Chapter 18 - ISABELLA DID NOT COME HOME AS BEFOREIsabella moved into a quiet house outside Boston with Ruby.
She did not return to the Moretti estate.
Too many walls contained memories her body understood before her mind did.
Some mornings, she remembered Vincent as the young man who brought coffee to her law-school library.
Other mornings, she remembered only explosions and locked rooms.
Recovery did not follow the romance people wanted.
Vincent loved her.
She did not owe him marriage because he suffered after losing her.
She visited him six months into his sentence.
They sat across from each other beneath fluorescent lights.
“I waited for you,” he said.
“You believed I was dead.”
“I never stopped loving you.”
“I never stopped loving parts of you.”
He absorbed the distinction.
“Will there be an us afterward?”
“I don’t know.”
Vincent nodded.
Years earlier, uncertainty would have felt like defiance.
Now he accepted it as truth.
Ruby visited separately with a child specialist.
She showed him a drawing.
Four people stood beneath a safe balcony.
Ruby.
Isabella.
Elena.
Mateo.
Vincent appeared inside a window.
“Why am I inside?” he asked.
“Because you’re in prison.”
She did not soften reality for him.
“Will you draw me outside when I leave?”
“If you’re safe.”
Not when.
If.
May you like
Vincent smiled sadly.
“That’s fair.”
Related Stories
