The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 294

Opposite Sides 

HANNAH’S POV: 

“My project is about sleep and bacteria,” Andrew said. “Which is not about her directly. But she is the reason our family has been through everything it has been through, which is the reason I was in this competition.” He said this with the careful logical sequence of someone who had worked out the chain. “So indirectly she is connected to everything I do.” 

A pause. 

“Yes,” Amelia said. “Of course you can put yours there too.” 

I got up and went to look at the mantelpiece properly. The photograph had been there since Adele had sent us a print, a few months ago now, and it had become part of the room. 

She slid off her stool and went to the mantelpiece where the framed photograph of Mirada lived, the one from Adele’s album that we had printed and framed, the one where she was smiling in the full warm way of someone in the middle of being happy. Amelia set her trophy beside it. Came back for Andrew’s certificate. 

“Andrew should put his,” I said. 

He got down from his stool and carried the certificate to the mantelpiece and set it on the other side of the photograph. 

The four of us stood there for a moment looking at it. Mirada’s photograph in the centre. A first-place drama festival trophy on one side. A regional science fair certificate on the other. 

The topic was announced on a Monday. 

“This house believes that rules matter more than feelings.” That was it. Eleven words. I read them on the notice board outside the school hall and I read them again and then I stood there thinking about all the different ways you could argue both sides of that sentence and which side I would rather be on. 

The answer was the affirmative. Rules matter more than feelings. Obviously. Not because feelings are not real or not important, they are both of those things and I have read enough about emotional neuroscience to understand the function they serve. But feelings are variable and subjective and two people can feel completely different things about the same situation and both be feeling genuinely, whereas rules exist as a shared framework that applies to everyone the same way. Rules create predictability. Predictability creates safety. Safety creates the conditions for people to have feelings in the first place without those feelings becoming chaos. 

This was a very clear argument. I was confident in it. 

I went to sign up. 

Mrs. Obama was at the table managing the sign-ups and she looked at me and said, “Andrew. Affirmative or negative?” 

“Affirmative,” I said. 

She wrote my name down. 

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