All Chapters of CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

The judge arrived at ten exactly.Honour Margaret Chen, late fifties, silver haired, the kind of face that had seen enough courtrooms to develop a permanent expression of measured assessment, she settled into her seat with the unhurried precision of someone who understood that the room would wait for her and had stopped finding that remarkable years ago."Before we address the postponement challenge, this court will conduct a preliminary evidentiary hearing to determine the admissibility of the materials submitted by both parties, this is not the full trial proceeding, but testimony directly connected to the admissibility question may be heard today."She looked at both legal teams."Mr Cole, you filed the challenge, you have ten minutes."Richard's lawyer stood immediately.His name was Brennan Cole, Clara had briefed me on him in the corridor, twenty years of criminal defence work, known for aggressive cross examination and the particular talent of making credible people sound unrel

Lunch was a sandwich I didn't taste in a side room with the blinds half drawn.Clara ate standing up, reading her notes between bites, and Adrian sat across from me with his untouched coffee going cold and his eyes on the table, and for a while none of us said anything, which felt less like silence and more like three people holding the same breath."You told them about the others."His voice was low."In your answer, you named everyone who helped, I noticed.""They did help.""I know, but you could have made it about you alone, it would have sounded stronger.""It wouldn't have been true."He looked up then, and something in his face softened in a way he didn't seem to notice, the look of a man hearing his own old instincts being gently corrected by someone who didn't even need to try."You said, the man I was once married to.""That's what you are.""Once.""Yes."He nodded slowly, took it, and didn't argue with it, and I felt the baby shift beneath my hand as if even she, or he, ha

"Explain it."My voice came out steadier than I felt, and I kept my eyes on Victor Knight's face and my hand flat on my father's letter, as if the page might slide away if I let go."Explain how a silence becomes the rest of it."Victor opened his eyes."He asked me for one small thing, and I knew, the moment I read it, that I would keep it, because keeping it was easy, it cost me nothing, and it let me feel loyal to a man I was about to fail.""That isn't an explanation.""No, it's the beginning of one."He folded his hands on the table, and I noticed they were shaking slightly, an old man's tremor, and he made no effort to hide it."Your father left something with me that night, a box, recordings of his voice, letters for you, a photograph of your mother laughing, things meant for a daughter who was too young to hear them, and he asked me to hold them until you were strong enough.""You had them.""For twenty years.""And you didn't give them to me.""I told myself you weren't ready

My mother was sitting on the floor.I noticed that before anything else, that she had lowered herself onto the carpet beside the coffee table with her back against the sofa, like a girl, and that the box in front of her was smaller than I had imagined, plain dark wood with a brass clasp gone green at the edges.Marcus stood by the window with his arms folded.He had clearly been standing there for a while, because the stillness in his shoulders was the kind that takes effort to keep, and when I came in he looked at me and then at our mother and gave me a small nod that said, she hasn't touched it."I waited."Her voice was thin."I wanted you here, both of you, I didn't want to be the only one who heard him."I sat down beside her on the floor.Adrian had stopped in the doorway, and I turned and found him watching me with that careful uncertainty, asking without asking, and I thought about it for exactly one breath."Stay," I said."Are you sure.""It's your father's fault it was hidd

I chose the building with the east facing window.It was the only place that had belonged to both of us before anyone else touched it, the building where my father had arranged a first meeting neither of us was allowed to remember, and when I unlocked the door and stepped into the small room where the ring box had been waiting, the morning light was already lying across the floor exactly as it had that dawn, patient, as though it had never gone anywhere.Adrian was already there.He stood by the wall furthest from the window, hands loose at his sides, and he hadn't moved toward me when I came in, which I noticed, and which I was glad of."You came early.""I didn't want you to arrive to an empty room.""That's thoughtful.""I'm trying to be."I sat on the old wooden chair by the window and left him standing, and I let the silence stretch, because I had spent three years being the one who rushed to fill silences and I was finished with it."I'm going to say things," I told him."Yes."