Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 236

The Phone Call To Nick-2

“She said she was going to make me things.”

“She’s going to make you so many things.”

“What things?”

“Everything you like,” I said. “Once she knows what you like, she’ll make all of it. That’s how she works.” A pause. “You should tell her about the allergies.”

“She already asked,” Nick said. “She had a list.”

I sat with that for a moment. My mother had asked Mrs. Peterson for the allergy list weeks ago. She had it written in the small notebook she kept for exactly this kind of occasion. She had been preparing to feed my son since November, when she counted him in a list of grandchildren in a Seattle kitchen without being asked.

“Of course she did,” I said.

“It was a long list,” Nick said. “Her questions.”

“She’s thorough.”

“She asked if I liked the soup. The ginger one.” A pause. “I said yes. She said she’d make it when I come.”

“She will,” I said. “She’ll make it exactly right.”

Nick was quiet for a moment. He was quiet but the comfortable kind. The kind that indicated we were getting better across months of phone calls. The kind that didn’t need a date.

“Grandpa Parker, he didn’t say much.”

“He doesn’t, that’s how he is.”

“He said. ” Nick stopped and was finding the words. “He said he was looking forward to showing me the garden in spring. He said there were plants that looked dead but weren’t.” He said it with the particular tone of someone who had received information they found scientifically interesting. “He said you could

r tell by the stems.”

Cameron’s dad was in the Chicago garden, bending stems with Lake while Lake catalogued. The same instinct, the same language, my father had found his way to Nick in forty seconds through the same door he’d used with Lake.

“He knows a lot about gardens,” I said.

“He sounded like he did,” Nick said. Then: “Mum.”

“Yes.”

“Three days,” he said.

“Three days.”

C

The Phone Cat-Te Nick-2

“Okay” The full word, the complete one. “Okay.”

Claim

We stayed on the line a few more minutes. He told me about a school project. He told me that Drew had sent him a photograph of a bird, the varied thrush, for correct identification, with a note in Drew’s careful handwriting that said for your records. He had apparently started a bird list.

“Drew said everyone should have records,” Nick said.

“Drew is right about most things,” I said.

“I know.” A pause. “Can Drew come? On the twenty-sixth?”

“Not this time,” I said. “The first time is just us. But there’ll be other times.

He received and filed it. I sat in the sitting room for a while without moving. I was there with my hands across my chest. “Three days,” I repeated

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