Lahat ng Kabanata ng He Wants Me More After Divorce: Kabanata 351 - Kabanata 360

Lyndsey’s POVThe housekeeper, Marta, let it slip on a Monday morning while she was bringing me tea in the nursery.“Your mother was in her study for a while yesterday,” she said, setting the tray down. “Asked me if I’d seen you go in there Sunday.”“Did she.”“I told her you had. I didn’t think.”Marta was seventy. She had taken care of me since I was eight. There was not a Marta alive who would have said anything about anyone if she’d thought it mattered. I told her it was fine. I thanked her. She left.James was in his crib, hitting a stuffed elephant against the wood slats with a cheerfulness that had nothing to do with the weather inside my body.I didn’t eat lunch. I didn’t eat dinner. I lay awake at two a.m. waiting for a knock that didn’t come. I fell asleep at four.The knock didn’t come the next day either. Or the day after.By Friday, I was picking pieces out of a bagel on the kitchen counter and ignoring James’s lunch yogurt when I heard her heels in the hallway—evenly spa

Claire’s POVI went alone.I wore the navy coat, the pearl lipstick, the gray leather gloves. I had worn this outfit to four funerals. I did not consider this a fifth.The visitor lot was nearly empty at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday. I parked in the second row and sat in the driver’s seat for ninety seconds with both hands on the wheel. Then I took the gloves off, put them in my handbag, put them back on, and got out.The intake officer looked me up and down without pretending not to. I did not mind being looked up and down by men who make nine dollars an hour; I consider it one of the oldest taxes. I signed what I was given to sign. I handed over my handbag. I did not take off my coat, because nobody asked me to. I walked where I was pointed.Booth five held two plastic chairs, a scratched table, and a camera. I sat.Thomas came through the door a minute later. He was thinner than the last time I had seen him, which had been across Harrison’s driveway at a distance of sixty fe

Estelle’s POVThe kids were gone.That was the first thing. Daisy had picked them up at four—Lucas in a bike helmet for no reason, Chloe with a backpack full of books about coral reefs and a grievance she had been building for a week and intended to air on the drive. I stood on the porch and waved, and when the car turned the corner I went back inside and closed the door and stood in the hallway for a minute without doing anything else.Harrison was in the kitchen with the roasting pan. He had announced at eleven that morning he was going to make a chicken. I had said, carefully, that I did not doubt him. He had caught the carefully and elected to ignore it.By seven the house smelled of rosemary and of a chicken that had been in the oven about forty minutes too long. Harrison stood at the open oven door holding a meat thermometer in one hand and a tea towel in the other.“Don’t look at it,” he said, without turning.“Too late.”“It’s fine.”“It’s very chicken-shaped.”“I said don’t

Harrison’s POVThere was pounding on the door.“Dad.”“One minute.”“Dad.”“One minute, Lucas.”“I cannot wait one minute.”“Why.”“Because it is eight o’clock and I have not eaten.”“You have eaten.”“I have not eaten cereal.”“Lucas.”“I am going to pour it myself.”“Don’t pour it yourself.”“I’m pouring it.”“Lucas.”Estelle, behind me, laughed into her pillow. “Let him pour it.”“He’s going to flood the kitchen.”“So let him.”I opened the door. Lucas was on the landing in his pajamas with a cereal box in one hand and a carton of milk in the other, his face dead serious. He did not look embarrassed. He was nine and he had not yet worked out why two adults might want to sleep in on a Saturday, or he had worked it out and filed it under adult behaviors he had decided to ignore.“Dad.”“Bowl. Counter. Kitchen.”“Okay.”“I will be down in three minutes.”“Two.”“Three, Lucas.”“Okay.”He went. I closed the door. Estelle was still laughing.“He’s going to flood the kitchen,” I said.“

Estelle’s POVThe venue was a converted boathouse on the east side of the lake, and the jazz trio had set up on a small wooden platform by the water, and Lara walked in at three-ten in cream silk with her hair pinned up and a bouquet of white anemones in her hands.Karl was shaking.Not visibly. Not in a way a stranger in the room would have clocked. But I was at the far end of the ceremony space with Harrison beside me, and I could see Karl’s left hand from where we stood, and his left hand was moving in a way a hand moves when it is being held still by sheer will.The officiant was a small bald man in a cream suit. He had done this, he’d told Karl the night before at the rehearsal dinner, two thousand times.He was good at it. He was unhurried. He watched Karl’s face as Karl watched Lara come down the short stretch of white carpet they had unrolled between two rows of chairs.Lara’s mother was crying already. Lara’s sister, in the front row, was filming on her phone. Daisy was three