Lahat ng Kabanata ng Lawfully Wedded Nanny (BWWM): Kabanata 141 - Kabanata 150

A single chime polite, measured, out of place in the easy warmth of the kitchen. Monet paused mid-pour. Meredith froze with a berry pinched between her fingers. Carter looked toward the door like he expected it to be a deliveryman with balloons. Richard’s brows drew together, and he wiped his hands on a towel. “I’ll get it.” Monet turned back to the stove, but her heartbeat quickened, steady yet alert. Something in the air shifted—the kind of shift she’d come to recognize in this house. Memory. History. Grief. From the hallway, a soft voice drifted in. “Hello, Richard.” Juliet. Monet’s hands stilled. Richard didn’t answer immediately. There was the briefest pause, as if he were absorbing the sight of his late wife’s mother standing on his doorstep on a quiet morning that had, until now, belonged only to them. Then, gently, “Come in.” Her footsteps followed light, elegant, and somehow tired. Juliet stepped into the doorway of the kitchen a moment later. She was dressed beau

The house was different after Juliet left.Not tense. Not heavy. Just…quiet in a way Monet couldn’t quite name.Richard had taken Meredith to school and gone to work after leaving Monet and Carter at home. Carter had drifted off to sleep upstairs, exhaustion finally winning. Meredith was already at school. The kitchen was tidy again, sunlight stretching across the counters in soft gold.Monet stood in the middle of her room, staring at the boxes she hadn’t touched since marrying Richard—boxes from the short life she’d been building with Kyle, boxes she had forced herself to pretend didn’t exist.Clothes. Little keepsakes from her convent life and college days that followed. Books she’d brought from the convent. Little pieces of a life that had ended abruptly, painfully.She crouched, slowly peeling back the tape on the first box.She didn’t notice Richard until she heard him clear his throat from the doorway.She turned.He stood there holding a bouquet.Not roses. Not lilies.But a m

The house was warm with afternoon sunlight, the kind that softened every sharp edge and made the Abbott home feel almost unreal in its coziness. Monet stood at the kitchen counter, sleeves rolled up, whisking cupcake batter in a glass bowl. Carter sat cross-legged on a stool, his cast propped on a cushion, supervising with a seriousness that made her bite back a smile.“More sprinkles,” he declared, tapping the counter dramatically.“We’re making cupcakes, not a rainbow explosion,” Monet teased.“But it’s my birthday soon,” he said with the confidence of a king stating law.“Your birthday is in five days,” she reminded him gently. “Five whole days of behaving well so you get everything you asked for.”He grinned. “I behave well now.”Monet raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”He giggled, then reached over to dip a finger in the batter. Monet gasped and swatted at his hand, pretending to be scandalized. He shrieked with laughter, clutching his cast to his chest.The sound of him laughing—reall

Monet heard the footsteps before she saw him.Heavy. Slow. Not physically strained—just weighted.Richard appeared at the top of the stairs with four boxes stacked in his arms, another three hovering behind him in a precarious tower Juliet was pushing gently down each step.Monet’s breath caught.The foyer looked… wrong.Too full. Too raw.Like the house was bleeding out pieces of someone who’d once filled it.Richard dropped the first stack at the foot of the stairs, the thud echoing far louder than it should have.He didn’t look at Monet.Not once.His jaw was clenched—not with anger, but with a bracing, controlled kind of grief that made his shoulders look too tight for his frame.Juliet reached the bottom carefully, setting her boxes beside his. She didn’t touch them. She didn’t open them. She just stood still for a moment, hand on the top flap, breathing like she was keeping herself from breaking in front of strangers.Monet stayed near the kitchen doorway, fingers twisted in the

Richard didn’t even remember grabbing his keys. One moment he was staring at the stairs Monet had disappeared up, the flowers still in the vase by the counter. Next, he was outside, the cool air hitting him like a reprimand. He wasn’t running from her. Not from Monet. He was running from himself. The engine purred to life, but he didn’t pick a destination. He drove—past the bakery Meredith loved, past the school, past the park that was very close to the cemetery where Hannah was buried. He kept driving until the familiar roads blurred into backstreets he hadn’t visited in years. His phone buzzed once. Then again. He ignored it. He just needed to think. Or stop thinking. He wasn’t sure which. --- Back at the Abbott House Florence didn’t knock. She never had to. The housekeeper let her in with a knowing smile and a murmured, “They’re upstairs, ma’am.” Florence Abbott—elegant, sharp-eyed, wrapped in a soft lavender shawl—moved through the foyer with the accuracy of a