wet R. "Most go plain. Easier to read from a car.""Could you put a small hook at the top of the I, curled to the left, the way a person writes it by hand?"He looked at me over his glasses. "Nobody asks for that.""A teacher in fourth grade said it looked confident.""Did it?""I never found out. I just kept doing it."Ottis shrugged and bent to his can, and by ten the window read ISLA RENWICK in black capitals with gold edging, ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN beneath it in smaller type, and at the top of the ‘I’ a tiny curl that nobody would see unless they went looking. I stood on the sidewalk with my arms folded while a bus went past, and