All Chapters of The Wife He Never Saw: Carrying His Secret Twins In Silence: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Elena's POVThe morning had settled into a quiet rhythm.Tristan had been back in the chair since his calls, and we had been existing in the particular space we had found after midnight, not resolved, not comfortable exactly, but no longer adversarial. He had asked me once if I wanted more water and I had said yes and he had refilled the glass from the pitcher on the tray table without making it into anything larger than what it was. We had not returned to the conversation from the night before. Both of us understood, without discussing it, that the conversation from the night before needed time to be what it was before anything was built on top of it.I had been looking at the courtyard trees when I heard the footsteps.I knew Serena's footsteps. This was a thing I had not known I knew until I heard them in the corridor and my body registered them before my mind did, a slight change in my posture, a tightening across my shoulders that was the physical memory of years of operating in

Elena's POVI had been in bed since eight in the morning.Not because I particularly wanted to be in bed. I had not wanted to be in bed at eight or nine or ten or eleven, when the modified bed rest protocol had required me to be there regardless of what I wanted. The protocol was specific and I had agreed to follow it and I was following it with the determined compliance of someone who understood that the alternative was another ambulance ride and another hospital room and two heartbeats on a screen that she needed to stay on the screen.Marco had gone to the studio after making me breakfast and leaving the day's tea and crackers and my phone and my sketchbook and a stack of books on the bedside table with the wordless practicality of someone who understood what a person needed without having to be asked. I had eaten the breakfast and drunk the first cup of tea and opened the sketchbook and worked lying on my side, which was not ideal for the precision the work required but was what t

Elena's POVThe call came on a Saturday morning.I was at the kitchen table, sketchbook open, working on the third panel of a series that had started as an assignment from Marco's firm and had become something else in the execution, the way work sometimes did when you stopped managing it and let it go where it needed to go. The series had begun as a study of twin fetal development week by week, clinical and precise, the kind of anatomical documentation that medical publishers commissioned and used. It had become, somewhere around the fourteenth panel, a record of something personal, the specific weeks of this specific pregnancy, annotated with the things that had happened alongside the biological development.My phone was beside the sketchbook. I saw my father's name on the screen and felt the familiar bracing sensation that his calls produced, the preparation for a conversation that would require more than it gave.I answered."Elena." His voice was different from how it usually was.

Tristan's POVI called Richard Hale on a Wednesday morning.He answered with the professional efficiency of someone who had been expecting the call or who was always in a state of readiness for calls from clients who made significant decisions without warning. I had given him sufficient cause over the past months to develop this readiness specifically for me."The annulment proceedings," I said. "I want them suspended."A brief pause. "Elena has not signed the paperwork yet. The process has not formally begun in any substantive sense.""I understand that. I want the proceedings suspended. Not paused pending her signature. Suspended. I do not want them moving forward."A longer pause. Richard was a careful man. He was careful with language and careful with conclusions and careful about the distinction between what his clients wanted and what they were likely to get."Tristan," he said, in the tone of someone selecting words with particular attention. "Suspending the proceedings is with

Elena's POVI found the apartment on a Thursday.The bed rest had been lifted at the twenty-six week mark, Dr. Patel cautiously satisfied with the monitoring results and the sustained stability, the instruction shifting from modified bed rest to reduced activity, which meant I could move through the world again at a pace that did not require me to calculate each step. The relief of it was considerable. Three weeks of careful stillness had given me a great deal of time to think and the thinking had produced, among other things, a clarity about what I needed next.I needed my own space.Marco's apartment had been everything it needed to be during the weeks I had needed it. The spare room with the east-facing window. The kitchen table where important decisions had been made over tea. The person on the other side of the wall who had shown up without being asked and stayed without being required and had asked for nothing in return except the occasional company of someone he genuinely cared