He stood in the middle of the open area, in what had been a reception area. The space was large and full of light. It was slightly out of the centre of town, making it affordable, and close to both a bus and train line so it was fairly easy to get to. There were six rooms that went off from what could be made into a waiting area. If Frazer got desperate, she could rent one room out to someone who worked privately.

Rob cocked his head at her, waiting for an answer. Frazer bounced on her toes.

“I love it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY

The sun was setting through the tiny plane window, and Cora watched it with a kind of awe. Sunsets always amazed her, even after these last five weeks, when she’d seen many of them—incredible ones that stretched over the horizon, painting the coast an orange that shouldn’t have been natural. The ocean would be so tinted with the colour that it was difficult to tell where sky ended and water began. Some of the kids from the orphanage would watch the sunsets with her, and she’d quiz them on what colours they saw in English.

In turn, they taught her the words in Indonesian. Mereh for red. Jeruk for orange. Biru for blue, her favourite word, for how it felt when it left her lips. Her favourite sound, though, had been their laughter whenever she pronounced everything terribly.

It had taken Cora a week to organise everything she needed to leave, but it had been more than worth it. Alec had pulled the same thing with her that he had with Frazer and had refused her two weeks’ notice. He hadn’t seemed to care about what he would be putting the respective departments through to find replacements as he had informed her of this with clear relish.

Little did he know, she’d been hoping he would do exactly that. The excitement of what was ahead of her had been growing even as he had sat at his desk and exerted his final bit of power over her. Her enthusiasm had been hard to contain. And suddenly, she’d been on a plane flying to Indonesia.

She missed nothing about home, really. Everything in Indonesia had been busy, hectic. There was always something to do in the orphanage, even if all that needed doing was playing with kids that clung to any adult near them. She organised aid, distributed it among the four sister orphanages where it was needed. She liaised with people who distributed financial grants and organised the people who came in carrying bags and bags of donated items that the orphanages could never have enough of. They always needed more formula, more nappies.