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All Chapters of Chasing His Divorced Wife: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

68 Chapters

Chapter 51

ELARA'S POVWe spent the morning doing nothing in particular. I read. He worked through some papers, then stopped and read too. The fire did what fires do and the apartment was warm and outside Seattle was doing its November thing.By afternoon I was restless."Walk?" I said."Yes."We went to the waterfront, which was quieter than summer, the tourist energy gone and the city feeling more like itself. We walked without a destination, hands linked, not talking much.Near the market he stopped at a flower stall and bought me a bunch of dark red dahlias without explanation."What are these for?" I asked."Nothing. You looked at them.""I look at a lot of things.""These ones twice."I looked at the dahlias. Then at him. "You're annoyingly observant.""I'm making up for lost time."We walked back along the water and he kept my hand the whole way, which was not a small thing for someone who'd spent years keeping physical distance as a form of self-protection. He'd had to learn it deliberat

Chapter 52

DAMIEN'S POVVancouver in December was cold and clear and smelled like the ocean.We flew up on a Wednesday morning. Elara had her folder, her camera, and the focused energy she carried when she was working toward something. She'd been in contact with the Vancouver lawyer and the potential manager, a woman named Claire Beaumont who met us at the airport with the efficiency of someone who respected other people's time.Claire was fifty, sharp, had run a gallery in Montreal for twelve years before moving west. She knew everyone worth knowing in the Canadian contemporary art scene and spoke about the market the way Elara spoke about it, from genuine knowledge rather than performed expertise.They got along immediately.I stayed out of it.The space was on a quiet street in Gastown, ground floor of a heritage building, exposed brick, good north light through tall windows. Elara walked through it without speaking for ten minutes. I followed at a distance, watching her look at walls, ceilin

Chapter 53

ELARA'S POVChristmas that year we spent in Tacoma with my parents.Damien's idea, which surprised me until it didn't. He'd been quietly building something with my father since the conversation in the hospital hallway after the wedding. Phone calls about basketball. A book Thomas had mentioned wanting that arrived in the mail three days later. Nothing large, just consistent attention to what mattered to the people I loved.My mother cooked for two days beforehand. The house smelled like it always had at Christmas, cinnamon and something roasting and the specific warmth of a home that had been lived in fully.Damien helped my father assemble a bookshelf on Christmas Eve that had been sitting in its box for three months. I watched them from the kitchen doorway, my father reading instructions he didn't need and Damien following them precisely, both men finding common ground in the practical task of building something."He's good," my mother said beside me."He is.""Your father likes him

Chapter 54

DAMIEN'S POVMarch arrived and Cross Industries turned fifteen years old.James wanted to mark it with an event. I agreed to a dinner for senior staff and board members, nothing excessive, a private room at a good restaurant in New York. Two days, fly in, handle it, fly back.Elara had the Vancouver build-out entering its final phase and didn't come. We said goodbye at the apartment door on a Tuesday morning and she handed me a travel coffee and said, "Don't let James talk you into staying longer than two days.""He'll try.""I know. Tell him no."I told James no on Wednesday evening when he suggested extending through the weekend. He accepted it without much argument, which meant he'd expected it.The dinner was good. Forty people who'd built something real over fifteen years. I gave a short speech that James said afterward was the best I'd ever given, which I attributed to finally understanding that the company was about the people in it rather than the revenue it generated.I belie

Chapter 55

ELARA'S POVWe were at the gallery by seven AM. Claire was already there, had been there since six, moving through the space with the quiet efficiency of someone who'd done this enough times to know what needed doing without a list.The artists arrived through the morning. Six of them, all mid-career, all chosen because their work said something real rather than something decorative. I'd spent three months on the roster and felt certain about every name on it.By ten the installation was complete.I stood in the center of the main room and looked at what we'd built. The work on the walls, the light doing exactly what I'd hoped it would do, the brick giving the space history without overwhelming the art.Claire stood beside me."Ready?" she said."Yes."We opened the doors at eleven.The public day had been advertised modestly, social media, local arts publications, a mention in the Vancouver Sun. I hadn't expected a line but there was one, not enormous, maybe forty people, a mix of ag

Chapter 56

DAMIEN'S POVJames confirmed the Maya situation on a Tuesday phone call in mid-May.He brought it up himself, which meant he'd been waiting to tell me and had finally decided it was time."I'm seeing Maya Reeves," he said. Directly, the way James did things."I know."A pause. "Elara told you.""Maya told Elara. Elara told me. You have approximately zero secrets between the four of us.""That's concerning.""How's it going?""Good. She's difficult in ways I find interesting rather than exhausting.""That sounds right for Maya.""She told me upfront that if I hurt Elara by proxy she'd make my professional life very uncomfortable.""She said the same thing to me at the wedding.""She means it.""I know. That's why I like her."We talked for another twenty minutes about Cross Industries and then James said, "You're okay with this.""James. You're my best friend and she's someone important to Elara. If this works it makes everyone's life better. Why wouldn't I be okay with it.""Some peop

Chapter 57

ELARA'S POVClaire had curated it independently, which was the point. I'd given her full autonomy after the opening and she'd used it well, assembling a show around four Pacific Northwest artists that drew on both the Canadian and American sides of the region's contemporary scene.I flew up for the opening night.Damien came. James and Maya drove up from Seattle where Maya had been spending increasing amounts of time, enough that she'd started keeping a bag at James's apartment, which she mentioned to me with the studied casualness of someone trying not to make it a big deal.The opening was full. Not the performed fullness of people attending because they should but genuine interest, collectors mixed with working artists mixed with people who'd come because of the public day in May and wanted to come back.Claire moved through the room with the confidence of someone who knew exactly what she'd built and why.Afterward the four of us had dinner at a place near the water. Maya and Jame

Chapter 58

DAMIEN'S POVJulian called me the week he landed."Dinner," he said. Not a question exactly but not quite a demand either. Progress.We met at a restaurant in midtown, just the two of us. No agenda stated. I arrived first and he came in five minutes later looking different in ways that were hard to specify. Same face, same posture, but something behind it had settled.We ordered and talked about Cape Town for twenty minutes, the project timeline, the local team he'd built, a complication with a contractor that he'd resolved without calling me.Then he said, "I want to talk about before."I waited."The lawsuit. The Vivian situation. Everything I did when you first came back from the hospital." He held his wine glass without drinking. "I was looking for ways to benefit from your situation and I'm not proud of it.""I know.""I'm not asking you to forgive it. I'm telling you I know what I did.""Julian."He looked at me."I know who you were. I can see who you're becoming. That's enough

Chapter 59

ELARA'S POVWe went to Tacoma again. My parents had started expecting it, which meant my mother began planning the menu in November and my father had the spare bedroom ready without being asked. It had become the thing we did and the ease of that was its own kind of gift.Damien brought wine and a chess set for my father, which was either inspired or dangerous given Richard's recent obsession had apparently filtered into conversation between the two of them.My father opened it and looked at Damien."You play?" Thomas asked."Badly. But I'm willing to learn."They played for two hours after Christmas dinner while my mother and I sat in the living room and listened to them disagree about strategy through the wall."Your father is teaching him," my mother said."Damien is letting him teach him," I said. "There's a difference."She considered that. "Either way it's working."It was working. That was the thing about Damien now, he understood that some relationships required you to come in

Chapter 60

DAMIEN'S POVClaire organized a small event, nothing as deliberate as the opening, just an evening for the artists who'd shown that first year and the collectors who'd supported them. She called it a thank you rather than a celebration, which was exactly the right framing.Elara flew up the day before to help with final details that didn't need her help but that she wanted to be present for anyway. I followed the next morning.The evening was warm for Vancouver in May, the city doing its best impression of summer a month early. The gallery doors were open to the street and people drifted in from outside with the comfortable ease of somewhere they'd been before and wanted to return to.I stood near the back and watched Elara work the room.A year ago in this same space I'd watched her and thought about how completely she'd rebuilt herself. Tonight I thought about something different. Not how far she'd come from where she was. Just who she was, standing in a room she'd built, talking to

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