All Chapters of The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back): Chapter 291 - Chapter 300

326 Chapters

Earned

HANNAH'S POV:"No," she said. "Mine are right for my piece. But hers are right for hers. I am just saying it is good. You can appreciate something without wanting it for yourself.""That is a very mature observation," I said."I know," she said, and went back to watching.We sat together in the green room while the remaining performers finished and the audience waited for the results and Amelia was very calm.I sat beside her and I thought about the monologue. About her writing it thinking about Mirada. About a girl finding a photograph of a woman who was a dancer before she was anything else.My mother would never know she had a granddaughter who had written something beautiful about exactly that. But in some way I could not explain properly and did not try to explain to anyone but understood in my own chest, I felt certain she knew anyway.* * * * * * *The results for the junior solo category were announced at half past three.The adjudicator was a small woman with a clear voice wh

Nothing Wasted

ELIJAH'S POV:The panel chair went through the placings from third upward. Third place was the water filtration project. I watched Andrew register this without any expression on his face. Second place was the light spectrum project. I watched him register this too, still without expression.The results took time. The panel chair went through the categories methodically and there were several before Life Sciences and Andrew waited through all of them without fidgeting.I watched him while he waited. He was watching the panel and reading their faces, not anxiously but with the data-gathering attention he brought to everything. At one point he leaned slightly toward me and said, very quietly, "The grey-haired judge spoke more extensively about the projects she responded to. I counted the questions." I looked at him. "She asked me three questions," he said. "She asked the other projects one or two." He said this without triumph. Just as information."How many questions did the other judge

Making Space

HANNAH'S POV:We were home by six fifteen.The four of us in the kitchen, the twins were still in their competition clothes because neither of them had changed yet and I had not pushed it because there was something I wanted to preserve about the day for a little longer.Jacob called first.He called before we even had our coats off and the conversation was Jacob's way of conversation where he kept saying wait wait wait and making us repeat things he had already heard because he wanted the full version. Cherry was beside him, we could hear her, and she kept asking questions in the background which Jacob relayed with his own commentary attached."She is asking if Amelia cried," he said."I am asking if Amelia performed or if she ascended," Cherry's voice said, clearly having decided to stop letting Jacob relay things."She ascended," I said. "She wrote a monologue and she performed it and the adjudicator said she had rarely seen that level of original writing at this age."Cherry made

Opposite Sides

HANNAH'S POV: "My project is about sleep and bacteria," Andrew said. "Which is not about her directly. But she is the reason our family has been through everything it has been through, which is the reason I was in this competition." He said this with the careful logical sequence of someone who had worked out the chain. "So indirectly she is connected to everything I do." A pause. "Yes," Amelia said. "Of course you can put yours there too." I got up and went to look at the mantelpiece properly. The photograph had been there since Adele had sent us a print, a few months ago now, and it had become part of the room. She slid off her stool and went to the mantelpiece where the framed photograph of Mirada lived, the one from Adele's album that we had printed and framed, the one where she was smiling in the full warm way of someone in the middle of being happy. Amelia set her trophy beside it. Came back for Andrew's certificate. "Andrew should put his," I said. He got down from his st

The Line Between Us

ANDREW'S POV:I thought about this for a moment. Amelia and I argued about things regularly. We argued about butter quantities in baking, we argued about the correct way to load the dishwasher and a lot more which were all arguments in which both of us believed we were correct.A formal debate was different. In a formal debate you were assigned your position by the draw of a lot and not by what you actually believed. Which meant one of us was going to have to argue for something we did not believe.I made notes. I organized the notes. I told Dad I wanted to practice the structure with him and he said yes and we did it at the kitchen table on a Tuesday evening and he asked the questions that were slightly to the side of what I expected, which forced me to think rather than recite.The part about protecting the minority was something I arrived at in that session. Dad had asked, "What happens when the majority of people feel that something is right but it is not?" and I had said that was

The Line Between Us (2)

ANDREW'S POV:"Good," she said. "I was hoping for that answer."We agreed to not discuss our arguments with each other until the debate itself, which was in two weeks. This was Amelia's suggestion and it was a good one. If we compared notes we would spend the whole time arguing at home instead of building our real cases, and our parents would have to live through both the preparation and the competition, which was already going to be a lot for them.* * * * * * *I approached the preparation the way I approached everything.First I read everything I could find about the debate between rule-based ethics and emotion-based ethics, which led me into a body of philosophy I had not properly encountered before and which was significantly more interesting than I had expected. There was a philosopher named Kant who argued that rules were the only reliable basis for moral action because they could be applied universally without depending on individual circumstance. There was another philosophe

Where We Stand

AMELIA'S POV:The notice board said eleven words and I read them and I thought: good.This house believes that rules matter more than feelings. And my immediate, first, completely automatic response was: no they do not and it is not because I had thought about it but because I felt it. Which was already a point in my favour if anyone was paying attention.I signed up for the negative before Andrew got there. I knew he would want the affirmative. Andrew believed in rules and systems and structures and proper frameworks the way some people believed in their favourite football team, passionately and with a lot of data to back it up. He was going to argue for the affirmative very well and I was going to have to be better than very well.I was going to be excellent.I found him later and we established the rules of engagement, which were that we would not share our preparation with each other until the debate itself. This was my idea. I did not want Andrew knowing my arguments in advance b

Good Luck

AMELIA'S POV:I then practiced the argument three times in front of my mirror, which I know sounds like the most dramatic possible thing to do but mirrors do not lie about whether you are convincing and I needed to know if I was convincing. The first run-through was too much in my head. I was thinking about the logic while I was saying it and the thinking showed. The second run-through was better. The third one felt right.Mum came past my room on the third run-through and stood in the doorway for a moment without saying anything and I did not stop because stopping breaks the momentum. When I finished she said, "The ending is right. The middle needs to be slower." I said I knew. She said, "Then make it slower." I said I would. She left.Becca came over one afternoon for a practice session and argued the affirmative against me, which she had been briefed to do, and she was a good enough debater to push me in the right places. There was one point she made that I did not have an immediat

The Better Argument

AMELIA'S POV: Before I go any further I want to say something about the morning of the debate. Mum and Dad were very careful that morning. I noticed this because I notice most things and also because they were being more careful than usual, which created a slight variation in the normal texture of the morning. Dad made breakfast and did not talk very much. Mum asked me how I felt and then did not ask again, which was the right call because I had already answered once. They did not tell us to be confident or remind us how hard we had worked or any of the other things adults say before competitions that are well-intentioned and slightly unnecessary. What Dad did instead was pack us each a small bag with a water bottle and a snack for the intermission and a card. Mine said: rules are a promise. Make them keep it today. I looked at it for a moment. Then I put it in my pocket. Andrew's card, I found out later, said: your best thinking is still ahead. Trust it. We walked into sch

Built to Disagree

ANDREW'S POV:Oliver made the foundational argument. Rules exist to protect everyone equally. Feelings are individual and variable. What I feel is not the same as what you feel and if we each act on our own feelings without the framework of shared rules we end up in conflict, not community. He gave examples. He was good. He sat down.Then the first speaker for the negative stood up.It was not Amelia. She was their closing speaker, which was the most important position, the one that had to pull everything together and leave the last impression on the judges. The negative's first speaker was a girl named Priya from the year above who was very confident and who opened by asking the room a question."Can anyone tell me," she said, "what it feels like to be treated fairly?"She paused and let the room sit with it."You can feel it," she said. "You know it in your body when you have been treated fairly and you know it in your body when you have not. And that feeling, that sense of justice

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