Read The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins novel by Artemis Z.Y. Updated 2025 -26 - The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 457

The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 457

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.”

“But it’s not.”

“You don’t know everything, Ethan.”

“I know more than you.”

“Boys,” I interrupt before this can escalate into one of their elaborate arguments about epistemology or whatever other philosophical concept they’ve picked up from YouTube. “Shoes. Both of you. Now.”

Madison appears in the doorway, clutching her stuffed elephant, the one that’s missing an eye because she’s been picking at the thread for weeks despite my repeated requests that she stop. Her face has that careful, uncertain expression she gets when she’s trying to figure out if something is good-surprising or bad- surprising.

“Are we going somewhere scary, Mama?”

“Nothing scary, sweetheart,” I tell her, kneeling down to her level, smoothing back her hair where it’s gotten tangled. “I promise. Just something good. Something I want to show you.”

She considers this, her small face serious, then nods slowly. “Okay. I believe you.”

Those three words I believe you feel like a gift I haven’t earned yet.

By the time everyone is dressed and shoed and ready, twenty minutes have passed instead of fifteen, and Kyle is waiting in the living room, sitting on the couch with Gas’s head in his lap, his long fingers scratching behind her ears in that specific spot that makes her back leg twitch

thatly. He looks up when we

emerge, and something in his expression softens when he sees the kids, especially Madison, who’s still clutching her elephant and staying close to my side.

“Ready?” he asks, and his voice is gentle in a way I rarely hear it, that particular tone he reserves for when he’s trying not to scare something small and precious.

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

ver

aerodynamics and whether it’s

possible to train a dog to fly using a special harness and engine, hits 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.”