I Left Them in Grief Chapter 09

I Left Them in Grief Chapter 09

My resolve finally got through to him.

Brennon looked at me–really looked–and something in him seemed to understand that there was nothing

left to salvage here.

Maybe he was remembering the night two years ago, the estate, the fall. The woman who had loved him

without question.

She was gone. This was what remained.

He took two steps back, his voice unsteady. “Put the bottle down. Please.”

He reached down and pulled Elodie up from the floor, then took Callum by the arm.

“We’re leaving. We won’t bother you again.”

He turned and walked out, unsteady on his feet.

Callum and Elodie kept looking back–tears on their faces, something caught between grief and anger and despair–until the crowd swallowed all three of them whole.

The suits outside peeled away and disappeared.

I put the bottle back in the cabinet. Then I flipped the sign to Closed and took the week off.

I spent it developing new recipes.

When I reopened, the new flavors sold out by noon.

Three years later, news reached me from back home.

Brennon Ashford–heir to Ashford Capital, one of the most powerful men in Westmont–had died of a heart attack during a late night at the office.

Years of overwork had finally caught up with him. He never remarried. He died alone.

Callum took over as CEO. On his first day, he went after the Rowan family’s entire business empire–handed the authorities a full paper trail on Selah: years of tax fraud, embezzlement, financial misconduct.

She was arrested and convicted. His way of settling the debt for what she’d called motherhood.

Elodie’s story was harder to read.

Growing up without anyone who genuinely loved her had left something broken in her, and she’d spent years chasing the feeling in all the wrong places.

The last man who deceived her pushed her past a line she couldn’t come back from. She killed him. Last anyone heard, she hadn’t been the same since.

I found out about all of it while Maeve and I were shopping in Paris.

We each had two enormous bags hanging off our arms, jewelry stacked up to our elbows, the afternoon sun

warm on our faces.

When a good–looking man across the street gave us a look, we dissolved into laughter like teenagers.

Somewhere along the way, I’d stopped needing love to feel like I was enough.

The woman who had been hollowed out by all of it–she’d set herself down quietly, somewhere in the years

between then and now, and walked away lighter.

What came after was ours. Every good, unhurried day of it.