The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 290

Thinking and Feeling 

ELIJAH’S POV: 

The morning was the set-up and informal viewing period where parents and other students could look at the displays. Andrew stood at his table and answered questions from people who wandered past with the confidence and precision of someone who had answered every version of these questions in his own head already and was not going to be thrown by them in the real world. 

A girl from another school stopped and read his methodology section carefully. 

“Did you actually collect sleep data from your classmates?” she asked. 

“With their consent and the school nurse’s oversight, yes,” Andrew said. 

“How many participants?” she asked. 

“Fourteen,” he said. “Over three weeks. With a control period and an intervention period where participants received a standardized probiotic supplement for comparison.” 

She stared at him. “How old are you again?” 

“Eight,” he said. 

She stared for another second and then walked away without saying anything else. Andrew watched her go and 

then looked at me. 

“I think that was a compliment,” he said. 

“I am almost certain it was,” I said. 

The judges’ walkthrough began at eleven. 

There were three of them, all adults and all wearing lanyards and carrying clipboards, moving through the room. When they reached Andrew’s table he greeted them by name because he had looked up the judging panel in advance and had remembered all three. 

I stood back and watched. 

He was extraordinary in the way of someone who has genuinely understood something and is simply explaining it to other people who might also find it interesting. He walked them through the hypothesis with the logic of someone who had started from an observation that felt real to him and had built toward an answer with proper tools. He showed them the methodology. He explained the data. He answered their questions without filler words, without hesitation and without the self-consciousness that most adults had in front of a panel. 

One of the judges, a woman with grey hair and very gray eyes, asked him a follow-up question that went beyond the scope of his project into broader implications. 

Andrew thought for three seconds. 

“That would require a larger and more longitudinal study,” he said. “My dataset is too small for that conclusion. But the direction of the data does suggest it would be worth investigating with proper resources.” 

The judge looked at him for a moment. 

“I know,” she said, into my shoulder. Then she pulled back and looked at me with critical eyes. “Were you crying?” 

“I was not crying,” I said. 

“Your eyes are red,” she said. 

“I was moved,” I said. 

She looked at me for a moment. Then she said, “Okay.” She sat back down and looked at her hands. “The voice break,” she said. “At the end of the second section. Was it too much?” 

“It was exactly right,” I said. 

“It was real,” she said. “I was not planning it. It just happened.” 

“I know,” I said. “That is why it was exactly right.” 

She thought about this for a moment with the focused expression she got when she was filing something important away. “Okay,” she said. 

While we waited, Amelia observed the other performers the way she observed everything, with a focused and attention. She leaned over to me at one point and said, very quietly, “The girl in the red dress. Her physicality is excellent. The way she uses her hands is better than mine.” 

I looked at her. “Do you want to use your hands differently?”