Chapter 25
There were several personal items I wanted to collect before the remaining rooms were cleared.
Vincent had offered to send everything.
I had declined.
Some things needed to be finished in person.
The house looked exactly as I remembered.
The gardens were immaculate.
The windows gleamed.
The security gates opened before my car reached them.
For a moment, I felt the old familiarity settle over me.
I knew every corridor.
Every staircase.
Every room where I had hosted dinners for people who rarely remembered my name.
I knew which windows caught the morning light.
Which doors creaked.
Where the floorboards made a faint sound near the library.
It had been my home for ten years.
I wouldn’t insult those years by pretending they had meant nothing.
But walking through the foyer, I felt something I hadn’t expected.
Distance.
The house no longer seemed enormous.
It seemed quiet.
Vincent was waiting near the library.
He looked at me for several seconds.
Then he smiled faintly.
“Hello, Mara.”
“Hello, Vincent.”
We stood apart.
He glanced at the small box in my hands.
“Did you find everything?”
“Almost.”
“The staff can help.”
“I’m fine.”
He nodded.
The old Vincent would have insisted.
The man standing before me simply accepted my answer.
I walked toward the study.
He followed at a respectful distance.
On the shelves were several framed photographs from our marriage.
One from our wedding.
One from a vacation in Italy.
One taken at a charity gala during our fifth anniversary year.
I stopped in front of the wedding photograph.
We looked young.
Happy.
Certain.
Vincent stood beside me.
“We were happy then,” he said quietly.
“Yes.”
I didn’t deny it.
He looked at the photograph.
“I’ve been thinking about how everything changed.”
I waited.
“I kept believing that after the next deal, the next crisis, the next expansion, I’d have time.”
His voice was low.
“I thought our marriage would still be there when I was ready.”
I looked at him.
“It was there, Vincent.”
He turned toward me.
“I was there.”
His eyes filled.
“I know.”
“For years.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
I looked at our wedding photograph one last time.
Then I stepped away.
There was a framed picture of my mother on the bookshelf near the window.
I picked it up.
My mother was smiling in the garden of the small house where I had grown up.
She was wearing a simple blue dress.