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Chapter Twelve: "Five O'Clock"

Author: NayJayK
last update publish date: 2026-05-22 21:07:00

ZARA

Friday, 5:02pm

She put the phone in her pocket before he got his coat off.

Not hiding it. Just not ready. She needed another minute with what she knew before she handed it to someone else. Even him. Especially him.

He came into the kitchen and looked at the covered pot on the stove and then at her.

"You cooked," he said.

"I said I would."

He looked at her the way Isla said he did. She felt it and kept her face ordinary.

"How was the board meeting," she said.

"Long." He loosened his tie. Se
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  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Thirty-One: "Sunday"

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  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Thirty: "The Morning After"

    ZARAWednesday, 7:44amShe woke up to something burning.The spare room had a quilt with a pattern she didn't recognise and a window that looked onto the November garden. She lay there for a moment. A cabinet opening in the kitchen. Something set down too carefully. Then nothing.She got up.The kitchen doorway.Callum was at the stove.Her mother was sitting at the table with both hands around a cup of coffee. Not helping.The heat was wrong. She could see it from across the room.She crossed to the stove. Turned it down without saying anything.He looked at the dial.Lower than I thought.Lower than you always think.Her mother made a sound. Zara looked at her.Elena was looking at her cup. The corner of her mouth doing something.The eggs were salvageable. Just. Zara moved them slowly, the way Mae had shown her, and they came back from the edge and became something that could be eaten.She put them on three plates.They sat at the table. The yellow kitchen. The enormous knotted cus

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  • THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out   Chapter Twenty-Eight: "Atlanta"

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    ZARATuesday, 1:14pmThe restaurant was quiet and expensive and two blocks from Marguerite's building.Zara had walked past it on the way to the subway Monday night without knowing what it was. Now, standing outside in her lunch break clothes dark jeans, good jacket, the boots she'd resoled twice

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    ZARAMonday, 11:48pmShe found the contract at the bottom of her bag at midnight and sat with it on her bed.She'd been home three hours. Showered, eaten toast over the sink, called Mae and said work ran late, nothing interesting. The biggest lie she'd told since she was nineteen.She'd stood in th

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    ZARAMonday, 8:31 amShe almost didn't come.She'd been standing outside the building for four minutes coffee going cold in her hand, the Monday morning crowd splitting around her like she was something fixed talking herself into walking through the door.It's probably nothing, she'd told herself.

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