All Chapters of Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle: Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

Xena"He called Okafor this morning."Dante said it the second I picked up the phone, no greeting first, straight into the news the way he does now when something actually matters.I stood in my kitchen with the phone pressed to my ear, my whole body suddenly very still, waiting."And?""He's agreed to authenticate the records." Dante's voice had a careful lightness to it, relief held just barely in check. "Sworn written statement, notarized, everything Okafor needs to enter them formally. He has conditions, though. I want you to hear them before you get too hopeful.""Tell me," I said, bracing myself for whatever came next."No court appearance. He won't testify in person, not for Herald, not for anyone. The statement stands alone or it doesn't stand at all." Dante paused. "And no contact with the family whatsoever. Not Cassandra, not you, not me. He said the records are for Herald, not for anyone else's forgiveness."I sat down slowly at my kitchen table, turning that over.It was s

Xena."You're holding it wrong.""I'm holding it exactly how you told me to hold it."Dante set his own sledgehammer down against the exposed studs and crossed the room, sawdust caught in his hair, one sleeve of his shirt rolled higher than the other. He put his hands over mine instead of taking the tool away, adjusting my grip an inch lower on the handle."Choke up on it," he said, patience worn thin at the edges but still holding. "Swing with your hips, not your shoulders."I swung.The sledgehammer connected somewhere below where I'd aimed, and a chunk of plaster the size of a dinner plate came away, dust blooming out in a pale cloud that caught the light from the bare bulb overhead."There," Dante said, and there was real warmth in it, a kind of pride he didn't try to talk himself out of. "That's the swing."I stepped back and looked at what I'd done. It wasn't much. A hole the size of a fist in a wall that had sixty more years of plaster left to give.But it was mine. The house w

Xena.Tell him thank you.I read it four more times before I set the phone down on the plastic sheeting, like putting distance between us would make it mean something different."Who was that?" Dante asked, not looking up from the outlet he was rewiring, wire strippers balanced between his teeth for a second before he set them down."I don't know." I picked the phone back up despite myself. "Unknown number. Three words. Tell him thank you.""Tell who thank you?""That's the part I don't know either."He straightened, giving me his full attention now, the kind he saved for things that weren't actually about outlets or wiring."Delete it," he said, easy, like it cost him nothing. "Wrong number. People text strangers by accident all the time.""It's not a wrong number." I turned the screen toward him, like he could read something in it I couldn't. "Nobody texts a stranger 'tell him thank you.' That's a message for someone specific, sent to me on purpose."I ran through the short list of

Xena.Nobody moved for a long moment. Foster stood at the edge of the driveway with his hands still shaking at his sides. Behind me, Dante's breathing had gone slow and deliberate, each one drawn out longer than it needed to be."You should leave," Dante said, stepping half in front of me without quite making it look deliberate."I know how this looks." Foster's hands were still shaking, and he made no move to hide it. "I'm not here to cause trouble. I just needed to say something in person instead of hiding behind a phone I bought so nobody could trace it back to me.""So the texts were you.""Both of them." He said it plainly, like the confession cost him less than the drive over had. "The first one from my own number, and when you didn't respond the way I'd hoped, I bought a second phone and sent it again, thinking maybe you'd answer a stranger before you'd answer me."I felt Dante's hand tighten slightly where it rested against my back, a silent question I didn't have a fast answe

Xena. I pulled into the gravel lot of a diner I'd never been to before, somewhere past the county line, with no memory of deciding to stop. The sign out front buzzed and flickered on one corner, half its letters burned out, and through the window I could see a waitress moving between empty booths with a coffee pot she didn't seem to be serving anyone.The engine ticked as it cooled. My hands ached from how long I'd been gripping the wheel, and when I finally let go of it, they trembled in my lap like they belonged to someone else.I sat there for a long minute just breathing, watching my own reflection in the dark windshield glass, not recognizing the shape of my own face in it.I picked up my phone.Not words. A photograph.The kitchen wall, the one we'd sledgehammered apart together in chapter one of this house, now closed up again. Drywall hung clean and taped, corners mudded smooth, ready for paint. No caption at first, jus