The Donna Who Vanished from the Portrait Chapter 08

The Donna Who Vanished from the Portrait Chapter 08

Three days after the retirement exhibition, Elena and Sophie left the Moretti estate.

Before departing, she stood beneath the bare wall in the great hall and confronted Adrian. “Do you truly believe Margaret will come back just because you sent us away?”

Adrian said nothing.

Elena gave a bitter, faint smile. “You always said you were merely ‘looking out for us. But every promise you made to Sophie made me believe you would eventually marry me.”

“I never made you such a promise.”

“Yet you gave me everything a wife ought to receive.”

After she drove off with the child, Adrian sat alone in the great hall through the entire night.

The next day, he phoned me. He claimed he was ready to sign the divorce papers-on one condition: that I return to the Moretti estate for one final meal.

When I arrived at the main house, every item she’d left behind in the west wing had been moved back into the master bedroom. On the nightstand rested a newly embroidered pillowcase, its stitches painstakingly copied from photos of my mother’s old one. It looked similar, yet the imitation was painfully obvious.

My old photographs and bedside lamp sat back in their familiar spots. Even my clothes in the wardrobe were sorted by season, exactly how I liked them.

Adrian stood beside the dining table and pulled out my chair. “Sit.”

None of the dishes on the table were ones Elena favored. The most tender cut of fish was placed onto my plate. The soup held no onion, and wine had been replaced with water.

He picked a stray peanut out of my bowl and laid a piece of boneless fish in its place. I stared, struck by how automatic his gestures had become.

He had always known I was allergic to peanut, how much I feared swallowing them. But in the past, that tender fish had always gone onto Sophie’s plate first.

Noticing my pause, Adrian’s lips tugged upward in a faint smile. “I remembered all along.”

He ladled soup into my bowl. “I kept thinking… you wouldn’t actually leave over things like this.”

His phone vibrated on the corner of the table. It was the clinic calling. Sophie’s asthma was under control. The doctor, Nonna, and Elena were all with her, yet the child kept waking up crying for him.

Adrian glanced at the screen and hung up immediately. “I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

The phone rang again. He looked once more.

On the third ring, his fingers tapped restlessly against the tabletop.

I set my fork down. “Stop pretending.”

“I’m right here, aren’t I?”

“What good is an empty shell?”

Adrian grasped my hand, his grip tightening. “If I stay, can you stop this defiance? Isn’t this everything you

wanted?”

“What I wanted before was for you to choose to stay.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You’re staying now only because you’re terrified of watching me leave all over again.”

He shot abruptly to his feet, trapping me between his body and the table. “If I leave, you accuse me of favoring them. If I stay, you say I’m putting on an act. Margaret, is every single thing I do wrong in your

eyes?”

“No one’s keeping score. Even if you do a hundred good things now, I won’t come back.”

Adrian drew in a sharp breath.

I picked up the divorce agreement lying on the table. Its final page was still blank, unsigned.

His gaze dropped. He let out a quiet, humorless laugh. “I lied to you.”

He snatched the documents, folded them carelessly, and stuffed them inside his suit jacket’s inner pocket.

“I’m not signing.”

“Adrian.”

“You hate conflict, and you cherish your pride.” He straightened the collar of my dress, his touch gentle, his words final as a locked door. “If you truly had the courage to drag the Moretti family into court, you would have done it long ago. Why endure ten years in silence?”

I pulled another manila folder out of my handbag and set it on the table.

When Adrian read the cover-Notice of Divorce Proceedings-Mediation Required-his smile vanished completely. “You dare sue me?”

“The petition has already been filed.”

He grabbed the paperwork. “Withdraw it.”

“Didn’t you just say I lacked the courage?”

His phone rang once more. Sophie’s sobs wailed through the speaker. “Daddy, I can’t breathe…”

The doctor’s voice cut in quickly, explaining it was only from hysterical crying, that her oxygen saturation

levels were normal.

Adrian froze. He gave no reply, didn’t even glance my way.

I opened the front door.

He chased me out onto the front entrance steps, his voice finally cracking. “Margaret, if you walk out today, I’ll never beg you to come back again!”

I didn’t slow my pace.

Silence hung behind me for several seconds. Then came the brittle shatter of porcelain shattering against

the floor.

The mediation notice landed in a puddle of spilled soup, the case number still clear.