The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 386

Chapter 386 Scarlett & Morton

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Chapter 386 Scarlett & Morton

Mia’s POV

“Go back to bed, Alexander. It’s still early.”

“I’m not tired anymore.” He followed me toward the kitchen, Gas trailing behind both of us. “Can we have pancakes for breakfast?”

“It’s barely six-thirty.”

“Pancakes don’t have a time limit.”

“That’s not how time limits work.”

Alexander climbed onto one of the kitchen chairs, his feet dangling above the floor. He was getting taller. Soon his feet would touch the ground when he sat here. Soon he’d be too big for dinosaur pajamas and early morning nonsense conversations about tetanus.

“Mama, did someone clean our house?”

I froze in the middle of reaching for the coffee filters. “What makes you think that?”

“Because yesterday there were a million dishes and everything smelled like Sophie’s perfume and now it’s all clean and it smells like\…” He sniffed the air with exaggerated concentration. “Like nothing. Like when you clean everything really hard before Grandma comes to visit.”

“I cleaned up last night. After you went to bed.”

“No you didn’t.” Alexander said this with absolute certainty. “Because when I got up to pee in the middle of the night, you were sleeping on the couch. And you were snoring.”

“I don’t snore.”

“You do. It sounds like this-“He made a sound that was somewhere between a chainsaw and a

dying walrus.

“That’s not what I sound like.”

“It’s exactly what you sound like.” He grinned at me, all gaps and small teeth. “So who cleaned if you were snoring on the couch?”

I turned away from him to measure coffee into the filter, buying myself time. “Maybe I cleaned after I woke up in the middle of the night.”

“But you were sleeping when I saw you. And you were still sleeping when I went back to bed. And now everything’s clean. So either you’re a really fast cleaner or\…” He paused dramatically. “Or there was

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a cleaning fairy.”

“A cleaning fairy.”

“Yeah. Like the tooth fairy but for dishes.’

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“I don’t think that’s a thing, buddy.”

“Well something happened.” Alexander swung his legs, his heels hitting the chair legs with a rhythmic thump. “Unless you’re secretly a superhero who can clean while sleeping. Are you secretly a superhero, Mama?”

“If I was, I wouldn’t tell you. That’s what ‘secret’ means.”

He laughed, the sound bright and sharp in the quiet kitchen. “You’re funny when you first wake up. Did you know that? You say weird things.”

The coffee maker started gurgling, filling the kitchen with the smell of brewing coffee. I leaned against the counter and watched my son swing his legs and chatter about cleaning fairies and secret

superheroes.

“Can I watch TV?” Alexander asked.

“It’s six-thirty in the morning.”

“That’s not a no.”

“Fine. But keep the volume low. Don’t wake up Ethan and Madison.”

He scrambled down from the chair with the energy of someone who’d just gotten exactly what he wanted. “Thanks, Mama! You’re the best superhero cleaning fairy mom in the whole world!”

He bounded toward the living room, Gas following close behind.

I poured coffee into my favorite mug-the one with the chip on the handle that I kept meaning to throw away but never did-and stood at my kitchen window watching the city wake up.

Somewhere out there, Kyle was… where? Back at the hospital? Sitting in his car in some parking lot? Wandering the streets of Manhattan at dawn like a ghost who didn’t know he was supposed to be haunting somewhere else?

My phone buzzed on the counter. Sophie: “Dr. Norbu will be at Mount Sinai at 2pm. Kyle has agreed to meet with him. I am a genius. You may thank me later. Bisous.”

I smiled despite myself. Only Sophie would refer to herself as a genius at seven in the morning.

From the living room came the sound of cartoons. Alexander’s laughter. Gas’s contented sigh as he

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settled onto the couch.

I took my coffee and went to check on the other children.

Ethan was awake. I could tell by the way he was lying perfectly still in his bed, his eyes closed but his body too tense for sleep. He did this sometimes-pretended to be asleep so he could have a few more minutes of peace before Alexander’s chaos invaded his morning.

Madison was still sleeping. I stood in the doorway and watched them breathe.

“Mama?” Ethan’s eyes opened. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, baby. Why?”

“You’re standing in the doorway looking sad.”

“I’m not sad. I’m just\… thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how much I love you.”

Ethan sat up, his dark hair sticking up in the back where he’d slept on it wrong. “That’s a weird thing to be sad about.”

“I’m not sad. I told you.”

“But your face looks sad.’

“Come have breakfast,” I said. “I’m making pancakes.”

“You’re making pancakes?” Alexander’s voice came from the living room, sharp with suspicion.” You said it was too early for pancakes!”

“I changed my mind.”

“But you never change your mind about breakfast rules!”

I left Ethan to wake up at his own pace and went back to the kitchen. Alexander appeared immediately, his eyes narrowed.

“What made you change your mind?”

“I’m allowed to change my mind. That’s one of the benefits of being a grown-up.”

“Being a grown-up sounds confusing.”

“It is.”

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He climbed back onto his chair, watching me pull out the pancake mix. “The TV is showing scary

stuff.”

“What kind of scary stuff?”

“Like a big wave that ate a whole city. They called it a\…” He scrunched up his face, trying to remember. “A sue-mommy?”

“A tsunami.’

“Yeah. That. What’s a tsunami?”

I mixed pancake batter in a bowl, the spoon making soft scraping sounds against the sides. “It’s a really big wave. Bigger than any wave you’ve ever seen. It happens sometimes when there’s an earthquake under the ocean.”

“How big?”

“As tall as a building. Sometimes taller.”

Alexander processed this information with his usual intense concentration. “Why would the ocean want to make waves that eat cities?”

“The ocean doesn’t want anything. It’s just what happens sometimes. Nature doesn’t think about

what we want.”

“That’s mean.”

“Nature isn’t mean or nice. It just is.”

He swung his legs again, thinking. “If a tsunami came here, would we be safe?”

“We’re too far from the ocean for that kind of wave to reach us.”

“But what if it was a really, really big tsunami?”

“Then we’d figure it out. We’d go somewhere safe. We’d be okay.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s what parents do. They figure out how to keep their kids safe.”

This seemed to satisfy him. He went back to watching the TV, where the news was showing footage of destruction and rescue efforts in some distant place I didn’t recognize.

When we were children, the world’s disasters felt theoretical. Something that happened to other people in other places, contained safely behind the TV screen. You could watch cities destroyed by water or fire or wind and then turn off the TV and go play with your toys and forget it ever happened.

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Nothing was same when you turned seventeen. You fell in love with some idoit and the idiot would steal your spare key in the midnight.

Ethan appeared in the doorway, fully dressed in clothes he’d picked out himself-jeans and a striped shirt that didn’t quite match but looked intentional enough that I wouldn’t argue.

“Morning, buddy.”

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