After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 36

After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 36

On the night of the first anniversary of our meeting, Elias booked the famous courtyard garden of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

The Venetian-style palace was quiet and magnificent in the night. Ancient Roman sculptures and evergreen plants in the center of the courtyard cast poetic shadows under the soft lights. The air was filled with the fragrance of tuberose, and a string quartet in the corner was playing Bach, the graceful music echoing beneath the glass dome.

Ava wore a midnight-blue silk gown Elias had given her and sat at the table covered in a white cloth, feeling as if she had fallen into an unreal dream.

“I remember our first official meeting was also in a museum.” Ava swirled the champagne in her glass, bubbles rising in fine streams along the crystal wall. “You were explaining the composition of a painting to Lily.”

Elias looked at her gently. “I remember. From then on, I knew my world could no longer be without the two of you.”

His words flowed through Ava’s heart like warmth. Over the past year, they had experienced so much together, from the caution of the beginning, to fighting side by side, to being inseparable now. He had healed every wound from her past and made her believe in love and family again.

Just then, the string quartet’s music suddenly changed, flowing smoothly into Ava’s favorite piece, Debussy’s Clair de Lune.

All the spotlights gathered at once, gently surrounding Elias.

Ava’s heart skipped a beat.

Elias slowly rose from his seat and walked to her. With elegant solemnity, he lowered himself to one knee. From his pocket, he took a velvet Cartier red box and opened it gently.

An enormous antique sapphire ring of royal blue flashed under the light with a deep, tranquil brilliance.

“Ava,” he said, his voice trembling slightly from nerves, though his gaze was utterly firm. “In truth, from the first time I saw you years ago on Harvard’s campus, I knew it was you. Every day with you has been happier than all the life I had before combined.”

He held the ring before her.

“This ring was passed from my great-grandmother to my grandmother, and then to my mother. They all hoped I would give it to the only woman I wanted to spend my life with.”

His throat moved. He took a deep breath.

“Ava Reed, will you marry me?”

Tears instantly blurred Ava’s vision. She looked at the man before her, the man who had appeared when she was at her most wretched and had protected her and Lily with the strongest gentleness. All her waiting and suffering seemed to have been for the completeness of this moment.

Choked with tears, she nodded again and again with all her strength.

“Yes. Yes!”

The light in Elias’s eyes ignited instantly. With trembling hands, he placed the ring, a symbol of family inheritance and promise, steadily onto her finger. The ring’s cool touch met her heated skin, and an unprecedented sense of safety wrapped around her.

He stood and pulled her tightly into his arms, confessing again in a hoarse voice by her ear.

“I love you, Ava. That will never change.”

Just then, beneath an archway not far away, the butler walked over holding Lily’s hand. Lily wore a little white tulle dress and looked like an angel. She ran to them, hugged both their legs, and looked up with her innocent little face, asking curiously,

“Are we a family now?”