Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 153

Chapter 148: Mother and Son Reunion

Nick’s POV

She took out her phone. It was the small one, the personal one, not the house phone that she used whenever she was working here. She looked at me steadily. “Are you ready?”

I thought about being ready.

I thought about all the things I’d been carrying since the hospital. The day Mom had come and I’d said the things I’d said to her, the things I’d heard adults say and hadn’t understood yet that they were weapons, hadn’t understood yet that words were weapons until I’d used them and watched her face and known immediately that I’d used them wrong but hadn’t known how to stop using them.

I’d been carrying that day for a long time.

“Yes,” I said.

Mrs. Peterson dialed.

I heard it connecting. The sound of a phone call starting, the beeping first that started it, and then the ringing.

One.

I held the card.

Two.

I looked at Gerald the Boot on the ceiling.

Three.

And then

“Hello?”

Her voice.

Across all the distance between where I was and where she was, which was a lot of distance, which was Chicago to Seattle and also all the months since the hospital and all the things I’d said and all the things I’d meant and all the things I’d been trying to figure out how to say-

Her voice.

My chest did the big thing again.

“Mom?” I said.

Silence then a gasp as she spoke

Mother And Son Reunion-1

Claim

“Nick.” Her voice was different. It cracked on the one syllable of my name, went soft in the middle of it. “Hi, baby.”

I hadn’t been called baby in a long time.

Catherine didn’t call me that. Grandma Sherry didn’t. Dad never did. It was Mom’s word, it had always been Mom’s word, and hearing it come through the phone made my eyes do what I didn’t like it to do.

“Hi,” I said sniffling hard as I forced back the tears.

“Hi,” she said back.

We were both quiet for a moment and it wasn’t an awkward quiet. It was just the kind of silence where there were a lot of things that needed to be settled down first before we could start.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Mrs. Peterson said you were sick.”

“I was sick,” she said. “I’m better now. I’m getting better.”

“Really better?” I said. “Or the kind adults say when they don’t want kids to worry?”

She made a sound that was almost a laugh as she chuckled.

“Really better,” she said. “The doctor has numbers that prove it. I can show you the numbers sometime if you want.”

I did want to see the numbers. Numbers meant it was real and that it was proof that she was better because the numbers don’t lie. Numbers were fact.

“Okay,” I said.

“How are you?” she asked. “Tell me real things. Not the polished version you think I should know.”

I knew what she meant. She’d always asked for the real things, the actual things. I breathed out.

“I made you a card,” I said. “Three weeks ago. I didn’t know where to send it.”

“You made me a card,” she said, and her voice did the soft thing in the middle again.

“It’s blue,” I said. “Dark blue. I drew us on the front. You’re wearing the green sweater.”

“I love that sweater,” she said quietly.

“I know.” I looked at the card in my hand. “I wrote something inside. Can I read it to you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Please.”

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