Rainbow Rowell Eleanor & Park Novels & Stories

Or at least she had been heartbroken, since now, with her adorable dimples showing and her little hands on either side of her waist, Eleanor was the picture of confidence. - The cards said I won't fall if I take the training wheels off. – Ellie answered his question, saying those words so naturally that he almost choked – Can you take me to the park, Uncle? Mom and Dad are busy and... - Wait, Ellie... – he interrupted her, stunned – Who said you could take the training wheels off?

Eleanor lifted the comic book in her hand and pointed to the cartoon girl wearing a dress on it. Christopher looked at the cute girl in the cartoon, wearing a pink rainbow chiffon dress, thinking he misheard, and asked with difficulty, "Do I have to wear a dress too?" "Chris, is there a problem?" Eleanor blinked her innocent big eyes, very understanding. "Don't you want to wear pink anymore? Alright, then we'll wear the blue set together." “...” ***

Stone exterior, garden that had been tended for decades by someone who understood that plants needed to be argued with rather than controlled, a front door painted dark red that was the kind of color chosen by someone who knew their own mind completely. Eleanor herself opened it before the car had fully stopped, which meant she had been watching for them, which told Lena something important about how much this lunch mattered to a woman who would never say so directly. She was small. That was the first thing. Lena had imagined someone larger, built to the scale of the family she'd created, but Eleanor Black was small and neat with white hair cut efficiently short and eyes so dark they looked

“You never found any.” She talked as she worked, her voice filling the room, skipping from one thought to the next without pause. Complaints about the company came first, then about the staff, then, inevitably, about Eleanor. “That woman has been strutting around like she owns the place,” Mrs. Rowe said, tugging gently at my sleeve. “Making changes, rearranging offices, pretending she was chosen.” I glanced at her. “You mean Aunt Eleanor.” She snorted. “That witch.” I raised an eyebrow. “You’re not subtle.”

About the white room and the designed warmth and the four sentences in Sarah Jenkins's piece. About the dinner that had lasted four hours. About the beginning that had not yet revealed its direction. "I don't know yet," I said honestly. A pause. "Neither do I," Eleanor said. That was the most surprising sentence she had ever said to me. Eleanor Wolfe not knowing what she was going to do next. "Eleanor," I said. "Yes." "The boy," I said. "Noah." A silence. "Yes," she said. "He's five years old," I said. "And from what the piece described he's—" I stopped. "He's real," I said. "The way she was real. The way the thing between them was real."

THE CONFRONTATION (Damien's POV) Riverside Park at midnight felt like the end of the world. Dark trees swayed in the wind. Empty benches lined the paths like tombstones. The only light came from old streetlamps that cast long shadows on the ground. I walked slowly toward the designated meeting spot. My hands were empty. My phone was off. Just me and the darkness and the weight of twenty-seven years of bad choices. Eleanor stepped out from behind a large oak tree. She looked smaller than I remembered. Older. More fragile. But her eyes still burned with the same cold fire that had terrified me as a child.

Nearly all the students were at a loss as none could provide accurate answers, and I dreaded the moment when my name would be called. “Miss Ellie Parkinson,” Grey called and I stood up, with my stomach groaning as though hit by a rock. He slid the image on the screen, and a tall muscular man wearing royal red robes with a golden crown on his head appeared, holding a gleaming silver dagger in his hand in an intimidating manner.

She takes a step towards Auster and starts ruffling his hair. The small pre-pubescent ball of anger flushed and smiled. He smiled! “That’s really kind of you, Auster,” Eleanor says, leaning her head down so that they were at eye-level. She looks around and settles her gaze at the tarp that blocked the outside. She taps her chin and tilts her head. Finally, she smiles down on Auster. The boy had nothing but childlike adoration on his eyes as he stared back. Behind them, I do my best not to roll my eyes and hurl everything I’ve had in the last 24 hours. And it wasn’t even much.

He let out a quiet sigh before allowing himself to be led toward the waiting vehicle. "Rowland." Eleanor continued without slowing. "You're going to meet a respectable young girl from an excellent family. And you'll forget all about..." She glanced back at me. "...this woman who has a child, a complicated past, and who is connected to your own uncle..." "Mom..." "Don't argue." She opened the rear door. "Get in." With one decisive shove, Rowland disappeared into the back seat. The door slammed shut before he could protest again. Eleanor circled to the front of the vehicle. She looked directly at the driver. "Drive."

So Elijah sat in the back and watched. Eleanor was the first to arrive after Alexander—a woman in her late sixties with silver hair and the particular bearing of someone who had spent decades in nonprofit governance and had developed, as a result, the ability to sit through almost anything without visibly suffering. She nodded at Elijah with the brief curiosity of someone who assumed he was a student or an intern or someone else who didn't matter to the business at hand, and took her seat at the table.