Lahat ng Kabanata ng Too Late: She Is Gone With Your Baby: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 27

Chapter 21ARIAVivian had been with the orchestra for nine days when I noticed the first shift.It was small enough that I might have dismissed it as coincidence if I had not spent five years learning to read a room full of musicians. Musicians were particular people. They felt things collectively before they said them individually, and the mood of a rehearsal room communicated more than any individual conversation could.The shift was in the way certain members moved through the space when Vivian was present.Not all of them. My principal violinist, my cellist section, my conductor, these were people who had been with me long enough that their loyalty was not a question I needed to ask. But the newer members, the ones who had joined in the past year, the ones who were still finding their place in the ensemble hierarchy, they had started doing something different.They deferred to Vivian.Not openly. Not in any way I could point to and name in a direct conversation. But in the small

Chapter 23Vivian had said as much. My mother had said something similar, in the way my mother said things, with less gentleness and more specific instruction about what I ought to do instead.I picked up my phone and put it down again.Julian had threatened to call the police and he had meant it and he had the standing to follow through. I had grabbed Elena's wrist at a public event and it was still circulating online and the narrative was not flattering. Another incident would move from gossip to something with legal weight.I needed to be rational.I was going to be rational.Being rational lasted until Saturday afternoon.I had gone to the park near my building because it was a thing my doctor had suggested in a way that implied I was not managing stress adequately, and I was trying to demonstrate to myself that I could follow reasonable advice.I had been walking for fifteen minutes when I heard him."If you go that way, the ducks get angry. I found that out already."I stopped.

Chapter 25ARIAI told myself it was nothing for three days.It was a reasonable thing to tell myself. Julian had a life before me, a full life, with relationships and history that had nothing to do with the woman he found half-conscious and nameless in a hospital bed. It would have been strange if he didn't. I had no claim on the years before I existed to him as anyone at all.But the stone stayed where it was, and on the fourth day, while Julian was at a meeting with the venue about the final performance logistics and Eli was occupied with his tablet under the stage manager's supervision, I found myself in our hotel room going through a box of his things.I was not looking for anything specific. I told myself that too.The box had come with us from city to city for the length of the tour, a small archive box of business files and old photographs Julian kept for sentimental reasons, things he sometimes pulled out to show Eli, university photos, early agency photos, the small artifact

Chapter 27ARIAI was coming out of the small grocery store two streets from the hotel with Eli's hand in mine and a paper bag of fruit balanced against my hip when I saw her standing by the entrance.Ava.She was not dressed for coincidence. She was standing too still, too deliberately positioned near the door, the kind of waiting that told you a person had been waiting specifically for you and not for anything else."Aria Vale," she said, and her voice had none of the warmth I had seen in the park that day with Julian. "Or should I say Aria. I don't actually know what to call you.""Excuse me?" I said, my grip on Eli's hand tightening slightly without my deciding to do it."I think we should talk," she said, stepping closer. "Woman to woman."Eli looked up at her, then at me, his small face doing the thing it did when he sensed adults behaving strangely around him."Mum, who's this?""Nobody, sweetheart," I said. "Go stand by the window for a second, okay? Look at the puppies in the