The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 457

Mia

Getting three children ready to go anywhere is always a production, but today it feels especially chaotic, like the universe is conspiring to delay us, to give me more time to reconsider this decision, to back out and send Kyle away and keep my new house separate from this complicated mess of our almost-relationship.

Alexander is upside down on his bed when I open the door, his feet planted against the wall, his face red with the rush of blood, his shirt riding up to expose his pale belly.

"Why are you upside down?" I ask, even though I know better than to expect a reasonable answer.

"Practicing being a bat," he announces, as if this is the most logical thing in the world. His voice sounds congested, thick, all the blood settling in his head making him sound like he's underwater.

"Why do you need to practice being a bat?"

"In case I need to be a bat someday. Ethan says it's good to have diverse skills. I'm diversifying."

I look over at Ethan, who's sitting on his own bed with a book, completely ignoring his brother's acrobatics. "Did you tell him to diversify by pretending to be a bat?"

"I said it's good to learn new things," Ethan says without looking up from his book. "I didn't specify bat impersonation."

"Right side up," I tell Alexander firmly. "Now. We're leaving in fifteen minutes."

"But I'm in the middle of—"

"Alexander. Now."

He flips himself over with more drama than strictly necessary, landing on his mattress with a bounce that makes the bed frame creak. "Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise."

His whole face scrunches up in theatrical displeasure. "I don't like surprises."

"Since when?"

"Since right now. Since this exact moment. Surprises are—they're suspicious. That's why they sound similar. Surprise. Suspicious. It's like a warning."

"That's not how words work," Ethan says, still not looking up from his book.

"It could be how words work."

Alexander is already halfway to the door, his shoes on the wrong feet—I can tell from here, can see the way the left shoe curves outward when it should curve in.

The drive to Elm Street takes twenty-three minutes, and Alexander talks for at least twenty of them, a constant stream-of-consciousness monologue about bats and aerodynamics and whether it's possible to train a dog to fly using a special harness and engine, his voice filling the car with the kind of innocent absurdity that makes it impossible to think about anything serious or sad or complicated.

The trees are almost bare now, November having stripped them down to their essential architecture.

I pull into the driveway and put the car in park, and for a moment no one moves, no one speaks, we just sit there looking at it—the house I designed and I built.

It's nothing like the house that stood here before. That house was dark brick and small windows and a layout that felt cramped and dim even on sunny days, rooms that seemed designed to hide things, to keep secrets, to make you feel smaller than you were. This house is the opposite of all that—pale gray stone that seems to glow in the afternoon light, windows that wrap around corners and stretch from floor to ceiling, clean lines and open spaces and a feeling of possibility in every deliberate choice I made.

"Whoa," Alexander breathes, and it's the first time I've heard him awed.

The house has a wide front porch, deep enough for furniture, for summer evenings, for the kind of casual gathering I never had as a child but always imagined other families experiencing. The roof is pitched but not steep, charcoal shingles that will weather beautifully, and the landscaping is still spars.

"Is that ours?" Alexander's voice has gone small, uncertain, like he's afraid to believe something this good might actually belong to us.

"Not yet," I tell him, twisting in my seat to look at him properly. "But soon. A few more weeks and we can move in."