The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 211

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ELIJAH’S POV:

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“Unless she asks,” she added.

“Obviously,” Andrew said.

“Right,” I said. “Obviously.”

Hannah came home at eight thirty that night, which was actually closer to the time she said she would be home than usual and I considered that a small victory. She came through the door looking tired but bright in the eyes in the particular way that the warehouse produced in her, like it was charging something inside her that everything else in the day had been slowly draining.

She kissed me and smelled like pencil shavings and fabric and the particular lavender spray she kept in the warehouse and I told her dinner was on the stove and she said wonderful and went to look in on the twins who were supposed to be asleep and came back two minutes later shaking her head.

“Andrew is reading under the covers with a torch,” she said, sitting down at the kitchen island.

“He does that three or four times a week. I think he believes we do not know.”

“He has been doing it since he was five, Elijah. He found a torch in a kitchen drawer and it changed his whole life.” She was smiling though.

We ate dinner together and she told me about the day. About how Sandra had approved four of the new sketches without a single negative comment which apparently was a moment of historical significance. About how Kate and Moses had between them figured out a construction technique for the draped back piece that solved a problem Hannah had been thinking about for two days. About how one of the interns, a young woman named Tata who had barely said a word since the fire, had stayed an hour past the end of the day to finish pinning a toile and when Hannah told her she did not have to stay Tata had said quietly, “I want to. This collection deserves it.”