Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 131

Chapter 120: The Phone Call

Sedona’s POV

He’s adjusting. He’s thriving without me there. He’s so much happier without me being there to make his life miserable.

I pressed my hand flat against the hospital blanket and felt the texture of it, gripping onto it, because it was the only thing that felt real underneath my hands. I forced myself to put on a fake cheery tone as I continued.

“I’m glad he’s eating properly,” I said carefully. “He has a very specific dietary-”

“I know,” Catherine said, casually with the warmth of someone sharing something with me.

“He told me all about it, actually. He explained the whole thing-the fragrance-free requirement that he needed because his skin was too sensitive, the nut situation, the inhaler protocol, both the main and emergency ones were. He’s been quite the little educator. I think-” I could hear the smile in her voice, which was a specific kind of difficulty to receive.

“I think he was trained very thoroughly. He takes it very seriously. He doesn’t joke about his life, not after the first scare and I had to stay up all night looking after him because his mum abandoned him to prove a point.”

I trained him on that. I spent three years since he was old enough to remember basic things about his health and I was.making sure he knew his own body’s rules well enough to say them, because the day would come when I wasn’t in the room and he’d need to be able to tell someone what he needed. I’d made it into a game at first, when he was three-the rules of Nick’s body, like a superhero’s specific powers and vulnerabilities-and we’d rehearsed it until he had it, until it was his rather than just mine.

“I’m glad he remembers all those things,” I said.

“He remembers everything,” Catherine said. There was something fond in it, and something else underneath the fondness that I was not letting myself think about yet.

“He’s a remarkable child, Sedona. Truly. You did-” Another pause, this one slightly different. “The foundation is very solid and can stand without you as the support beams. He’s a really wonderful boy.”

The past tense of it. The way she’d constructed the sentence-*you did*-as if the doing was complete, finished, a phase that had concluded.

“I’d like to speak to him,” I said. “When he’s home from school. What time does-”

“Of course,” she said. “Of course, I’ll make sure he calls. I’ll have Nick-” She stopped, calculating as she continued on smoothly.

“I’ll make sure he knows you called.”

“What time does he get home?” I asked again, because she hadn’t answered the question, he had advanced to a new class with a new closing time and I had not yet known the new schedule.

13

Phone Call

Claim

“Around three-fifteen usually, with traffic. Depending on whether there’s an after-school activity-he’s been doing a little soccer, which he loves, so some days it’s closer to four.” The warmth was still there, consistent, maintained.

“I’ll make sure he knows, Sedóna. I promise.”

The promise sat in the air between us.

I looked at the phone in my hand, at the ordinary object of it, at the texture of the plastic casing.

“How is Logan?” I asked, because I was going to ask it and get it over with, and because the answer might be information worth hearing.

A pause. Shorter than the previous pauses, which meant she’d prepared for this one more specifically and already had an answer ready to use.

“He’s-he’s been struggling,” she said. “I want to be honest with you about that. He’s been in a difficult place since you left. He’s been… Can I be honest with you? Woman to woman, separate from everything else?”

I waited.

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