The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 328

MARY’S POV: 

I stared at the screen, my finger frozen over the notification. His profile picture was the same one he had used for years, a professional headshot, his smile controlled, his eyes unreadable. And next to it, in small gray letters, the word that changed everything: 

Liked. 

He had seen the posts. He had read them, or at least glanced at them, and he had liked one of them. Maybe accidentally. Maybe on purpose. Maybe because he agreed with what it said. 

It didn’t matter. 

The like had been removed by the time I found it, quickly, probably as soon as someone told him it was there. But not quickly enough. The damage was done. Thousands of people had already seen it. Screenshots had already been taken. The internet never forgot, and neither would I. 

I set my phone down and walked to the window. 

The street outside was quiet. Normal. Cars drove past. A neighbor walked their dog. A child rode a bicycle in wobbly circles on the sidewalk. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed, and I was standing in my kitchen with my hands pressed against the counter and my heart beating too fast and my mind racing through possibilities I didn’t want to consider. 

My phone buzzed again. 

I looked at the screen. 

It was a post from someone I didn’t know, someone with a profile picture of Vesper and a username that included the words ForeverVesper. The post was short, just a few lines, but it contained something that made my blood run cold. 

Someone had posted my location. 

Not the city. Not the neighborhood. The actual address. My house. The place where I lived, where my daughter slept, where I had thought I was safe from the cruelty of strangers who knew nothing about my life. 

She lives at 1427 Maple Drive. Go tell her what you think. 

I stared at the words until they blurred, until the letters swam together, until I couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely hold the phone. 

A car door slammed outside. 

I looked up. 

The woman from the porch, the one who had been standing there with her phone raised, the one who had been staring at my house like it was a zoo exhibit, was still there. But she wasn’t alone anymore. 

A car had pulled up to the curb. A man was getting out. Another woman was walking up the driveway, her eyes fixed on my front door, her phone already recording. 

I stepped back from the window. 

My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel it in my temples, in my throat, in the tips of my fingers. The clock on the wall said 2:47 Elowen’s school let out at 3:00. 

I had to pick her up. 

But the people outside, the strangers who had found my address, who had come to my house, who were standing on my lawn with their phones raised like weapons, they weren’t going to let me leave. 

The front door rattled. Not a knock, someone was trying the handle. 

I had locked it. Thank God, I had lucked it. 

But the locks on this house were old. Alistair had been meaning to replace them for years, but he never got around to it, and I had never pushed because I didn’t want to be a bother. 

Now I was standing in my kitchen, watching the door handle turn, listening to the voices outside grow louder and more agitated, and I was realizing that I might have waited too long to start pushing back. 

“Open up!” someone shouted. “We just want to talk!” 

The door rattled again. 

Another car pulled up outside. More doors slammed. More voices joined the chorus. 

I grabbed my phone and my keys. The back door was through the kitchen, past the pantry, past the mudroom where Elowen’s rain boots were still sitting in a puddle of melted snow from last winter. 

I ran. 

You need to leave him alone! 

He was never yours! 

I turned and ran toward the car, still holding Elowen, my bare feet slapping against the wet grass. The garage was attached to the house, and the garage door was closed, but I had a remote in my purse, somewhere, buried beneath the receipts and the lip balm and the small toys that always ended up at the bottom of my bag. 

I set Elowen down in the driver’s seat, she was small enough to fit, small enough to curl up in the footwell where no one could see her. 

“Stay here, baby. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.’ 

Her eyes were huge in her pale face. “Mommy-” 

“I love you. I will be right back. I promise.” 

I closed the door and ran to the driver’s side. The remote was in my bag, somewhere, somewhere- 

A shadow fell across the garage door. 

I looked up. 

A woman stood at the edge of my driveway, her phone raised, her mouth moving. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. The blood was pounding too loudly in my ears. 

I found the remote. Pressed the button. 

The garage door groaned and began to rise. 

And the woman smiled, because now she could see me. Now she could see the car. Now she could see the small face peeking out from the footwell, and her smile widened, because she had found something even better than me. 

She had found my daughter.