All Chapters of Chasing His Divorced Wife: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

ELARA'S POVChristmas morning I woke to the smell of my mother's kitchen already working.Six-thirty. Earlier than she needed to start. She started early because she loved it, because the long morning of cooking was its own kind of Christmas for her, the hours of it as much the gift as the meal.Damien was asleep.I lay still and listened to the house. My mother moving in the kitchen, soft and unhurried. The particular creak of the third stair that had been there since I was seven. Outside the Tacoma morning, quiet in the specific way of Christmas, the world briefly paused.I looked at him.On his back, one arm across his stomach, breathing even. He'd been up later than me, he and my father finishing the chess game and then sitting in the living room for twenty minutes afterward that I hadn't been part of and hadn't needed to be.I'd heard them from the hallway. My father's voice and then Damien's and then a long pause and then both of them. Not what they were saying. Just the rhythm

ELARA'S POVThe days between Christmas and New Year had a quality I'd come to love.The gallery closed until the second of January. Damien's work minimal, the Cross Industries machine running on its own momentum through the week. Nothing required from either of us beyond what we chose to give.We moved through the days slowly.Wednesday the farmers market was there, smaller still than the December one, just four stalls, but the bread woman was there and the cheese and we went anyway because it was what Wednesdays were.Damien bought coffee from the cart and handed me one before I asked.The bread woman looked at us with the recognition of two years."Usual?" she said to him."And the rosemary," he said.She put both in a bag and he paid and we walked on."She knows your order," I said."I've been coming for two years.""You didn't used to talk to vendors.""You say that every time.""It keeps being true."He took my hand and we moved through the four stalls and bought what was worth b

ELARA'S POVI was there at eight-thirty, before the staff arrived, walking through the space the way I did after any closure, checking that everything was as it had been, that the work on the walls was still doing what it needed to do.It was.The space felt ready for the new year in the way spaces felt ready when they'd been well used and well rested.I stood in the center of the main room for a few minutes.Four years ago I'd been a woman starting over in a city I'd chosen because it was far enough from New York to feel like escaping. The gallery had been an act of survival first and ambition second. Now it was neither. It was just what I did and what I was good at and what I would keep building for as long as it was worth building.That shift from survival to simply doing was the whole story of the four years.I made coffee and sat in my office and started the year.The first week of January had the particular energy of a new start that hadn't yet been complicated by the demands th

ELARA'S POVWe skipped chapter one hundred and seven and nobody noticed.That was a joke Damien made at dinner when I pointed out the numbering and it made me laugh properly, the kind that surprised me, and the restaurant looked at us briefly and we didn't care.Dinner was at the Japanese place that had become the default Vancouver restaurant.We ordered without looking at the menu because we'd been here enough times that the menu was internal. The owner recognized us and brought water before we asked.I told him about the meetings.The textile artist first. His name was Rafael and he'd flown up from Oaxaca and walked through the gallery with the contained excitement of someone who had been making work for twenty years in relative isolation and had just understood that it was about to reach further."He stood in the main room," I said, "and looked at the north windows for a long time. Then he said: the light here is like home but colder. And I knew he was in.""What did you agree?""T

ELARA'S POVWe landed in Seattle on Thursday evening.The apartment was cold from two days away and Damien turned the heating up and I moved through the rooms doing the returning ritual while he made tea.In the studio I stood in front of the shelves.The Vancouver program was real and needed marking and I didn't know what the object was yet. I stood there and looked at what was already there and thought about what came next.Nothing came.That was fine. The right thing would arrive when it arrived.Damien appeared with tea."Nothing yet?" he said."Nothing yet.""It'll come.""I know."He handed me my cup and looked at the shelves beside me."The bowl," he said."Still good.""Still better than the one you didn't buy.""Yes."We stood there for a moment. Then we took our tea to the couch and the fire went on and the apartment warmed around us.Friday the gallery had its first full week back in operation and I was in it from eight until six, the particular productive energy of January