The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 288

Two Kinds of Brilliance 

HANNAH’S POV: 

The drama festival was held at the Meridian Arts Centre. The junior solo category was scheduled for early afternoon, which meant we arrived in the morning for warm-up and rehearsal space and Amelia disappeared into the backstage area with the other performers while I found a seat in the third row. 

Yeah i admit, I have a thing with third rows. 

The venue filled up. Parents, teachers, adjudicators in the front row with their clipboards and their specific quality of professional attention. The programme ran through the morning categories first and I watched other children perform and thought about what it took to stand on a stage and make people feel something. 

At one thirty the junior solo category was announced. 

There were six performers. Amelia was fourth. 

I watched the first three with genuine attention because they were good, all of them were good, the standard at this festival was notably high and I made a note of this because I wanted to be able to tell Amelia honestly that she was competing at a real level today and not just being given an easy win. 

The third performer finished and there was applause and then the host announced the next name. 

Amelia walked out. 

She walked the way she always walked onto any stage, like the stage had been waiting for her and was glad she arrived. She found her mark without looking for it. She stood still for one second with her hands at her sides and her chin level and her eyes automaticallyfound me. 

Then she began. 

The monologue opened with her back to the audience, which was not what I had seen in any of the rehearsals, which meant she had made this choice in the last few days and had not told me, which was completely Amelia. She made decisions independently when she was certain about them and did not ask for approval for things she had already decided were right. 

She finished on a single line, very soft, addressed to the photograph she was holding in her hands. 

Then she was still. 

And then the room came back and the applause started and I was pressing both hands over my mouth and I was trying hard not to cry at my daughter’s drama festival but lost that fight. 

I took a breath. 

I had raised this child, but she had also raised herself in every way that mattered, had brought herself to something and worked at it and made it true. And the thing she had made true today was something she had written thinking about her grandmother and had performed in a room full of strangers who had never heard of Mirada Kensington and who had still felt it completely. 

That was the thing about truth. You did not have to know the specific story to recognize the feeling inside it.