All Chapters of EYES OPEN: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

He knows before we tell him.I realise this on Thursday morning when I am leaving for the Dom Pearce podcast and Felix's door opens as I pass it and he looks at me with the dark eyes doing something different from usual, quieter, more inward, and he says, "You look like someone carrying good news carefully."I stop.Look at him."What does that look like?""Like someone who is trying not to smile too obviously in case the universe notices and charges them for it," he says.I look at him for a long moment.Felix Adler in his doorway with his suit jacket and his morning coffee and his specific way of seeing things that other people walk past."I am going to tell you something. And you cannot tell anyone.""I know almost nobody in your life," he says."Perfect," I say. "I am pregnant."He looks at me.Something happens in his face that is warm and real and also briefly something else, something personal and private that passes before I can name it."Congratulations," he says quietly. Mea

He texts the next morning.Not an unknown number, not Stanley relaying something, his actual number which I never deleted because deleting it felt like a statement and I was done making statements about Derek a long time ago. It was good to see you. You look like yourself. The real version. I am glad."I read it standing at the kitchen counter at seven am with Rhys in the shower and Arlo on my feet and the October morning doing its thing outside.I read it three times.Not because I do not understand it...Because I am deciding what it does to me and I want to be honest about the answer before I do anything with it.It does something.Not what it would have done six months ago. Not longing, not grief, not the particular ache of good on paper and peonies bought on guilt. Something quieter and more complicated. The specific feeling of seeing someone you shared years with show up as the person they should have always been and knowing with complete certainty that the timing of it does no

Rhys is exactly where I left him.Kitchen counter, coffee, Arlo at his feet, the Sunday paper open on the counter that he is not reading because he has been waiting for the door since I left and we both know it.He looks up when I come in.Reads my face.Says nothing immediately which is the thing about him that undoes me most consistently, the way he gives me the space to arrive before he asks anything of me.I drop my bag on the chair.Stand in the middle of the kitchen."He told me he is still in love with me," I say.Rhys goes very still and stares at me. Not shocked. He suspected. But hearing it said out loud does something to the room that suspecting it did not do."I told him about the baby." He looks at me."I needed him to understand the full picture," I say. "Not to hurt him. Because he deserved the honest version the way everyone in my life deserves the honest version."Rhys puts his cup down.Comes around the counter.Stops in front of me and looks at me with the full ex

We drive to Rhys's parents on a Wednesday.Not because Wednesday is special. Because Margaret called Tuesday evening and said come this weekend and when Margaret says come this weekend she means Wednesday because she considers the weekend to start when convenient and Patrick has already made something.Rhys drives.I have my feet on the dashboard.Arlo is in the back making occasional sounds about the journey that suggest he has opinions about the route.The countryside does its green generous thing around us and I sit with the news in my chest and the ring on my hand and three months until a wedding and something else entirely that we are about to make real by saying it out loud to the people who matter most."Are you nervous?" Rhys asks. "No." "You are doing the thing with your ring," he says.I look down.I am turning the alexandrite around my finger, which I do when I am processing something, which I did not know I did until he told me and now I cannot un-know it."Slightly nerv

We find it on a Thursday.Priya finds it actually, because Priya approaches property the way she approaches everything, with a pre-built criteria matrix and a shortlist of six that she has already ranked before showing anyone.It is the third one on the shortlist.A first floor space in a building ten minutes from Clerkenwell, the kind that has been recently converted from something industrial and still carries the bones of what it was, exposed brick on the north wall, steel framed windows that run the full length of the east side, ceiling height that does something to natural light that makes the whole space feel like it breathes.Saoirse walks in and goes directly to the east windows and stands there looking out at the street below."The light... it's going to be different at different times of day," she says."Yes." "Research needs the afternoon light," she says. "My desk goes there." She points to the far end of the east wall without turning around. Not asking. Just knowing.Priy