All Chapters of Ex-Husband Forgot Ever Divorcing Me: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

MAXWELLI held her hand and still could not say it.That was the part I hated most. Not the paper in my jacket. Not Trevor’s face across a coffee shop table. The fact that I had asked her to sit, opened my mouth, and then shut it again like a coward who wanted one more hour of her softening before I put a child between us in words.Monique did not pull away.She also did not make it easy. She sat close enough to be near and far enough to leave. The living room lamp made a pale circle on the rug. Somewhere in the house Cecil was being quiet on purpose.“Maxwell,” she said. “If you start a sentence, finish it.”I looked at her profile. The tiredness around her eyes. The mouth that had told me I was living on a last name. The woman who had let me kiss her neck over a frying pan that same morning and then gone to work carrying a secret of her own. I could feel it. She had come home heavier than she left.I let go of her hand only to take the folded result from my jacket.I should have don

MAXWELLI left the plate by her door and did not knock again.Sleep did not come in any useful form. The result sat on the dresser like a third person in the room. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Monique on the stairs saying things like this never stayed where you put them, then the boy on a chair with a swab in his mouth, then Elise’s face the day I told her I wanted proof.Morning came anyway.Monique’s door was still shut when I dressed. I stood outside it long enough to hear nothing and took that as an answer. I had told her I would speak to my father today. Keeping that sentence was the only clean thing I had left.I drove to the Lohr residence with the paper in my jacket.The guard waved me through without a question. The house looked the same. It always did. White stone and order and the kind of quiet that meant someone had already been told I was coming.Elise reached the foyer first.She had dressed for a verdict. Hair done. Mouth painted. Relief already arranged on her fac

MONIQUEChelsea did not let me leave the café without a plan.That was why I had called her. I knew she would not offer comfort and send me back to the mansion with only tea in my hands.“You transfer him,” she said. “Not next week. Monday morning. You walk to Ellie yourself, you cite conflict of interest, and you do not let Janine talk you into being brave.”“Ellie will ask why now.”“Then you tell Ellie the truth she already suspects: the guardian is hostile, the child is connected to your personal life, and you cannot be the clean adult in that room.” Chelsea tapped the table once. “You can still care about him. Caring is not the same as keeping the file.”I stared at the cooling tea.“If Elise hears I passed him on, she will bring him back to the waiting area and call it proof.”“Let her perform in a hallway. You will not give her your license.” Chelsea leaned in. “Write the referral today. Lock it. If you sit on that chart one more night, you are going to start justifying it with

MAXWELLElise called before I left the office.I almost did not answer. Sunday had already given her my kneeling and my name. Monday should have belonged to work, to the company I had walked back into so Monique would stop calling me a last name with money attached.I answered anyway.“She dumped him,” Elise said, no greeting. “Your precious Monique. She refused to see Ambrose. She transferred him like he was a file she got tired of. He looked at her and she sent him down the hall.”My hand stopped on the car door.“Slow down.”“Don’t tell me to slow down. I took our son to her because he is not well. She sat with him once, played saint, and the minute the test proved you are his father she dropped him. Ask the receptionist. Ask anyone. She said conflict of interest. Do you know what that means? It means she doesn’t want your child near her now that he is real.”The parking lot was too bright.“Where is he now?”“With some other doctor. Ellie. I don’t care what her name is. Ambrose as

ELISEHe left me standing in the foyer with my hand still warm from his sleeve.Maxwell had come. That should have been enough. He had gone to the playroom. Ambrose had leaned on his knee. I had watched from farther than I wanted and called it a victory in my head before he opened his mouth again.Then he had looked at my hand until I dropped it.*There is no our side that uses him as a messenger.*The door shut on the sentence.I smiled for the staff until they scattered. I smiled until Ambrose was taken upstairs for a bath he would not want. Then I went into the nearest empty room and let the smile fall off my face like something cheap.Confirmed blood.A kneel in the study.A Monday visit.And still he had spoken to me like I was a problem in the hallway instead of the mother of his son.Monique had done this.She had sat with Ambrose once, played the gentle doctor, then shoved him to another woman the moment the paper made him real. Conflict of interest. Procedure. Pretty words fo