Semua Bab The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back): Bab 271 - Bab 280

LUCAS'S POV:Dorothy caught my eye over his head and I saw the corner of her mouth move.Martin sat down next to Sam at the table and Sam, without looking up from the colouring book, shifted his chair approximately two centimetres closer to Martin. Such a small movement. I sat down across from them."What are you colouring?" I asked.Sam looked up. "A lion," he said. "I am making it orange because real lions are not orange enough."I thought about Kate at the warehouse giving Sam an orange fabric offcut. I thought about how this boy had opinions about the right amount of orange and communicated them without apology."I think that is an excellent decision," I said.He looked at me carefully. Then he pushed the box of crayons across the table toward me. "You can help," he said. "But not with the lion. I am doing the lion. You can do the background.""What colour should the background be?" I asked.He thought about it very seriously. "Your choice," he said. "But choose well."Martin was

HANNAH'S POV:The fashion world, when it decides to respond to something, does not do it quietly.By the afternoon the article had been shared more times than our team could track accurately. By the evening the first industry response pieces were appearing. By the following morning, three things had happened that none of us had specifically planned for.The first was that a designer named Celia Marcos, who had been in the industry for thirty years and whose work I had admired since I was in school, posted a statement on her professional platform. It was three paragraphs long and it described a meeting she had with Aldric Voros twenty-two years ago in which he had made her an offer that had felt wrong and which she had declined and which she had never spoken about publicly because she had not seen the point of speaking about something she had no way to prove. She saw the point now, she said. She wanted it on record.The second was that a retired editor from one of the major internation

HANNAH'S POV:Better late than losing her somewhere else. I was choosing to hold onto that.The next morning she arrived with a printed document and placed it in front of me.I looked at the number at the top."That is the market rate," she said.I looked at the number for a moment."It is on the higher end of the market rate," I said."It is accurate for this city and this level of responsibility," she said. "I can send you the sources if you would like.""You have sources?" I said."I have three sources," she said. "And a comparison table."I looked at the comparison table she produced from behind the printed document. It was thorough in a way that was so completely Maya that I almost laughed."You prepared this before I offered you the role," I said."I prepared it when I started to suspect you were going to offer me the role," she said. "That was approximately four months ago."I stared at her. "Four months ago I had not decided.""I know," she said. "But you were going to. It was

HANNAH'S POV:Martin was there too. He and Lucas had been rebuilding things carefully, which was the right way to rebuild them, not rushing or even pretending that the weeks of ignoring each other had not happened, just being honest about what they both wanted and working toward it with the patience that real things require. They were not back to where they had been, not yet, but they were moving in the right direction and it was visible in the way they stood near each other, its thr very ease of two people who have decided to keep trying.Sam, at some point, found his way to me.He looked up at me with James Osei's eyes, according to Martin once again who had told me about James's eyes, and said, "Are you the lady who makes the dresses?""One of them," I said. "It is a team effort."He considered this seriously. "Uncle Lucas says you are the one who is in charge though.""Uncle Lucas is correct," I said.He nodded. "My gran says the person in charge should always say thank you to the

HANNAH'S POV: I called Jacob an hour later when I was composed enough to manage a conversation. "You did not tell me," I said. "Cherry wanted to tell you properly," he said. "She was very specific about the order of things." "It is the most beautiful thing you have ever done," I said. "Cherry thought of it," he said immediately. "I want to be clear about that. She came to me about four months ago and said she had been thinking about the baby's name and she had an idea and she wanted to know what I thought. And she told me. And I said yes before she finished the sentence." "Jacob," I said. "She deserves the credit," he said. "It was Cherry's idea. I just got to be the person who said yes." I thought about Cherry. About the woman who had shown up in my life through Jacob and had been so quietly and specifically kind in a way that did not announce itself and did not ask for recognition. Who had been there through difficult things and had not made a production of being there. Who