The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 448

Mia's POV

"These are—" I open the box, and the cardboard edges are soft from years of handling, the corners worn down to a lighter brown. "These are things."

"Things?"

"Moments." I lift the lid slowly, and inside there's chaos—photos stacked unevenly, some face-up, some face-down, ticket stubs from the aquarium, a dried flower from Madison's first school play pressed between two pictures, a tiny hospital bracelet. "Weird moments. Things that happened that I took pictures of because they were—" I search for the word, my fingers hovering over the pile. "Because they were them."

I pull out the first photo, and I have to smile before I even hand it over. The edges are slightly sticky from where Alexander once got peanut butter on it.

"That's Alexander at two and a half." I pass it to Kyle. "He decided he was a dog."

The photo shows Alexander on all fours on our old kitchen floor—the one with the yellow linoleum that came with the apartment. He's face-first in Gas's metal bowl, his cheeks smeared with wet dog food, wearing nothing but a diaper and one sock. His hair is sticking up in seventeen different directions. Gas is sitting two feet away, her head tilted, looking at him with what can only be described as profound confusion.

Kyle stares at it."Why?"

"I don't know." I lean over slightly, looking at the photo upside down from my angle, and I can still remember the smell of that dog food, the way Alexander had barked at me when I tried to pull him away. "He just decided one day that he was a dog. Crawled everywhere. Barked at people. Ate from Gas's bowl. Refused to use his hands."

"How long did that last?"

"Four days." I can see Kyle's jaw working, like he's trying not to react. "Until Ethan told him that dogs don't go to school. Then he suddenly wasn't a dog anymore. Just like that. Stood up, brushed off his knees, asked for breakfast. Never mentioned it again."

Kyle's thumb runs along the edge of the photo.

I pull out another photo, this one in better condition, the colors still bright. "This is Ethan at two. He organized all his books by color."

The photo shows a bookshelf in perfect rainbow order. Red books. Orange books. Yellow. Green. Blue. Purple. Each spine aligned exactly with the others. At the bottom of the frame, you can just see the edge of Ethan's foot—he always stood with his toes pointing inward when he was concentrating.

"Not by topic?" Kyle asks.

"No. By color. He said it looked better." I remember that day so clearly. "He told me that the information inside didn't matter if the outside was chaos. That looking at chaos made his brain feel itchy."

"That's very Ethan."

"That's very something." I set the photo down gently.

I pull out my phone, the screen bright in the dim living room. I have to squint as I scroll through videos, past hundreds of thumbnails—birthday cakes, sticky faces, playground adventures, mundane Tuesday afternoons that felt worth capturing. I find the one I'm looking for. Hand the phone to Kyle.

"Watch this."

He presses play. I've seen this video a thousand times. I want to see him see it.

The video shows our apartment, the one we're sitting in now, but from two years ago—you can tell because the wall behind the couch is still that terrible beige we painted over last spring. Alexander is standing on the couch cushions in his Spider-Man pajamas, the ones that are too small now, the ones I couldn't bring myself to throw away. He's wearing a cape made from my good bath towel—the navy blue one—safety-pinned at the neck. The pin is crooked. It's always crooked because he insisted on doing it himself.

On the video, my voice is laughing: "What are you doing?"

Alexander's voice, very serious, his little face set with determination: "I'm a superhero."

"What's your superpower?"

"I can fly."

"Can you really?"

"Yes. Watch."

He jumps. Arms stretched forward like Superman. His body goes horizontal for maybe half a second—less than half a second—before gravity remembers him and pulls him straight down. He lands on the cushions with a soft whump, his cape flying up over his head.

He doesn't cry.

Gets up. Positions himself carefully. Tries again.

Falls again. Gets up.

My voice on the video, gentler now, loving: "Baby, you can't fly."

"Not yet. But I will. I'm practicing."

The video ends.

He watches it three times. His eyes tracking Alexander's chaos, Ethan's slightly more controlled chaos, the way they crash into each other and just laugh and keep going.

"Wait," Kyle says suddenly. "Go back."

I scroll back through the photos.

"That one."

It's a photo of both boys in the bathroom, caught mid-crime. They'd gotten into my makeup bag while I was in the shower.

Alexander has lipstick—my lipstick—smeared all over his face. Not on his lips where it belongs. Just... everywhere else. His cheeks, his forehead, a streak across his nose. His hands are red with it. He looks like he's been finger painting.

Ethan has eyeshadow—three different colors applied with surprising technical precision. Each section of his eyelid is a different shade: purple on the left third, blue in the middle, green on the right. It's actually blended. He's four years old and he's somehow figured out blending.

They're both shirtless—I'd been about to put them in the bath—and they're both grinning at the camera with that specific guilty-but-not-sorry expression that children perfect around age three.

The bathroom counter behind them is a disaster. My makeup bag has exploded across it. There's powder on the floor. My mascara wand is in the sink.

"When was this?" Kyle asks, and his voice has changed. Gone quieter. More careful.

"Four months ago." I remember this day perfectly. The scream I'd let out when I saw them. The way they'd both frozen, guilty but also proud of themselves. "I was taking a shower. Came out and found them in my makeup bag. Apparently they'd been very quiet about it. Very focused."

"Did you punish them?"

"I made them clean it up. But no." I look at the photo, at their happy faces, at the absolute joy of their destruction. "I couldn't punish them for that. They looked so proud. And Ethan had done actual eye makeup. Like, properly. I asked him how he knew how to blend and he said he'd been watching me do it for months."

Kyle studies the photo for a long time. His finger traces Alexander's lipstick-covered face on the screen. Then Ethan's perfectly blended eyeshadow. The touch is gentle. Reverent.

"I want a copy of this," he says quietly, and there's something broken in his voice.

"I'll text it to you."

His eyes don't leave the photo. "All of them. I want copies of all of them. Every single one."