All Chapters of Too Late To Love Me : Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

"Don't touch the wall," Okafor said. "Don't touch anything. Look."The apartment on Fenner Street was a long, bare room with scuffed pine floors and a mirror covering one wall. Mira stood in the doorway with Dante at her shoulder, in paper shoes and blue gloves Okafor had handed her at the door. It was Monday morning. The curtains were drawn. The room smelled of dust and rosin."A rehearsal studio," Okafor said. "She rented it by the month. Cash."In the middle of the floor stood a single chair. Beside it, a wooden music stand held a ring-bound notebook open at its last page.Mira walked to it. She had expected anger. What came was colder. She looked at the open page and read her own habits, her own life, set out in a stranger's neat print.Left hand: fist when frightened. Right: tucks hair behind ear, always the right ear. Laugh: half a second late, behind the hand. Sits: left leg over right, then switches. Holds cup: both hands, thumbs up.Page after page. Photographs were pinned al

"Stop here," Theo said. "Right here. I need a moment."Theo stood at the mouth of the back lane at ten to five on a Tuesday morning, in a long gray coat of Mira's, a brown wig that had belonged to a play, and dark glasses, a paper cup in one hand. Dante leaned on the wall a dozen paces off with his arms crossed and his face rigid with the effort of not laughing."What are you doing?" Dante said."Becoming her." Theo drew himself up, set his chin, and walked ten steps down the lane in a long, graceful, swinging stride. He lasted four. His heel caught a drain cover, and he went down on one knee. The wig slid forward over his eyes."Terrible.""I'm sensitive. It's a vulnerable process.""Get up.""I'd like it noted that I'm doing this for you." Theo got to his feet. He pushed the wig back. "This is a test. We need to know whether you can tell. From behind, at dawn, in a coat. Before you see a face.""I'd know her anywhere.""Would you?" Theo said, quite gently. "Last week you couldn't pi

"Her name is Tess Marwick," Okafor said. "She's thirty-one. She has been crying since I told her what she was part of."Through the glass of the interview room, a young woman sat with both hands around a paper cup and a round hatbox at her feet. She wore a gray cardigan, the same gray cardigan, Mira saw, as in a hundred of the photographs. It was Wednesday, the twentieth of May, a week after the road in the rain."Dorsey found her through the car," Okafor went on. "It's registered to a man in Lakeport who died last year. The coach drove it until May. Then it went to Tess, who thought she was renting it from his son.""Does she know who I am?" Mira said."She knows exactly who you are. She's been wearing you for two months."Dante stood at Mira's shoulder with his arms folded. He hadn't spoken since Okafor opened the door. He stood, lately, like a man holding a door shut with his back."I'd like to talk to her," Mira said."I thought you might."Tess stood up when Mira came in. She was

"He comes on alternate Sundays," Vittorio said. "This is not his Sunday. That is why you're here."The visiting room smelled of bleach and old coffee. It was Sunday, the twelfth of July. Vittorio sat with his hands folded on the steel table, thinner than in April, his gray scrubs washed soft. Behind a pane of glass in the corner, Okafor sat with a notebook open and her face carefully blank."Who comes?" Dante said."Roger." Vittorio looked at the table. "Every second Sunday since the bail was revoked. He brings me the news. He tells me what is happening outside, and what I am to think about it." The dry mouth moved. "I have grown fond of the news.""What did he tell you?""That my son is learning to bake." Vittorio raised his eyes. "That my son is a long way down in the world. That the girl has been difficult." He paused. "And that on the eleventh of October, I am to be free."Dante's chest tightened. "Free of what?""I asked him that. He said, of all of it, Vittorio. The old debt. Th

"Nobody signs anything," Mira said. "Not a check. Not a receipt. Not a Christmas card.""I could teach her to sign with her left hand," said Laurent. "I've always wanted to be a forger.""Papa.""Only for fun."It was Friday, the eleventh of September. The Beaumont dining room held eleven people and a map. Okafor stood at one end of the long table with a marker. Kessler sat at the other with his briefcase on his knees. Between them sat Kate, Theo in a borrowed tie, Dorsey eating a biscuit with great care, Rosa, Anne, Laurent in his cardigan, and Dante at Mira's elbow."It's thirty days," Okafor said. "On the eleventh, Mrs. Russo is where she can see everyone. Not a minute alone. Phones in a basket. All of them.""Mine too?" said Theo."Especially yours.""I have a very sensitive relationship with my phone.""The basket's by the door," said Anne."Thirty days without signing," Kessler said. "I'll hold your post. I'll sign for the flour. Theo will be told not to speak to you." He cleare