All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Abandoned Wife : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

“You look exactly right,” Ethan said.He was outside the building on Chancery Lane at eight fifty-four, one minute early, which she had expected. He was in the dark jacket, no tie, the version of himself that said this matters without announcing it. He looked at her and she looked at him and neither of them performed the moment.“How are you,” she said.“Good,” he said. “Steady.” He looked at her face. “You slept.”“Better than I expected.”“I didn’t,” he said. “But I’m fine.”She looked at him. “You don’t have to stay the whole time.”“I know.” He held the door open. “I’m staying the whole time.”The building on Chancery Lane was nothing like the Harlow Foundation. No glass and quiet money. Just stone and function and the kind of corridor that said things of consequence happen here without trying to impress anyone about it.Webb was at the desk as promised. He looked like a man who had been running on very little sleep for several weeks and had made peace with that. He shook Bianca’s

“She named them Bianca, Ethan and Kemi,” Zoe said.Bianca looked at the message. Then at Ethan. He was reading over her shoulder and his expression was doing the thing it did when he found something genuinely funny and was trying to decide if this was the right moment to show it.“She named a hill after me,” he said.“She named a hill after all three of us,” Bianca said. “Yours is the biggest one.”He gave up trying not to smile.She typed back: Tell Lily those are excellent hill names. Also tell her we’re on our way home.Zoe replied: She says thank you. Also she wants to know if the biggest hill gets a name plaque or if that’s too much.Bianca showed it to Ethan.He looked at it for a long moment. “It’s not too much,” he said.She typed: Not too much.They stood in the kitchen of the house that was going to become theirs in a few weeks and she looked at the island and the windows and the light and thought about two girls in her apartment right now adding name plaques to three hills

“You made one comment about the lift,” Zoe said.“It was a very reasonable comment,” Ethan said.“You said it twice.”“The second time was a clarification.”Bianca carried a box past both of them and did not get involved. She had learned three weeks ago when the packing began that the dynamic between Ethan and Zoe in logistical situations was something that functioned best without her mediation. They argued about everything. They agreed on most things. Neither of them had admitted either of these facts out loud.The lift at her building held three boxes at a time. There were forty-two boxes. They had worked this out in advance and Ethan had made one comment. Then a clarification.Kemi was already at the house. She had gone ahead with the first carload to oversee what she called the receiving end, which everyone understood meant she wanted to arrange things before Bianca arrived and had opinions about where they should go.This was fine. Bianca had learned which things were worth havin

“She called,” Zoe said.Bianca looked up from the kitchen table. Zoe was standing in the doorway still in her school uniform, backpack on, phone in her hand. Not urgent. Not distressed. Just stating a fact in the careful voice she used when something had happened that she had already decided how she felt about.“Who,” Bianca said.“Dad.” Zoe came in and sat down. She put the phone on the table between them. “He left a voicemail. I didn’t pick up because I was in school but I listened to it on the way home.”Bianca looked at the phone. “What did he say.”“He wants to see me.” Zoe put both hands flat on the table. “He said he’s ready. He said he knows I have questions and he wants to answer them.” A pause. “He said he found out about the notebook.”Bianca was still.“I told him,” Zoe said before Bianca could ask. “I called him last week. You knew I was ready and I knew I was ready and I decided to tell him I was ready.” She looked at her mother directly. “Is that okay.”Bianca looked at

“She leaned on you the whole way home,” Ethan said.“Yes.”“And she asked about the bread.”“First thing.” Bianca sat at the island and watched him finish the last of dinner, something with rice and something that smelled like the kind of cooking that had taken actual attention. “She’s fine. She’s going to be fine. She just needed to ask the questions out loud to a real person who had to answer them.”“Did he?”“He answered all forty-three.” She picked up the glass of water he had put beside her without asking. “Some of them badly. Some of them honestly. One of them the way I didn’t expect.” She paused. “She asked him if he actually wanted to be her dad. Not officially. Actually.”Ethan was still.“He said yes,” she said. “She said she’d think about it.” She looked at her glass. “She didn’t give him anything. She just put the question on the table and filed the answer and came home.”“That’s very Zoe.”“It’s very me,” she said. “She learned it from watching me do it badly for years an