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Chapter 13- the past
publish date:
2026-06-02 22:45:56
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The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 161 — Everyone at the Table Anita
Ruth had insisted on lending us the small back garden for the evening, string lights already strung between the fence posts, a long table borrowed from somewhere I hadn’t thought to ask about, set with mismatched chairs that somehow, together, looked exactly right.“You didn’t have to do all this,” I told her, watching her adjust a centerpiece for the third time.“I wanted to. This studio’s seen enough hard nights. It’s earned a good one.”Kelvin was already grilling something at the small setup he’d assembled in the corner, Manny stationed nearby with strict instructions to guard the plate of vegetables from any wandering seagulls, taking the responsibility with characteristic seriousness.Marcus and Priya arrived together, Marcus carrying a bottle of wine and wearing an expression of careful nervousness that softened the moment Manny spotted him and ran across the garden.“You’re the one who tracked the bad guys,” Manny announced, by way of greeting. “Anita told me. You’re really go
The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 160 — Someone Named Marcus, Again
Anita Priya showed up at the studio unannounced, same as she always did, holding two coffees and wearing an expression I recognized immediately as someone with news she was barely containing.“I need to tell you something,” she said, before I’d even fully looked up from my desk. “And I need you to not make it weird.”“That’s an ominous opening.”“It’s Marcus.” She set the coffees down and sat across from me, practically vibrating. “We’ve been seeing each other. For two months. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure it was real yet, and then I wasn’t sure how to tell you without it sounding strange, given everything he’s connected to in your life.”I set down my pencil, genuinely delighted.“Priya. That’s wonderful.”“You’re not upset.”“Why would I be upset.”“I don’t know. Complicated timeline. He works for Kelvin. He’s tangled up in this whole enormous story that belongs to you and not to me, and I didn’t want it to feel like I was somehow inserting myself into something that
The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 159 — First Day
KelvinThe call sheet had me on set by six, which meant I was up at four, running lines in the quiet kitchen while the rest of the house still slept.Anita found me there, wrapped in Manny’s small blanket she’d apparently stolen off his bed on her way past, watching me mutter the same three sentences over and over.“You’re going to be fine,” she said, settling into the chair across from me. “You’ve done this before. Dozens of times.”“Not after a year off. Not with everyone watching to see if I remember how.”“Nobody’s watching for that. They’re watching because you’re good at this, and everyone on that set knows it.” She reached across and took the script from my hands, closing it gently. “You know these lines. You’ve known them for a week. Running them for the fortieth time isn’t going to make them any more known.”I let her take it, mostly because she was right, and mostly because having her sitting across from me at four in the morning was doing more to settle my nerves than anoth
The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 158 — Six Months Later
AnitaThe studio had grown too small for us by spring, fabric bolts stacked into the hallway, a second seamstress hired just to keep pace with the orders Helen kept apologizing for while grinning the entire time she delivered the numbers.“We need a real building,” she said, for what felt like the tenth time that month, standing in the doorway with yet another stack of contracts. “Not this back-room-of-a-back-room arrangement. Somewhere with actual space.”“I know.”“You’ve said that for three months.”“I know that too.” I looked around at the small chaotic kingdom we’d built out of almost nothing, and found I wasn’t quite ready to let it go, even knowing she was right. “Give me until autumn. I want one more season in this exact room before we outgrow it completely.”Helen let it go, same as she always did eventually, and left me alone with the pattern I’d been working on for most of the morning, a coat commission that had turned into something more ambitious than either the client or
The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 157 — The Verdict
AnitaThree weeks passed faster than I expected them to, ordinary days stacking quietly on top of each other until the morning of sentencing arrived almost without warning, a date on a calendar suddenly, unavoidably, today.Kelvin drove us to the courthouse, Marcus and my father meeting us in the parking lot, all of us dressed carefully, the whole day carrying a weight none of us had quite prepared for despite three weeks of knowing it was coming.“You don’t have to go in,” my father said quietly, as we walked toward the entrance. “I know you said you wanted to. I just want you to know, one final time, that changing your mind right now would be completely understandable.”“I want to be there,” I said. “I need to see it end, the same way I watched it begin.”He nodded, and took my hand, and we walked in together.The courtroom was larger than the small family court room, formal in a way that made the whole morning feel heavier, rows of benches filling slowly with people I didn’t recogn
The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 156 — The Man Who Called First
AnitaCallum called on Thursday, his voice carrying the hesitation of someone who had clearly rehearsed the question several times before finally asking it out loud.“I know I’ve been keeping my distance,” he said. “On purpose, mostly. I didn’t want to add anything else complicated to what Manny’s already carrying. But I keep thinking about him, and I wanted to ask, if it’s not too much, whether I could meet him properly. Not as a stranger from the news. Just as someone who cares how he’s doing.”“He’d like that,” I said. “I think he already knows your name, actually. We’ve mentioned you a few times. He knows you’re the one who helped.”“I didn’t do the part that mattered most. That was you, and Kelvin, and his grandmother.”“You did the part that made all the rest of it possible. He should know that too.”We settled on Saturday afternoon, the studio’s small garden Ruth had cultivated behind the back room, string lights she’d apparently strung up sometime during the week without eithe
The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 5-Still
One message.A number I did not recognise.No words.Just a photograph.I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and looked at it.Donald. Lying back against a woman I had never seen before. His head on her chest. Her hand resting in his hair like it belonged there. His face completely open in a wa
The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 3-The routine
The coffee machine made its noise at six forty-seven.I didn’t move to pour until it finished. I stood at the counter with my hands wrapped around nothing and listened to it run. That sound. The only sound in the whole house. The specific quiet that exists when you are the only one awake and have n
The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 2-The silence after
Donald did not say a word on the way home. Not one. Not when I fell into step beside him as the evening wound down. Not when we collected our coats and walked out into the cool Velmoor night. Not when he opened the car door for me with the quiet efficiency of a man performing a task he stopped t
The wife I swore I’d never be Chapter 1-The man at the door
“The Meridian deal was always going to close in Q3,” I said. “Donald’s team structured it that way from the beginning. The timeline was never a surprise.” Mr. Alderman nodded like I had said something brilliant. His wife smiled at me and looked away in the same breath. The smile of a woman who se
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