I Left Them in Grief Chapter 02

I Left Them in Grief Chapter 02

Brennon had a habit of sending small gifts every week—his way of proving he still cared, or so I assumed.

Graham Ellis, his assistant, stepped into the room, polished as always.

“Mrs. Ashford, there have been some unflattering rumors circulating around Westmont lately. Mr. Ashford wanted me to pass along that they’re completely false, and he’s handling it personally. He doesn’t want you to worry.”

I was sitting with the bundle of green chrysanthemums he’d sent, absently pulling leaves off the stems one by one.

Every week since I’d moved out here, he’d had flowers delivered.

I used to think it meant something—that he remembered I loved them, that it was his way of staying close.

Turns out, Selah had been picking them out online. Random bouquets, whatever was easy.

While I sat alone at home watching the petals wilt, Brennon was taking her and the kids on weekend trips. Movies. Dinner at rooftop restaurants with skyline views.

And in the photos, he’d laugh and say something like, “Callum and Elodie look more like yours than mine.”

Selah would shake her head with that practiced, melancholy smile. “Don’t say that. Maren would be upset if she heard you.”

And my children—the ones I’d carried and delivered—would curl into her arms and look up at her with wide, guileless eyes.

“Anyone can have a baby,” Elodie had said. “But you’re the one who actually raised us. You’re our mom.”

The memory hit like a fist to the chest.

I frowned and dropped the chrysanthemums on the floor.

Graham startled. “Ma’am—everything I’ve told you is true. Mr. Ashford only asked Selah to stay at the house for the children’s sake, and he’s already taken steps to address the rumors—”

“Got it.” I cut him off with a nod. “You can go.”

He hesitated. “Mrs. Ashford?”

I knew what he was waiting for—some message to carry back to Brennon. A reaction. Anything.

But I had nothing left to say.

Everyone in Westmont knew the truth anyway: Vivienne Ashford, Brennon’s grandmother, had never wanted me.

She’d tried to warn Brennon, back before the wedding.

“Maren’s too guarded,” she’d told him. “Too calculating. You’ll never be able to read her. Selah’s different—warm, steady, the kind of woman who actually makes a home.”

Brennon had fought his family on it for months before they finally gave in and accepted me.

The day the news reached the Rowan household, Selah fell apart. She cried through her congratulations, and every one of those tears landed somewhere deep in Brennon’s chest.

He never stopped feeling like he owed her. So he kept paying—in time, in attention, in patience—until it became something I couldn’t ignore.

When I finally asked him to cut her off, he turned on me.

“You’re the one who got in the way,” he said, his voice cold and flat.

“You moved first. You took what was supposed to be hers. I let it go—don’t push me.”

I stood there, frozen.

“We grew up together, Brennon. We fell for each other. How can you stand there and say it like that?”

“If you could go back,” I asked, “would you have married her instead?”

He looked away.

That silence told me everything.

The cold spread through me from the inside out—the specific kind that comes when you realize you were never actually chosen. That the life you built was never really yours.

I’d gone up to the roof and didn’t come back down.

I had no interest in revisiting any of that now.

“If there’s nothing else, you can head out,” I told Graham. “Maeve’s here with me. Tell Brennon not to bother.”