Chapter 15
Elena returned to the estate after midnight.
Quietly.
No banquet.
No announcement.
Ella was awake because Adelaide had refused to let anyone force the child to sleep while her mother was coming home.
When Elena entered the private sitting room, Ella stared at her.
Three years old.
Eight months was a lifetime.
Elena stopped several feet away.
Her entire face broke.
“Hi, baby.”
Ella looked at Salvatore.
Then Adelaide.
Then back at Elena.
“Mommy?”
Elena nodded.
Ella ran.
The sound Elena made when her daughter reached her brought Adelaide to tears before anyone else moved. She dropped carefully to one knee despite the pain in her ankle and held Ella so tightly the child disappeared against her.
“You came back,” Ella whispered.
Elena closed her eyes.
“I tried.”
Salvatore looked away.
Adelaide did not.
She watched her daughter-in-law hold the child Hattie had planned to turn into leverage, and something inside the old matriarch finally seemed to release.
Later, when Ella fell asleep across Elena’s lap, Adelaide approached her.
“I should have told him sooner.”
Elena looked up.
“Hattie threatened Ella.”
“I still should have.”
Elena took her hand.
“You survived long enough to tell him.”
Adelaide began crying again.
“I helped men like her once.”
Salvatore heard that from the doorway.
His mother did not hide from it.
“I thought fear kept families together.”
Elena squeezed her hand.
“And now?”
Adelaide looked toward Ella.
“Now I know fear only keeps people near you.”
That distinction silenced the room.
Salvatore sat beside Elena after Adelaide left.
Neither spoke for a while.
Finally Elena said, “I don’t know how to come back to everything.”
“You don’t have to.”
She looked at him.
“This house?”
“Yours if you want it.”
“Our marriage?”
Salvatore’s throat tightened.
“Yours to decide.”
Elena stared at him for a long moment.
Then she reached for his hand.
Not forgiveness.
May you like
Not yet.
But not goodbye either.
