All Chapters of Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

Xena."This is the one."Dante said it standing in the middle of an empty kitchen, before I'd even got both feet through the door, sunlight coming through a window that faced east instead of the street. Something in his voice had none of its usual caution in it."You said that about the last one too.""The last one had a crooked chimney and a surveyor who used the word imminent. This one has neither."He turned in a slow circle, taking in the room."This one has a kitchen a person could actually cook in. A garden that isn't a postage stamp. A door I don't hate on sight."I walked to the window.Below us sat a small, overgrown garden.A single old apple tree leaned at an angle that suggested decades of surviving Chicago winters on stubbornness alone."It needs work," I said, though I couldn't stop smiling at the tree."Everything worth having needs work. I've become something of an expert on that this year."I laughed despite myself.He came and stood beside me at the window, close eno

Xena."He said yes."Dante was standing in my kitchen the second I stepped through the door, phone still in his hand, something unguarded on his face that told me the whole answer before he'd finished the sentence."Okafor.""Okafor. He's already pulled the original plea transcript. He wants to meet Herald himself before he commits to anything, but he told me, and I'm quoting him directly, that a man who fights this hard for a stranger's guardianship case deserves a lawyer willing to fight just as hard for him."I felt something loosen in my chest.Relief arrived before I'd fully braced myself for it, the way it does sometimes, sneaking in ahead of the fear I'd been carrying."That's wonderful," I said, and I meant it fully."It is," Dante confirmed. He set the phone down on the counter, carefully, the way he does everything now. "It's also the start of something that's going to take months, probably longer, and I wanted you to know that going in, because I don't want either of us pre

Xena."You look terrible. Both of you."Herald said it before either of us had even sat down properly, his eyes moving between our faces with the particular attentiveness he brings to everything now."Thank you," Dante said, dry despite everything. "Very kind.""I'm not being unkind. I'm being observant." Herald folded his hands on the table. "Something's happened. Tell me."Dante told him.He told him plainly, without softening it.The suspension. The six months. The frozen files. The fact that he couldn't be in any room with Okafor in a professional capacity for half a year.Herald listened without interrupting, the same stillness he brings to everything difficult, hands flat on the table, eyes never once leaving Dante's face.When Dante finished speaking, Herald sat back slightly.He took it in slowly, the way he takes in most things, before he let himself say anything at all."Does this hurt my case," Herald asked, and there wasn't a trace of self-pity in the question, just a man

Xena."Someone else put an offer in."Dante read the email twice before he said it out loud, before I'd even sat down at the table, his voice carefully even in the way it goes when he's deciding how much of a feeling to let me see."On the apple tree house.""On the apple tree house." He set his phone down on the table between us. "Full asking price. No contingencies. They want to close in three weeks."I felt something drop through me, sharp and unexpected for a house we hadn't even been actively pursuing in months.It surprised me, how much it still hurt to hear."Can we match it," I asked, though some part of me already knew the honest answer before he even opened his mouth to give it."Not right now. Not with six full months of no income already three weeks in and four and a half long months still to go." Dante's jaw was tight. "Even if I wanted to ask you to cover it, which I genuinely don't, which we've already talked through carefully, the math simply doesn't work. Not honestly

Xena."He still has a post office box in Winnetka."Cassandra said it without looking up from the small address book open on her lap, the same cardigan she'd worn the first time I met her, a cup of tea going cold between us."You've kept his address for months, then.""I've kept a great many addresses for a great many years. It's a habit that outlasted most of the people it was meant to serve." She turned a page carefully. "I didn't write to the box because writing felt like something he could simply ignore. A letter sits in a box until someone chooses to open it. I wanted something he couldn't quite as easily set aside.""So what did you do about it.""I had a courier deliver it this morning. Signature required." Something almost fierce crossed her weathered face. "If he wants to refuse it, he has to look a stranger in the eye and say no out loud. I've found people find that harder than they expect."I sat across from her in the small flat overlooking the river, waiting for something