* Chapter 9
The next morning, the clatter of construction rang out from next door.
When I took the kids to school, I found Weston setting up an office in the vacant house beside ours.
Sweating and balancing a coffee machine, he waved at the kids.
“Good morning.”
They turned away, stubbornly refusing to engage.
Weston turned his smile to me. “If you won’t come back with me, then I’ll stay.”
He resembled the woman I used to be–desperate, trying so hard to hold on to a title that had never fit.
When I was blind, I’d had to relearn how to cook, my hands constantly blistered and raw, bandaged and bruised.
And when I managed to cook a meal, Weston wouldn’t touch it.
I thought maybe I wasn’t beautiful enough, so I practiced drawing on my face in the dark, tracing the features I could only imagine.
But it never mattered. He never came home..
Day and night
it were the same to me then. Just darkness. And only me.
If love isn’t there, nothing you do is enough.
Just as it wasn’t for him now.
Weston started showing up at the preschool, waiting for the kids to finish school.
Even if neither I nor the kids paid him any attention, he watched from a distance.
At lunchtime, the scent of home–cooked meals wafted through the village, each house carrying its own warmth up into the sky.
Weston would sit on the porch with instant noodles, eyes hopeful as he asked if he could join us for a meal.
Once, he wouldn’t touch my food. Now, he joked he’d pay any price for it.
But some things can’t be bought
2:02 PM
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He filled our garden with flowers, knowing their scent would drift through the fence when the lilies bloomed.
I remembered when I once loved lilies, keeping pots of them on the windowsill.
But even with his rare visits to the manor, his pollen allergy had driven him to stomp my beloved flowers to dust, much like he crushed me.
Now, he took his allergy medicine and endured.
In the past, I would have picked apart his behavior, searching for meaning behind every action.
But now, I didn’t want to. I didn’t care.
I assumed he would tire of this charade and return to his lofty world as the powerful head of Carrington Holdings.
But to my surprise, the privileged Weston Carrington stayed in our modest little village for months.
