Todos os capítulos de Ex-Husband Forgot Ever Divorcing Me: Capítulo 91 - Capítulo 100

MAXWELLLaurel called before seven.“Breakfast,” she said. “Don’t argue. Ambrose is already here.”That was not an invitation. It was a formation.I dressed and drove to the Lohr house with Monique still asleep behind a locked guest-room door. I had not told her where I was going. Telling her would have turned the morning into another negotiation about doorways and witnesses. Not telling her would cost me later. I chose later.The dining room was already arranged when I arrived.Laurel at the head.Elise at the side with a soft sweater and red-rimmed eyes.Ambrose in a chair too tall for him, a cushion under him, toast untouched.Derrick’s place was empty. Of course it was. He called things settled and then let the women fight the mess into a shape he could sign.“Sit,” Laurel said.I sat across from Ambrose, not beside Elise.The boy looked at me, then at Elise, then at his plate.“Eat, baby,” Elise murmured. “Daddy came.”Laurel did not waste time on tea.“Elise told me Monique refu

MONIQUEThe gate phone rang in the early afternoon.Cecil answered in the hall. I heard the change in her voice before I heard the names.“Mrs. Lohr is here,” she said, appearing at the kitchen doorway. “Miss Elise as well. They have the boy.”Maxwell was already moving.“I’ll take it,” he told her. “Keep them at the door until I get there.”He looked at me once.I had asked for this. 'You meet them at the door. Not me.'I stayed in the kitchen long enough to put my hands flat on the counter and breathe. Then I walked as far as the foyer arch and stopped where I could see without being the first face they received.Maxwell opened the door.Laurel stood on the step in cream and pearls, as if this were still her son’s house to enter. Elise was just behind her, Ambrose on her hip though he was old enough to walk. A small bag hung from Elise’s shoulder. Not large. Large enough to make a point.“Maxwell,” Laurel said. “We won’t have this conversation through a gate.”“Then we’ll have it he

MONIQUEI heard him in the hall.I had been awake since the gate lights swept the ceiling. I knew the sound of his car. I knew the pause he made at the bottom of the stairs when he was deciding whether to be a man or a storm. Then his voice came through the wood, low, as if a locked door were a person who might startle.“He went to sleep. I didn’t bring him. I didn’t stay for my mother.”His palm touched the door once.I did not answer.The silence after that was worse than if he had knocked. I sat on the edge of the bed with my hand on the key and let him leave. His footsteps faded toward the master room he still used as if marriage were a hallway you could walk back down.Only then did I breathe.The house smelled faintly of him even from here. Cologne. Night air. And under it, something softer, floral, that did not belong to this building. Elise’s perfume. A child’s bedtime. Another woman’s idea of a family clinging to his jacket.I lay down and did not sleep so much as wait for mo

MONIQUEMaxwell was home when I arrived.Not in the kitchen this time. In the living room, standing, as if he had already felt the day turning toward him. He took one look at my face and did not ask how work was.“What happened?”“Your mother called the clinic line,” I said. I set my bag down and did not sit. “She used Ambrose as the reason they put her through. She said yesterday was undignified. She said I dropped him, hid in a hallway, and made you choose a performance over blood. Then she mentioned lawyers.”Maxwell went still.“She called St. Claire.”“Yes. After Chelsea told me not to pick up her private number. So she used the building.” I held his gaze. “She expects you at dinner tomorrow. Ambrose will be there. I may come if I can behave. Or I can stay in my locked room and let the family do what I will not. Those were her words.”The silence that followed had weight.Maxwell took out his phone, stared at it, then put it away without dialing. Calling Laurel in front of me wou

MONIQUEHe came home without a child and without a suitcase.That should have been enough to let me sleep.It wasn’t.I was still in the living room when the door opened. I had not gone upstairs after his call. Awake, I had said. I had meant it. Maxwell stopped when he saw me, as if he had expected the locked room and found the lamp instead.“They’re going to call it cruelty,” he said.“They already have.”He took off his jacket. The smell of that other dining room came in with him—wine, roses, Elise’s perfume again, faint and stubborn.“Ambrose reached for my sleeve when I left. I told him tomorrow. His bed. Not a bag.” Maxwell rubbed his face. “Derrick used the word arrangement. My mother used life. Elise used your name like a knife in a napkin.”I sat with my feet under me on the sofa.“You closed the clinic.”“I said it in the room. Whether they heard it is another matter.” He looked at me. “You were right not to go. The empty chair was a prop.”“I know.”He sat in the chair acros