Chapter 9 - WHY DIDN’T YOU COME HOME?Vivian claimed someone borrowed her car.
“Who?” the detective asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“You reported it stolen?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was unaware it had been used.”
The charity-event photographs showed Vivian arriving at 9:00 p.m.
She disappeared from the event for ninety minutes.
The archive was twenty-five minutes away.
She returned shortly after the fire began.
The timeline did not prove arson.
It destroyed her alibi.
Vivian’s attorney ended the interview.
Police allowed her to leave because no arrest warrant had been issued.
Adrian canceled the public engagement announcement.
Vivian removed the diamond ring.
“You will regret humiliating me.”
“This is not about humiliation.”
“It is about a woman appearing from the dead and telling a story you want to believe.”
Adrian looked toward Sophie.
“I don’t know what I want to believe.”
Sophie heard him.
The uncertainty hurt, but it was honest.
After Vivian left, Adrian arranged a private apartment in the gallery’s secured upper floor for Sophie.
She refused to come to the Beaumont home.
“Chloe lives there,” Adrian said.
“So does Vivian.”
“Not tonight.”
“But her clothes, photographs and plans are there. I will not walk into your current life and pretend five years didn’t happen.”
Adrian lowered his eyes.
“Then where does Chloe stay?”
“With you.”
Chloe began crying.
“I want Mommy.”
Sophie knelt.
“I’m not leaving Paris.”
“You left before.”
“I didn’t choose to.”
“Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
Sophie hesitated.
Promises had become dangerous.
Then she held out her scarred hand.
“I promise I will do everything I can to be here tomorrow.”
Chloe placed her small hand inside it.
Adrian carried the sleeping child home after midnight.
The mansion felt different.
Vivian’s red coat hung beside the entrance.
Her engagement photographs covered the dining table.
Adrian removed them one by one.
Chloe woke as he carried her upstairs.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t Mommy come home?”
Adrian sat beside her bed.
“I don’t know everything yet.”
“Did she forget us?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she tried to write.”
Chloe touched the bird charm Sophie had allowed her to borrow.
“Vivian said Mommy wanted a different family.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
“I should have heard her say those things to you.”
“She said not to tell because it would make you sad.”
Vivian repeatedly used Adrian’s grief to silence the child.
He had mistaken Chloe’s quietness for healing.
The next morning, he returned to the gallery alone.
Sophie stood near The Blue Garden.
Without the surgical mask, her scar was fully visible.
Adrian approached.
“Why didn’t you come home?” he asked.
Sophie looked at him with pain.
“I tried.”
“Before the letters. Before two months ago.”
“I did not know who home belonged to.”
“You remembered my face.”
“In pieces.”
“You remembered Chloe.”
“As a baby in dreams. Sometimes I believed I had lost a child. Sometimes the clinic told me the dreams were symptoms.”
“Why trust them?”
“Because I woke without a name.”
Adrian stepped closer.
“I searched for you.”
“I know.”
“I spent five years believing you died.”
“I spent five years believing you stopped looking.”
They stood beneath the painting that connected both lives.
Adrian’s anger was not entirely for Sophie.
It was for time.
For himself.
For everyone who profited from their separation.
Sophie touched the lower frame.
“There’s another opening.”
Marc removed the painting from the wall.
Inside the frame, behind the hospital bracelet, was a folded photograph Sophie had never seen.
It showed Vivian entering Maison Sainte-Cécile.
The date was two years after the fire.
May you like
Sophie was visible through the window behind her.
Vivian had known she was alive for years.
Related Stories
