Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 174

Chapter 169: Telling Drew About Nick

Drew POV

The different face was the good one.

Dad had different faces for different things and I’d catalogued them across my whole life the way I catalogued birds, the way I catalogued leaves.

I’d thought about how to name it and the best I could do was: like he was somewhere else.

Clam

Not physically. Dad was always physically where he was supposed to be-school pickup, dinner, bedtime, the Thursday hot chocolate. But the somewhere-else face meant that even when he was present he was also thinking about something he wasn’t saying, which was different from the kind of not-saying I did, because when I didn’t say things it was because I was sorting them, but when Dad didn’t say things it was more like he had them locked up.

The new face wasn’t like that.

The new face was more here.

I’d first noticed it around the time he started going to Sedona’s house more, or she started coming to ours, or they started going on the walks together. It was hard to pinpoint exactly when the face changed because faces didn’t change all at once, they changed in small steps that you only noticed when you looked back and compared the before and the after.

But it was different now.

At dinner he asked me more questions and listened to the answers differently, the kind of listening where he was actually thinking about what I said rather than waiting to say the next thing. He laughed more, the real laugh, which Sedona had told me once was different from the polite laugh and she was right, I’d always known they were different but I hadn’t told anyone in case they thought I was weird for knowing.

Also there was Lucian.

す

Lucian came to our house more now.

Before, Lucian was Dad’s work person. He met him at work or through Sedona, i wasnt sure of that but i knew the day i met Sedona was the same time i met Lucian and Lake..and soon enough Lucian came all the time.

Now he came over not for work.

This was different.

He came over on Wednesday evenings sometimes and they cooked, which was strange because Dad usually cooked alone or ordered things and didn’t cook with other people. When Lucian came to cook they talked the whole time and there was a different sound to the kitchen, the kind of sound that meant two people were comfortable rather than one person and a guest.

Telling Drew About Nick

Lake had explained it to me with the directness he brought to everything.

“Our dads like each other,” he’d said, at school, like he was reporting the weather.

“I know,” I’d said, because I did know, I’d known for a while

“Not like how you like a friend,” Lake had said, making sure I understood the type of liking.

“I know,” I’d said again.

“Is that okay?” he’d asked.

Clum

This was a Lake question, which meant it came fast and direct and without a lot of warning. Lake asked questions the way he reported things-because they were thère and needed to be addressed.

“Yes,” I’d said. “It’s okay.”

And it was. I’d thought about it properly before I said it, the way I thought about things I wanted to answer correctly. Dad having Lucian be someone he liked in that way was-it was good. Dad’s face was the new face now. And Lake came over more, which meant I had someone to give my leaf identifications to and to correct when he got bird species wrong.

The addition was a good thing, normally it was just me, my dad and a lot of hotels, always moving to another city.

That was a phrase I’d heard Dad use on the phone and I’d looked it up.

Sedona had shown me Nick.

We’d been in the garden on a Saturday when it happened-not a walk day, just an afternoon, and she’d been sitting on the bench under the tree that still had some of its shape even without most of the leaves, and I’d been looking at the bare branches trying to identify the exact structure of them.

She’d said: “Drew, can I show you something?”

I’d sat down next to her.

She’d showed me her phone. A picture of a boy who was bigger than me-maybe six or seven, with dark hair and a face that looked like it was thinking about something even when it was just a picture.

“This is Nick,” she’d said.

I’d looked at the picture for a while.

“He’s your son,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“He’s in Chicago.”

“Yes.”

“Do you miss him?”

Telling Drew About Nick

She’d been quiet for a moment. “Every day,” she said.

I’d looked at the picture again. He had the same kind of eyes I did, the kind that were looking at things carefully. I hadn’t said that out loud because I wasn’t sure if it was accurate or if I was just pattern-matching.

“Is he going to come here?” I asked,

“I’m working on it,” she said.

Claim

“Working on it like you’re not sure yet,” I said, “or working on it like you know it’s going to happen but there are steps?”

She’d looked at me with the expression she had sometimes, the one that was like being assessed and found interesting. “The second one,” she said. “There are steps. But I’m going to get there.”

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