A Little Life A Novel Novelas e Histórias

"Zoe!" Caleb's voice trembled with fear and panic. As my consciousness faded, I felt no fear, only a strange sense of relief. Was it finally ending? I thought I had 24 hours left. Had it come even sooner? Maybe that was better. At least I wouldn't have to suffer through the pain eating away at me anymore. "Caleb, the journal on the nightstand and the voice recording are my parting gifts to you. Please remember to take a look," I thought.

"'Just a little cold'? He's crying so hard he can barely breathe." "It's such a pain to go to the hospital in the dead of night! Imagine the noise, waking up Nathaniel–Ayden, then what?" Derick chimed in, nodding. "Yeah, honey. Don't fret. Take care of our little one. I'll take Jasmine's boy to the hospital first thing in the morning." I could not help but snort with a mix of laughter and frustration. Just then, the maid came running over, clutching my child. "Ms. White, Ayden seems to have caught a cold."

"Go now. In your next life, you will be born into a loving, ordinary family, with loving parents, a healthy body, and a peaceful and happy life." I turned back, taking one last look at the world full of scars and entanglements. The small sunflower windmill in front of my tombstone spun tirelessly in the wind. In the distance, Timothy's foundation allocated its first grant to help a female awake her wolf. My spirit lived on forever in another form now. I smiled with relief, turned around, and plunged into that warm light without looking back. Goodbye, Timothy Russell. Goodbye to the six years I spent loving you.

I thought about coffee outside a door and chess past midnight and a floristry report in his handwriting and the pale oval stone chosen in a Marylebone jeweller on a November Saturday. I thought about what temporary becomes when you stop letting it be the whole story. What it becomes is this. A kitchen that smells like jollof rice and effort. A ring that was chosen rather than assigned. A man reading beside you on a sofa with his arm around your shoulders like you have always been there. A life that is small and warm and completely yours. Not a comma anymore. A full stop. And then, because life does not actually stop, just shifts and deepens and asks you to keep going — A new beginning. THE E

" Behind us, Jody's heart-wrenching sobs filled the air. I pushed down the last bit of pain in my chest and walked into the sunset. Chloe, from now on... Daddy is going to live a good life for you in this world. The End

Josephine was not sure if she had done the right thing. But her child's life was on the line. She had her back against the door, and her heart was beginning to race. Again and again, she told herself it was only a transfusion. She tried to convince herself that once I regained my memories, I would forgive her. She tried to convince herself that once I regained my memories, I would forgive her. Every trace of light in them had gone out, leaving behind only a lifeless wasteland.

Just the place where the real story started. The one that would be ordinary and extraordinary simultaneously. That would be Saturday cooking and Sunday walks and dinner tables and December snow on London rooftops and Diana’s garden in summer and Amara calling from Philadelphia with sharp questions and my mother’s pepper soup and the Emmanuel Okoye Fund doing the work it was built to do and the book that was not not being written and the child or children who would arrive in their own time and who would grow up in a home built entirely differently from the one this man had grown up in. All of it. The full, specific, unhurried, entirely chosen texture of a life.

I was supposed to be nothing more than a doomed side character in someone else's story. After I woke up to the truth, though, I became the male lead's best friend instead—and ended up with the wealthy girl who had always loved him, leaving him free to live happily ever after with the school's golden girl. Ten years later, though, he made a very public announcement that he was single and back in town. Then, in the old class group chat that had been inactive for a long time, he sent two messages. [I'm back. We should all get together sometime.] [@Whitney Charlton, you'll be there, right?] The group chat exploded instantly. After all, everyone still remembered the golden boy we had known b

My mom stole my dad's name and his status as the top-ranked student in the state, then gave them to her childhood sweetheart. From then on, the two thieves soared to the top. One was admitted to Ashford University and went on to become a computer science professor at one of the country's top universities. The other attended Westbridge University and became a nationally recognized expert in education. … Meanwhile, my dad was left without a legal identity, spending his entire life scraping by through odd jobs and backbreaking labor. Years later, I inherited his talent and founded a leading AI technology company, making a name for myself in the industry. Potential partners were constantl