All Chapters of Chasing His Divorced Wife: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

ELARA'S POVNatasha called me on a Tuesday morning.Not a casual call. I knew from the first second, the quality of her silence before she spoke."I need to tell you something," she said. "I've been holding it for a long time and I can't hold it anymore."I sat down. "Tell me."She told me.It took forty minutes. She spoke carefully, the way someone speaks when they've rehearsed and still finds it hard. The documentation she'd been collecting for a potential divorce before Julian changed. Victoria's emails, which she'd accessed through Julian's shared family account before the password was changed after Victoria's death. What those emails contained.I listened without interrupting.Victoria had paid two household staff members to report on Elara's daily movements, her phone calls, and her visitors. She'd hired a woman named Claire, not our Claire, a different woman, who had approached Elara in the second year of the marriage as a potential friend, spent six months gaining her trust, a

ELARA'S POVMy mother met us at the door and read the room immediately the way she always did, hugged me, shook Damien's hand, and said dinner would be ready in an hour. She gave us space without being asked.My father was in the living room.He stood when we came in. He looked like a man who had been preparing for something difficult and had been waiting long enough that the preparation had worn thin.I sat across from him. Damien sat beside me."Tell me everything," I said. "From the beginning."Thomas sat down slowly. "After the divorce I was angry in a way I didn't know what to do with. I watched you rebuild yourself and I kept thinking about how it happened, the specific machinery of it. So I hired someone.""Who?""A firm in Portland. Licensed, reputable. I paid out of my retirement savings."Damien didn't react. I felt him stay still beside me deliberately."What did you ask them to find?" I asked."Initially just background on the Cross family. Whether what happened to you was

ELARA'S POVDamien called me at seven PM from Burlington airport.I was home, had been home for two hours, and had been waiting without admitting I was waiting."Tell me," I said.He told me.All of it. The facility, Patricia, the garden path, the common room. Daniel at the window. The moment he sat down and said his name and Daniel pressed his device and the synthesized voice said I know.I sat on the couch and listened and didn't say anything for a long time after he finished."He knew," I said finally."Someone had told him he had a brother at some point. Patricia thinks it might have been his mother before she died. He had a photograph of Richard and apparently a second photograph that staff didn't recognize until today.""Of you?""Of me. From a newspaper article about Cross Industries, maybe ten years old. Someone had printed it and given it to him or he'd found it somehow. Patricia couldn't say."I pressed my fingers to my eyes briefly.Daniel Cross had a photograph of his brot

ELARA'S POVDamien came home from New York on Wednesday evening.I had dinner ready, not because I'd planned it but because I'd needed something to do with the hours between knowing he was flying back and hearing his key in the door.He came in and sat at the counter and I put food in front of him and he told me about Julian.All of it. The apartment, Natasha leaving with Henry, the embezzlement numbers, the moment he'd said I know what happened to you and Julian going completely still.I listened without interrupting."He wants to meet Daniel," Damien said."That's good.""He held Henry's toy the whole time. Didn't notice he was doing it."I thought about that. Julian Cross sitting with the thing that had broken him wide open while holding a cloth rabbit belonging to his infant son."How did James do?" I asked."Exactly right. He said one thing at exactly the right moment and then let Julian have the space.""What did he say?"Damien told me. I thought about James for a moment, fifte

ELARA'S POVDamien called me after lunch at Richard's apartment.I was at the gallery, had been there since eight trying to work and mostly thinking about New York. When my phone rang I stepped into the back office and closed the door."How was it?" I asked.He told me. Julian's three words, how could you, landing with the weight they carried. Richard said yes we did without deflection. Julian said he was in therapy. Richard asks to visit Daniel and asks both his sons to come with him.I sat with it for a moment."He said stay for lunch," Damien said. "And we did.""How was that?""Quiet. Gerald made something. We sat at Richard's table and ate." A pause. "It wasn't comfortable. But it was real. Nobody performed anything.""That's new for that family.""Completely new.""How is Julian?""Tired and lighter at the same time. The way you look when you've said something you've been holding for thirty years.""And you?""Good. Clear." A pause. "Elara, he said yes we did. Not defensively, n