2026-02-19 15:58:25
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Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty
Elise and Caron found a quieter corner of the reception room, two chairs near the window with the January garden outside and the noise of the event at a useful distance, and she listened to him talk about Lukas with the attention of someone receiving information they had not known they needed until it arrived."He messaged on a Tuesday morning," Caron said, turning his glass slowly in his hands. "Very simple. He said he had been thinking about our conversation in the café and about the letter I published and that he understood, with time and distance, that my concerns about scope of practice were not wrong even if the method I chose to express them caused damage he did not deserve." He paused. "He said he wanted to acknowledge that directly rather than let it sit unacknowledged between two people who might have useful things to say to each other.""That sounds like him," Elise said quietly."It does now," Caron said. "When I met him in the café he was still defending his position enti
Chapter Three Hundred and Forty Nine
Elise told herself the London conference was necessary.It was necessary. That was the true part. The medical technology symposium had been in her calendar for four months, two days of panels and presentations relevant to a digital health initiative the Van der Meer Foundation had been developing, the kind of event that justified the travel on its own terms without requiring any additional justification.She told herself this on the flight and believed it at a percentage she did not examine too closely.The hotel was in Mayfair, quiet and well-run, and she arrived on the Tuesday evening and unpacked with the methodical calm of someone grateful to be in a room where nobody knew where she was or what she owed them. She ordered food she did not particularly want and ate it at the desk and opened her laptop and looked at the conference schedule and then, before she had consciously decided to, opened a new tab and typed his name.There was a mention in an Amsterdam society column from the
Chapter Three Hundred and Forty Eight
Sofia's question followed Elise home from the restaurant and was still there in the morning.She woke at five on the Wednesday after the lunch and lay in the dark and tried to answer it honestly, the way you try to answer things at five in the morning when the defenses that operate during daylight hours have not yet fully assembled themselves.Do you want him free or do you want him back?The back part was easier to examine than she had expected, because back implied return to something that had existed, and what had existed had not been sufficient, not for either of them. She did not want to return to the canal house or the social obligations or the specific dynamic of two people who loved each other and could not find a way to love each other that the life they were living permitted. She did not want to be the person she had been in that marriage, performing competence and calling it contentment.So not back.But the free part.Free meant gone. Free meant the possibility of him clos
Chapter Three Hundred and Forty Seven
The restaurant was on the Keizersgracht, the kind of place that required knowing someone to get a table and required knowing someone better to get the alcove Sofia had apparently secured without difficulty. Private enough that the conversation would stay between them. Public enough that being seen here together meant something in the circles where being seen meant something.Elise arrived two minutes early and Sofia was already there, which Elise had expected."Thank you for coming," Sofia said, as Elise sat down."I almost did not," Elise said."I know." Sofia smiled. "But you are curious and you are brave, in the ways that matter, and those two things together meant you would come." She opened the menu briefly and closed it again, the gesture of someone who already knew what they were ordering and was performing the ritual for politeness. "I am going to be direct with you. I find directness saves time and I think you prefer it.""I prefer it," Elise said."The gala was designed to m
Chapter Three Hundred and Forty Six
The car pulled away from the venue at ten forty-three and Erik was quiet for approximately ninety seconds, which was how long it took for the quiet to become the kind that required filling."How well do you know him?" he said."I told you inside," Elise said. "He is my ex-husband.""You told me he was someone you knew." Erik looked at her. "You did not tell me he was your ex-husband.""You did not ask directly.""I should not have needed to ask directly." His voice had the controlled quality of someone managing an emotion they had decided was beneath them but could not entirely suppress. "You let me stand there not knowing who he was.""I let you stand there having a conversation," Elise said. "Which you managed perfectly well.""That is not the point.""Then tell me what the point is, Erik."He looked out of the window at the city going past and she watched his profile and saw him deciding how much of what he was feeling to express and how to frame the expression so it did not reveal
Chapter Three Hundred and Forty Five
Lukas was quiet for a moment after the hesitation.Then he turned back to the railing and looked at the city and said, "It is not simple.""I did not ask if it was simple," Elise said. "I asked if it was real."He looked at her. "She is real. What I feel about her is real, some of it." He paused, choosing words with the care he brought to things that mattered. "There is genuine attraction. There is genuine gratitude, which I know is not the same thing but which creates its own weight." He paused again. "She helped me survive a period where I was not sure survival was the outcome. That does something to how you see a person.""It does," Elise said quietly."But." He stopped."But," she said, giving him the space to finish it."But I do not know if what I feel is what she believes I feel. And I do not know if what she feels is what I believe she feels." He turned slightly. "We are both people who are very good at performing versions of ourselves in service of outcomes we want. That make
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