Lahat ng Kabanata ng Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore: Kabanata 241 - Kabanata 250

Chapter 242THEOThe folder was a green one with a plastic cover.I had chosen it specifically because it was the least interesting folder in my school bag, the one that held worksheets I had already finished and handouts that didn't need to be looked at again, the kind of folder that adults flipped past when they were helping with homework because there was nothing current in it. Mrs. Adebayo had never opened it. Dad had never opened it. It lived at the back of my bag behind the more important things and nobody paid attention to it.That was where I kept the drawings.There were six of them now.The first one was the accident, the one where my hand had moved before I decided to let it move, the stone room with the rough walls and the crack in the ceiling and the caged light. That one was the least detailed because I had stopped partway through and turned it over and then turned it back and written the numbers in the corner before I had fully decided to

Chapter 244THEOI did not say that the dream felt like a punishment. I did not say that I thought she was in the dream because she had seen me laughing on a Saturday morning with someone I had given a familiar name to. I did not say that the stone room felt like something she was showing me to make me understand what trapped looked like, so I would know what I had done to her memory by being happy while she was gone.I did not say any of this because saying it would make it real in the daytime and I was not ready for it to be real in the daytime."Just normal dreams about my mum," I said.Dr. Fisher looked at me for a moment with the complete attention."Okay," she said. "But if any of the dreams feel too big to carry by yourself, I'd like you to bring them here. Even if they're hard to explain. Even if they don't make sense yet. That's what this room is for."I nodded."Okay," I said.---I drew more when I got home.The

Chapter 246CALLAHANI was quiet for a moment.This was the real thing. Not the drawing, not the exposure of the secret, not the fear of being thought crazy. The leaving. That was the word at the end of the sentence that had the weight.I had known this was there. I had been watching it for weeks. He had never said it directly. He was five years old and he had been through more loss than most adults managed, and the word leaving had a weight for him that it had for very few people his age."I'm not going anywhere," I said.He looked at me."I mean that literally and I mean it for the longer thing," I said. "Both. I'm not leaving because of a drawing and I'm not leaving because of whatever you tell me is in the drawing." I held his eyes. "You can say the thing you've been not saying."The kitchen was quiet.Theo came fully into the kitchen.He put his bag on a chair and he sat down across from me. He looked at the drawing on the table

Chapter 248. The Buckle Opens.BIANCAThe leather on the left wrist gave out quietly. Not the way I had imagined it in the first week, when I still had enough energy to imagine things dramatically. No snap and no sudden freedom. Just the stitching at the third hole separating in the gradual way of something that had been asked for too much and for too long. The material loosened until there was enough room to move my fingers toward the buckle.I did not rush, rushing was the mistake of someone who still believed urgency was available to them. I had stopped believing that somewhere in the third week. The urgency required a reserve time I had spent. And what was left in its place was something slower and more reliable. I worked the buckle with my fingertips in the dark. And I felt the pin, and I breathed at the pace I had been breathing for weeks. The pace of someone who had learned that the body was the only resource she had and waste was not permitted.The pin moved and I held it the

Chapter 250THEOCal was on the phone.I could hear him through the study door, the specific low voice he used when the call was serious, the one where the words came out flat and even and close together. He'd been in there for forty minutes. I knew because I had checked my watch three times.The living room had run out of things to do.I had sorted the dinosaurs twice. The first time by geological era, the way Sophie had taught me, and the second time back into my own system, which was based on a combination of defensive capability and personal preference with the Triceratops at the top regardless of what any objective measure said. I had read two chapters of the book Louis had recommended, which was good but required more concentration than I had available right now. I had eaten the apple that Cal had put on the table before his call started.I was bored in the specific way that made the back garden look interesting even though the back garden was just the back garden.I went to the