Felix does as instructed.
He meets her at the front door with that unflappable calm of his, takes her coat, asks after the drive, and leads her, no detours, through the gallery, past the terrace, down the old service corridor that smells faintly of wet earth after rain.
I follow at a distance, long enough to watch the moment it hits her.
The greenhouse.
Refurbished glass panes glow in the dusk like a lantern on the lawn. We replaced every warped frame and shattered panel, rewired heat and irrigation, polished the brass until it remembered it was allowed to shine.
Inside, the air is warm and fragrant with jasmine climbing the back wall, tubs of heirloom roses she used to fuss over, clay pots of foxglove and sweet pea, basil and mint in a tidy kitchen row because she always said food tastes better when you bruise the leaves yourself.
And on the old worktable, the long plank of weathered oak where two foolish people once learned how impossible forever is, there’s white linen, low candles, crystal that throws constellations on the glass, and a meal that smells like butter and memory.
Naomi stops in the doorway like she’s walked into a story she didn’t dare hope someone kept. Her hand lifts to her throat; her mouth parts.
I feel the reaction before she says a word, and something loosens between my ribs and tightens in the same breath.
“Vasso,” she says, and it isn’t a challenge or a defense, just my name like it belongs somewhere soft.
I step forward, take in the way candlelight loves her skin, and pull the small matte box from my pocket. The lid gives with a hush.
She inhales.
It’s a rivière necklace with slender platinum with east–west emerald-cut diamonds stepping around her collarbone, the center stone a twin to her ring, knife-edge set with a hidden halo so the light has something to do besides fall.
It’s clean, unapologetic, and it belongs on her.
“Turn,” I say.
She does, wordless. I lift her hair, catch the faint vanilla and citrus in it, and clasp the chain at the nape of her neck. When my fingertips skim her skin, she shivers. The stones settle against her, a river of ice and fire.
“It matches,” she whispers, looking down at the way the center stone echoes the one on her finger.
“It was made to.”
Her eyes gloss. “It’s—” She stops, shakes her head, laughs once like she can’t believe the sentence she’s in. “It’s too much.”
“Nothing about you is ‘too much,’” I say, and I don’t mean diamonds.
For a second, she’s close enough to pull into my chest and forget the table exists. Instead, I offer my arm. She takes it. We sit.
We eat. She tells me Theodore was bright today, that he scolded a nurse for moving his books and then fell asleep mid-lecture like a man who hadn’t done that in too long.
She tried a new tea the cardiologist swears by; she hates it; he pretends not to. I let her talk because I like the way her face moves when it’s lit from the inside.
Somewhere between the oysters and the halibut she mentions Harrison, one sentence, light as a thrown pebble—He called the house again; I let it ring out.
My fork stills before I can order it otherwise. The greenhouse holds its breath as the old anger rises, disciplined, familiar. She sees it.
Her eyes widen a fraction and she steers—clever woman—away from the reef.
“Grandpa wants to see the roses next week,” she says briskly, touching one petal with that reverence the world keeps mistaking for fragility. “I told him they’ll be ready to brag.”
I’m absurdly touched by the pivot, by the fact that she doesn’t want to salt the night with a man who’s taken enough from both of us. I nod, let the grip on my fork ease, and pour more wine.
Dessert arrives, her favorite—dark chocolate layered with something sinful and a whisper of orange as music spills from nowhere and everywhere at once—low strings, brushed percussion, a rhythm that remembers our feet. The staff ghosts away and the greenhouse is ours.
I take a spoonful, hold it toward her. “Open.”
