The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 503

Mia's POV

The apartment smelled something familiar. The lavender of the diffuser I'd left running in the living room. The faint, stubborn sweetness of the cookies Alexander had baked last week, burned on the edges, still somehow lingering in the kitchen walls. The woolly, animal warmth that meant Gas.

I stood in the doorway and let the smell of it wash over me.

Alexander pushed past me first. "We're HOME!" he announced. "WE'RE HOME AND DADDY'S ALIVE!"

His voice bounced off the walls. Off the family photos in the hallway—the one from last Christmas where Ethan was mid-sneeze, the one from Madison's adoption day where we were all crying and smiling at once. Off the coatrack with its tangle of scarves and jackets, the top hook still holding the raincoat I'd been meaning to donate for six months.

The lights came on. One by one. The living room with the blanket still bunched on the couch where Madison had been sitting when I told them we were going to the hospital.

Everything exactly where we'd left it. Waiting.

Ethan walked slower. His hand trailing along the wall as he moved down the hallway, his fingers bumping over the light switch, the thermostat, the small dent in the plaster from the time Alexander had thrown a toy car and missed his target.

He stopped at the thermostat. "It's sixty-four degrees," he said.

"Okay."

"The optimal sleeping temperature is between sixty and sixty-seven degrees. So this is acceptable."

"Yes, Ethan. It's acceptable."

He nodded. Satisfied with this data point. Then he adjusted the thermostat anyway—two degrees higher, to sixty-six—because that was Ethan.

Madison was still holding my hand. She hadn't let go since the car. Her fingers were small and slightly sweaty and wrapped around mine with a grip that seemed too strong for her size. I didn't mind. I didn't want her to let go.

We walked through the apartment together. Past the kitchen, where I noticed the plant on the windowsill had survived—somehow, against all odds, the small succulent Alexander had named "Gerald" was still green and upright. Past the bathroom, where someone had left the light on four days ago and I couldn't remember who. Past the linen closet with its tumble of towels, the ones with the faded dinosaurs that Alexander refused to give up even though they were clearly too babyish for a five-year-old, the fluffy white ones Madison preferred because they were "like clouds."

Gas was in the living room.

She had pulled herself up from her bed—the orthopedic one I'd bought when she started having trouble with her hips, the one with the memory foam that cost more than my first couch. She was standing in the middle of the floor, her legs slightly splayed for balance, her tail moving in slow, heavy sweeps.

She looked tired. But her tail was wagging. Back and forth. Back and forth. The soft thump of it against her own legs.

Alexander got there first. He dropped. His knees hitting the hardwood with a sound that made me wince. His hands found Gas's face, her cheeks, squishing them together the way he'd done since he was two years old and she'd let him.

"Gas. Gas, I have to tell you something."

Her tail wagged harder.

"Daddy woke up."

She licked his chin. A long, slow swipe of tongue, leaving a trail of dog drool that glinted in the lamplight.

"He was sleeping for a really long time. Like, days and days and days. And we were at the hospital the whole time, and it smelled weird, and the food was gross, and there was this vending machine that ATE my quarters—"

"—fifteen to twenty. Yes. Fine. She's happy."

Madison let go of my hand. Gas saw her coming.

The tail wagging intensified. The whole-body wiggle became a whole-body vibration. And when Madison knelt beside Alexander, when her small hand found the top of Gas's head, Gas made a sound I'd never heard before.

A sigh.

Deep and long and full of something that sounded almost like relief.

"She missed us," Madison said. Quietly. Like a secret.

"Of course she missed us," Alexander said. "We're her FAMILY. Families miss each other. That's how it works."

I stood in the doorway of my own living room and watched my children cluster around my dog. Alexander still talking—he was always talking. Ethan crouching now too, his hand finding the spot behind Gas's ear that always made her leg twitch. Madison silent but present, her fingers gentle on Gas's graying muzzle.

The lamp in the corner cast everything in warm yellow light. The couch cushions were dented from four days ago. The coffee table still had Alexander's half-finished Lego project on it—a spaceship, he'd said, though it looked more like a confused rectangle with ambitions.

We were home.

We were home and Kyle was alive and the world hadn't ended after all.