Chapter 6
Seraphine did not move into my bedroom.
I did not ask.
People around us seemed confused.
Wife alive.
Fiancée gone.
Surely marriage resumes.
No.
Eleven years had passed.
We were strangers with shared history.
She had been married to a thirty-four-year-old version of me.
I was forty-five.
She had lived without me longer than she had lived with me.
I had mourned her.
Loved other people.
Built habits around widowhood.
We did not get to call time theft romantic and pretend nothing changed.
Seraphine chose a guest suite near the garden.
Not the blue room.
Never again.
Agnes and Elspie moved into proper rooms until Agnes recovered.
First night, Seraphine knocked on my study door.
She held the forged letters.
“Do you want these?”
“No.”
She looked surprised.
“I thought you’d want proof.”
“Of what?”
“My father was dead.
Claribel had admitted enough.
The letters mattered to Seraphine, not my revenge.
She kept them.
Good.
Then she asked:
“Did you love her?”
Claribel.
“Yes.”
Seraphine nodded.
Pain flickered.
Then:
“I loved someone too.”
My chest tightened.
Fair.
“Who?”
“Thomas Vale.”
Widower.
Teacher.
Not Mafia.
She met him during her years away.
They lived together for three years.
He died from illness.
Ordinary.
Real.
Seraphine looked at me carefully.
“I don’t regret him.”
May you like
“You shouldn’t.”
That was the first honest kindness we gave each other.
