Chapter 12
Ainsley arrived without her engagement ring.
Nolan sat beside her.
Galen noticed that before anyone spoke.
Rebecca began with the behavior logs.
Ainsley did not deny writing them.
“You made Eira miserable and then documented the misery.”
“I was trying to help her adjust.”
“By taking her mother away one object at a time?”
Ainsley looked at Galen.
“You don’t understand what that house felt like.”
“Then tell me.”
She hesitated.
Every room contained Sofia.
Photographs.
Music.
Flowers she had planted.
Recipes she had written.
Staff members who still compared everything to the way Sofia did it.
Even Eira’s flower-girl dress carried lace from Sofia’s wedding veil.
“I wasn’t marrying you,” Ainsley said.
Her voice had lost its courtroom caution.
“I was moving into her life.”
Galen did not interrupt.
“You said I was your future, but every decision stopped the minute Sofia’s memory entered the room.”
“So you punished Eira?”
“I convinced myself I was helping her move forward.”
Nolan looked away.
Ainsley saw it.
“You agreed with me.”
“I agreed the renovation needed to happen.”
“You wrote the transition plan.”
“For the house.”
“You used Eira too.”
Nolan finally looked at Galen.
“My company had already spent almost two hundred thousand dollars preparing the project.”
“That was your decision.”
“You kept saying you’d decide after the wedding.”
“So you manufactured a reason I couldn’t refuse.”
Nolan did not answer.
Galen turned back to Ainsley.
“What did you want?”
Her voice dropped.
“One room that didn’t belong to Sofia.”
The answer was painfully ordinary.
Not hatred for a dead woman.
Fear of always coming second to her.
Ainsley looked at him.
“I knew if you had to choose between my comfort and Sofia’s memory, I’d lose.”
Galen glanced toward the empty place on his hand where the engagement ring had been.
“You didn’t lose to Sofia.”
Ainsley’s face tightened.
“You lost when you made Eira pay for being loved by her mother.”
Ainsley stopped defending herself.
May you like
But Nolan still had not.
And without his cooperation, resolving the financial mess around the renovation would remain difficult.
