All Chapters of Claimed by my ex husband’s uncle : Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

WHAT ROBERTA KNOWSLUCIEN'S POVAt two years and eleven months, Roberta knows: the names of all the parts of the maple tree she can reach. The sound her mother's pen makes on the legal pad and the difference between the sound of working writing and thinking writing. The three books she allows at bedtime and the specific order in which they must be read. That the stone in her pocket goes everywhere. That Grandad Robert lived in books, which is what Elena has told her and which Roberta has absorbed with the literalness of someone for whom books are already significant objects.She knows that Aunt Clara lives in Islington now and comes on Sundays and that Daniel comes with her and that Lily sometimes comes too and that this is the correct and permanent arrangement of those people. She knows that Ethan is the one who tells her true things when she asks true questions, which she has identified through several months of testing. She knows that Sophia is in New York and calls on Sundays and

ROBERT AT ONE MONTHLUCIEN'S POVHe is one month old and he has already established several firm positions on the world.He prefers the left side, he prefers being held facing outward rather than inward, which is the opposite of what Roberta preferred and which has required a recalibration of the instincts developed over three years of holding his sister. He prefers the kitchen to any other room — there is something about its combination of warmth and ambient sound that produces in him a quality of settled attention that no other space quite replicates. He is, at one month, already a person with preferences, which is the thing about newborns that I had forgotten and which strikes me again with the same force it struck me the first time: that they arrive already themselves.Roberta has adjusted to him with the methodical thoroughness she brings to all new situations. She spent the first week observing from a careful distance not with jealousy, exactly, but with the focused assessment o

WHAT ROBERTA MAKES OF ITLUCIEN'S POVAt three years and two months, Roberta has concluded that her brother is an acceptable addition to the household, with several specific conditions.The conditions are not stated — she has not sat us down and issued them. They are observable in her behaviour. He is not to be brought to the maple tree without her present, which she enforces by always being available when he is taken to the garden. He is not to be shown significant objects — her stone, the puzzle she completed in January, the book about the sea from Sarah Chen — without her introducing them. He is not to be addressed in baby language, which she finds philosophically objectionable and has said so in terms that would be clear to anyone paying attention.Within these conditions, she is the most dedicated older sister available.She tells him things, not in the heightened register adults use with infants, but in her own voice, slightly slower than usual, with the specific patience of som

CHRISTMAS IN HAMPSTEADLUCIEN'S POVThe first Christmas in the Hampstead house with both children is the kind of occasion that reveals the full character of a household.We have fourteen people for Christmas dinner, which is the natural consequence of a household that has been accumulating the people who belong in it over three years without ever removing any. Clara and Daniel and Lily. Ethan and Priya. Gerald and his wife. Sophia, who flew from New York specifically and who announced in October that she intended to spend all future Christmases in Hampstead and considered this a condition of continued friendship. Daniel's daughter Lily, who is nineteen now and whose presence at family occasions has shifted from the careful wariness of a teenager to the comfortable ease of someone who has decided this household is one she trusts.The table is extended into the sitting room. Elena managed the seating arrangement the way she manages all logistical problems — with a legal pad and a specif

THE COMMITTEELUCIEN'S POVElena gives parliamentary evidence on a Tuesday in February.I am not in the room, the public gallery is available but she asked me not to come, on the grounds that the committee room is professional space and she functions best in professional space when she is not managing the awareness of someone she loves watching her. I understand this and I respect it and I stay at the company and track the committee's live transcript feed on my laptop.She speaks for thirty-five minutes and then takes questions for forty.What I observe, through the transcript, is exactly what I have watched her do in every significant room over the past three years: she says what she means with complete precision, she acknowledges uncertainty where uncertainty exists, and she does not permit the framing of a question to determine the terms of her answer.One of the committee members asks whether the proposed amendment risks being applied too broadly — whether expanding the definition