Lahat ng Kabanata ng Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore: Kabanata 251 - Kabanata 260

Chapter 251THEOThe bird's chest slowed.Not stopped. Slowed. From the too-fast rhythm of something trying very hard to stay alive, down to something that was still quick but no longer desperate. Its eye, which had been very still and very fixed, shifted. It looked at me from a slightly different angle, which meant its head had moved, which meant it was choosing to move rather than just existing in whatever state it had been in.The held wing lowered.Just slightly. The way something lowered when the thing it was protecting had stopped hurting enough to require active protection.I looked at this happening and I did not have words for it. I was five years old and I was sitting on the cold grass with a bird in my hands and something was happening that I did not have a framework for. The book Sophie had lent me about birds had not covered this. Nothing I had read about anything had covered this.My cuts closed.I watched this happen with the same quality of not having words. The small

Chapter 253THEOShe looked at me for a moment with the expression that was not quite anything. Not contempt, not approval. The expression of someone noting something down."My name is Voss," she said.There it was.I had not known the name before but I knew it now, from the drawings, from the green folder, from the quality of the dreams and the room in them and the specific things she had said to Bianca that Bianca had needed me to know about. The numbers in the corner of the drawings. The help through the water-sound.I kept my face still."I'd like to show you something," she said. "It won't take long.""I'm not leaving him," I said."He'll be here when you come back," she said. "I'm not going to do anything to him while you're gone. He's not useful to me right now and doing anything to him serves no purpose."I looked at Cal.He was breathing. I could see it. The specific movement of his chest, slow and even, the rhythm of s

Chapter 255THEOVoss worked quickly. I watched her do it with the watching that was not the same as looking, the kind where your eyes were on something but the significant part of your attention was elsewhere. I was thinking about Dad. About whether the message had reached him. About the sequence of events that would have to happen for anyone to know where we were.The thing she did did not hurt very much. Less than the blood draws at the hospital, which I had extensive experience with and which I had a complicated relationship with but had developed a practical acceptance of. This was faster than those and the equipment was smaller and she sealed it quickly when she was done."Good," she said.She closed the kit.She stood and went to the door without saying anything else, which was something I had come to understand about Voss, that she did not add words to situations when the words would not do any work. She had said what was necessary and had done

Chapter 257BIANCATheo was on the floor.He was sitting against the wall, knees up, arms around them, and next to him, on his back, unmoving, was a man I didn't know. Dark hair. Breathing slow and even in the specific rhythm of deep sedation, the same rhythm I had just come up out of myself. This had to be Callahan. I had heard the name through walls. I had not pictured a face.Theo's eyes came up when I came through the door.I stopped where I was. I did not go to him fast. I had learned that much about him even from a distance, through months of watching pieces of his life I was not supposed to see — that fast was the wrong speed for almost everything with him."Theo," I said.He looked at me.Then he looked away. Down at the man beside him, at Callahan's chest moving, and he put his hand near the man's hand the way you'd guard something. He did not look back at me."It's me," I said. Quiet. "I'm here."Nothing."Theo."He still did not look at me, and the not-looking had a weight

Chapter 259BIANCAThe dark held for three seconds, maybe four, before the lights came back.When they did, they were dimmer than before, the kind of dim that meant something in the building's wiring had taken damage and was running on whatever backup existed for a place like this. Theo hadn't moved. His question was still sitting in the room between us, unanswered, and I understood that I couldn't let the explosion be the thing that let me off the hook for it."That's a fair question," I said. "I'm not going to dodge it because the lights did something dramatic."He watched me. Waiting.I had thought, in the months since I left, about how I would answer this if I ever got the chance. I had built versions of the answer in my head the way you build versions of a speech you hope you never have to give. Most of those versions were better than the truth. Most of them gave me more credit than I deserved.I wasn't going to use any of them."I let you believe I was dead," I said. "That part