Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 209

Chapter 209

Chapter 209

THEO

“But I thought about it for three days.”

“Thinking about something and doing it are different,” she said. “You know that”

“But I wanted to do it.”

“What were you wanting,” she said, “underneath the medicine cabinet part.”

I looked at the fish tank. There was a new fish since last week, orange with a white stripe. I don’t what kind it was. “I wanted Cal to stay.”

“Why does Cal staying feel important?”

I looked at the fish for a long time. It moved through the water with a specific efficiency, like it knew exactly where it was going even if I couldn’t tell. “Because when he’s there Dad argues more.”

Dr. Fisher made the small sound that meant she was interested in something I’d said. “Say more about that.”

“Not bad arguing,” I said quickly. “Not like before. Just – there’s more noise. Dad talks more. He gets that face when he’s trying not to laugh.” I picked at the edge of my sleeve. “Before Cal it was quieter. Even when Dad was there it was quiet. Like the quiet was the biggest thing in the house.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s less big,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment in her specific way. “Is there anything else about Cal being there that matters to you?”

I looked back at the fish tank. The new orange one had settled near the bottom near the little ceramic arch. “He reads like Mum did,” I said, and my voice came out smaller than I meant it to, not because was trying to make it small but because the words themselves seemed to take some of the air with them when they left. “Not exactly the same. But the same kind of reading. Where it’s just the words.”

Dr. Fisher didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, carefully: “That sounds like it means something to you

##

“Is it bad?” I said. “That I want him to stay because of that.”

“What would make it bad?”

“Because Mum isn’t gone gone,” I said, and then I stopped, because that sentence hadn’t come out right. “She is gone. She died. But she’s my mum. And if I want Cal to stay because he reads like her, that’s like I’m trying to replace her. With someone else. And she doesn’t get to be replaced because she’s my

mum.”

Dr. Fisher let the silence sit for a moment before she answered, which was what she did when she was choosing her words carefully rather than quickly.

1. ed.

he said. “Can I ask you something first?”

nen did your mum die?”

“Eight months ago.” I paused. “Almost nine.”

“Almost nine months,” she said. “That’s a long time. A long time to carry something very heavy.” She leaned forward slightly. “Can I tell you something about grief that sometimes surprises people?”

I nodded again.

“It doesn’t stay the same size as a parent, the grief starts every minute being made

room.”

said. “When someone we love dies, especially someone as important e. So large that it fills most of the space. The way you described it – ng about her. That’s what new grief feels like. It takes up almost all the

I was listenin

“But ove

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it doesn’t go away. I want to be clear about that. It doesn’t disappear. But it uieter not because it’s less real but because your life is growing around it. New people, new mornings, new facts about ankylosaurus.” The corner of her mouth d when you notice you’ve gone a whole day without the grief being the loudest thing not betrayal. That’s you surviving. That’s what surviving looks like.”

fish. “But I should still think about her.”

nk about her,” Dr. Fisher said. “You’re thinking about her right now. You thought about her heard Cal reading. You notice the places where things remind you of her and you feel

hing about that.” She paused. “Theo, someone who didn’t love their mother wouldn’t notice any of Someone who was replacing their mother wouldn’t feel what you described when you talked about reading. The fact that it meant something is the evidence of how much she meant.”

Sat with that for a moment.

it okay that the house

she said,

mer goes by and I didn’t think about her once.”

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+15 Bonus

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Then Yule Mowers to have Saturday mornings and arguments that are funny and eggs that are better and none of that means you’ve put her down. You’re still carrying her. You’re just also Carrying other things now, because you’re still here and still living and you’re supposed to be

vary gentle. That is allowed. You are allowed to have dinners,

oked at my hands in my lap. They were small hands. I had my dad’s fingers and my mum’s palms, which was something Grandma had said once, and which I had thought about occasionally since

“She’s been gone almost a year,” I said.

“Almost a year, Or Fisher agreed

“That’s a really long time.”

Flooked at the fish tank. The orange one had moved from the arch to the corner, where it hovered near a strand of plastic seaweed, doing nothing in particular with the specific contentment of something that didn’t know it was being watched. “I still miss her,” I said. “I just don’t always feel it at the same time as everything else”

That’s right,” Dr. Fisher said. “That’s exactly right.”

On the way home Dad let me sit in the front seat, which he did sometimes when it was just the two of us and I asked nicely enough. The city went past the window in the specific way it did from the front, which was different from the back because you could see more sky.

“Good session?” Dad asked. He always asked this but he never asked what we talked about, which I understood meant both things at the same time – that he cared and that the room was mine.

“Yeah,” I said.

He nodded.

We drove for a while without talking, which was its own kind of comfortable. Then I said, “Dad.”

“Mm.”

“When Cal goes home,” I said. “Can he come for dinner sometimes?”

Dad was quiet for a moment. The specific quiet of someone deciding, not someone who hadn’t heard. ‘If he wants to,” Dad said finally. “Cal makes his own schedule.”

“But you could ask him.”

“I could ask him.”

“Will you?”

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