The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 284

Two Roads, One Family 

HANNAH’S POV: 

Amelia looked at me. “Which one of you is coming to mine?” she asked. And to her credit the question was genuine rather than a demand. She actually wanted to know the process. 

“I am,” I said. “And Dad is going to be with Andrew.” 

She absorbed this. Then she turned to Andrew. “That is fair,” she said. 

Andrew looked at her. “You are not upset that Mum is not coming to mine?” 

“You do not need an audience the same way I do,” Amelia said, with the matter-of-fact accuracy of a sister who had been studying her brother for eight years. “Mum being there makes me better. For you it does not make any difference to how you perform.” 

Andrew thought about this. “That is accurate,” he said. “Though I would not use the word audience. I would say Mum’s presence has a different functional value in each of our contexts.” 

“That is what I said,” Amelia said. 

“You said it differently,” Andrew said. 

“Same meaning,” Amelia said. 

They looked at each other in the way they did sometimes, the twin way, the way that contained an entire conversation that nobody else was part of. 

Then Amelia turned back to us. “Okay,” she said. “Now can we talk about the shoes?” 

He had, in fact, already drafted the consent forms. 

Andrew began working on his project with the focused energy he brought to things that genuinely interested him. His topic, chosen months before the selection letter arrived because Andrew did not wait for external deadlines to start being interested in things, was the relationship between gut bacteria and sleep quality in children. He had been collecting data on himself and with the permission of the school nurse, had conducted a small survey with classmates. He had charts. He had a methodology document that ran to four pages. He had a hypothesis and a control group and what he called his preliminary findings, which he had presented to Elijah one evening at the kitchen table with the confidence of someone who had already stress-tested every part of it internally and was now ready for external review. 

Elijah had read through all four pages. He asked three questions. Andrew answered all three without hesitation. Elijah had said, “This is very strong work,” and Andrew had said, “I know. I want to make sure the presentation board is clear enough that the judges do not have to work to understand the structure.” They had spent the next hour designing the layout of the board together, Elijah’s business presentation instinct meeting Andrew’s scientific precision, and the result was genuinely impressive. 

I watched all of this from the doorway and felt something that was pride and something else that was harder to name. That something else was about watching Elijah with his son. The ease of it with the mutual respect of it. Two people who thought similarly and had found their way to each other and trusted the communication. 

I went back to my sketches and let them have the table. 

Amelia’s preparation was a different thing entirely.