The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 271

The First Meeting 

LUCAS’S POV: 

Saturday came. 

Martin drove. I sat in the passenger seat and watched the city give way to quieter roads and I thought about James. Osei who had died at a young age and had been worth knowing and had left behind a son who had his laugh and a best friend who had been keeping the promise for two years. 

I thought about walking into Dorothy’s house and meeting a five-year-old boy. 

Life was strange and full and I was very glad to be in it. 

“You are quiet,” Martin said. 

“Yes, that’s because I am thinking,” I said. 

“About?” 

“About how quickly things change,” I said. “And how I am glad they do.” 

He glanced at me. That glance that said everything. 

“Me too,” he said. 

We drove the rest of the way. I had been a person who moved fast and worked hard and kept my personal life clean and uncomplicated. I had been very proud of this. I had thought it was sophisticated. 

I understood now that it was lonely. 

What I was driving toward was the opposite of uncomplicated. A five-year-old boy who asked for Martin in the night. A grandmother who called people on their nonsense. A promise made at a hospital bedside that had been kept for two years without fanfare. An ex-fiance who had been a coward about the timing and honest about everything else. 

None of it was clean. 

All of it was real. 

I found that I did not mind at all. 

Dorothy’s house, when we pulled up, had a garden that was full of flowers and a small bicycle leaning against the fence that had clearly been ridden hard and put away muddy. 

I got out of the car. 

From inside the house came a sound that I had been told about but had not heard yet. A laugh, big and open and completely unguarded. 

“He talks about me to you,” I said. 

“Constantly,” she said. “For some months. Come inside before the food gets cold.” 

We went in. 

Sam was at the kitchen table with a colouring book and the serious focus of a child who has decided something is worth his complete attention. 

He looked up when we came in. He looked at Martin, which was the look of someone checking in with the person they trusted most in a new situation. Martin nodded slightly. Sam looked at me. 

“Are you Lucas?” he asked. 

“I am,” I said. 

He considered me. “Martin said you are funny,” he said. 

“I like to think so,” I said. 

“I will decide,” he said, with the complete authority of a five-year-old who had clearly absorbed Dorothy’s approach to assessing people, and went back to his colouring book.