All Chapters of The Other Mrs. Cross : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Isla POVBen stopped scrolling at the top of the column, and for a while nobody in either room said anything. The first entry was dated eleven years and two months back, eighteen hundred dollars from a personal account in Julian's name that had been closed since before Mabel was born, and the payee line already read ‘R. VOSS CONSULTING’. Odette leaned toward her screen with her lips moving, checking the date against something in her head."Five weeks before the lease," she said. "Before the company existed. Whatever he was paying her for, it wasn't work."I did the sum without wanting to. The first wire had gone out before the loan and before my parents' house went up as collateral, and, I counted twice to be sure, three weeks before the evening Julian asked me to marry him on the roof of our first apartment building with a ring in a paper napkin.Priya said not to go near her. She said it three different ways over the next ten minutes, a witness, possibly a defendant, anything I said

Isla POVThe old print shop on Alder Street still smelled faintly of ink, which the realtor called a selling point and which I privately thought was the best thing about it. It was a long narrow room with a pressed-tin ceiling and a cracked concrete floor that still carried the pale outlines of two press beds, and along the north wall ran a row of tall windows so grimy they turned the morning into weak tea. I stood in the middle of it with my shoes off, because you can't read a floor through leather, and walked its length heel to toe the way my first boss taught me, a habit I'd gone ten years without using and found waiting in my feet as if I never put it down."Forty-one feet," I said. "A little under.""Forty-one and a half." Pamela had spent the last twenty minutes describing a much shinier space on Fifth with a lobby fountain, and she consulted her tablet now with the air of a woman who knows when she's been corrected. "How did you do that without a ta

Isla POVI left the ring where it was. It sat on the counter beside the bottle, a thin gold band with a scratch along one edge, and neither of us touched it for a while, as if it might start rolling again."Does Josh know?""I'm telling him tonight. I've rehearsed it in the car for three days and every version ends with me saying sorry, and I don't even know what for." She pulled her coat sleeve over her hand and wiped her nose with it, a gesture I remembered from a dormitory hallway fifteen years ago. "He's going to be so reasonable about it. That's the part I can't stand.""Reasonable how?""He'll ask if I've thought it through. He'll offer to make a list of pros and cons." A damp laugh. "He'll offer to carry the boxes.""You could let him carry the boxes.""That would be the worst possible outcome. I’d feel guilty, and then I'd stay."I topped up both mugs, though neither of us was drinking much anymore, and sat on the stool across from her. Mabel was next door at the Fosters' unti

Isla POVThe Fosters' porch light came on across the street before I found a single word to put into the silence, and a moment later their front door opened and Mabel came down the steps in her coat, with the Fosters' teenage daughter walking a pace behind her and delivering her the way you'd deliver a casserole. I got to my feet so fast that my empty cup rolled off the step and into the hydrangeas."That's my cue," I said, as if I'd arranged it.Dorian had stood too, and he was already gathering both cups, mine included, which he'd somehow fished out of the bushes without my seeing. "I'll head out.""It's freezing. Come in, if you want to. There's chicken." I listened to myself. "I have a great deal of chicken.""I'd like chicken," he said gravely, and followed me up the walk.Mabel crossed the street at a march, said "Hi, Dorian" in the tone you'd use for a mail carrier you approved of, and handed me a drawing of what appeared to be a horse wearing glasses. Mrs. Foster had made her

Isla POVCamille arrived forty minutes early on Saturday with a tote bag of slime supplies and a look of such open, delighted conspiracy that I almost sent her home. She stood in my bedroom doorway with her arms folded, studying the three dresses I laid across the bed, and rejected two of them without a word, simply by tilting her head."The blue one makes you look like you're going to a funeral for someone you liked," she said. "The gray one is a deposition. Wear the green.""I wore the green to the gala.""Exactly, so you know it works." She picked it up and held it against me, squinting. "Not that green. The other green, the soft one from the back of the closet that you wear when you think nobody's watching."I hadn't known she noticed it. It was a wool wrap dress the color of sage, bought years ago in a shop that had since closed, and I put it on while she sat on the bed wearing an expression she clearly believed was neutral."Elliot's cooking tonight," she said, "so I'm in no hur