Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 216

his was what two weeks A wwe had produced, I was standing, in my own hallway constructing a case about jewelry.

Klan and Koy and Elijah were still in the study when I got back to it, which I had not entirely expected. Klaus was at the window Roy had his folder open, blijds was doing, the thing with his pen,

Teened the ones tod stood with wry back and met

it for a thomest

“James got the sample,” I said

Three different expressions of relied, each one in the specific register of the person producing it. Roy let out a breath that was shorter than a sigh and longer than nothing. Elijah set his pen down flat. Klaus turned from the window.

he case backrary,” Isaid.

We heard the door Kits said

“He handled it well,” I said. “Immediately, Better than 1 would have, probably,”

Koy made a small sound. “Damn,” he said, which from Roy was the equivalent of a longer statement. “James Wright is very quick on his feet. If she had been another thirty seconds earlier and found him with the sample in his hand–” He didn’t finish The sentence. He didn’t need 1).

“We would have been in significant difficulty,” Elijah said, completing it in the flat precise tone he used for things that were technically understatements.

“Significant difficulty,” Koy agreed.

Klate oked at he she didn’t per

semmed surprised to see him,” I said. “The right kind of surprised.”

Klaus nodded but didn’t say anything.

Louis appeared in the doorway twenty minutes later with Sophie behind him and Daniel behind her, and I understood from the formation that he had been elected spokesperson for some inquiry and had brought backup.

“Dad,” he said.

“Louis.”

He looked at the room at Klaus, who he knew well, at Roy and Elijah, who he

about. He looked at me last.

had

enough times to have formed opinions

“Did you think Bianca was lying about me getting better?” he said. “Is that why you brought the doctor?”

The room was very quiet.

I looked at my son and thought about the various available responses and selected the one that he deserved, which was the

honest one.

“I wanted to have options,” I said. “If James says nothing is wrong, then nothing is wrong, and I have more confidence. If something is wrong that Bianca hasn’t seen yet-“I paused. “She’s tired, Louis. She’s been carrying a lot of things. Sometimes when someone is tired they miss small things. Not because they’re bad at their work. Because they’re human.”

Louis processed this.

“So you weren’t calling her a liar,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I wasn’t calling her anything. I was asking a second doctor to look at you because you’re my son and I wanted to be

sure.”

Louis stood in the doorway for another moment. Behind him, Sophie and Daniel maintained their formation with the solidarity of people who had agreed to be present for something without fully understanding what it was.

“Okay,” Louis said.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he said again, as though this resolved it, and turned back down the hallway.

Sophie gave me a look that I could not entirely read before following him. Daniel followed Sophie.

Klaus watched the doorway for a moment after they left. “He accepted that.”

“Louis accepts things that make sense to him,” I said. “He doesn’t argue for the sake of it.”

“He’s also worried,” Klaus said. “Whatever he said to James about feeling the same

better.”

he meant it. He doesn’t think he’s getting

I sat down in the chair behind the desk. The study had the quality of a room that had been used for a long time by people working on something difficult, a density to the air that had nothing to do with the physical space. “I know.”

“James will call tomorrow,” Klaus said.

“Tomorrow,” I confirmed.

Roy closed his folder. Elijah picked his pen back up. Klaus looked at the window and then at me.

“The necklace,” he said.

I looked at him.

“I saw it,” he said. “When she came in. I was in the hallway.” He paused. “I didn’t say anything because acces van wasn’t the moment. But I’ve been going through everything I know about what Bianca whs and wor

“I’s from her first marriage,” I said. “She told James. She rarely wears it. She found it recently

Klaus was quiet.

“That’s a reasonable explanation,” I said.

“It is,” Klaus agreed.

“People have jewelry they don’t wear often.”

***They do.”

“She was in a marriage for four years and kept a few things. She mentioned that to me more than once.”

“Rivera,” Klaus said.

I stopped.

“I’m not saying it means something,” he said, with the specific care of someone who was being precise rather than cautious. I’m saying that when James has the results tomorrow, we’ll know more. And until then, we note it and we hold it and we don’t construct a case around a piece of jewelry.”

“That’s what I was telling myself in the hallway,” I said.

“Good,” Klaus said. “Keep telling yourself that.”

He said it in the tone that meant he was telling himself the same thing and finding it approximately as convincing as I was.

I looked at the window. Outside, the garden was the same garden. The leaves were still there. The light was the thin pale kind that came through cloud and did its best.

Tomorrow James would call.

Until then I had a house full of children arguing about geological eras, a blood sample in a sealed tube in a doctor’s pocket, and a crack in something I couldn’t yet see clearly enough to name.

Chapter

Chapter 217