Chapter 10 - The Garden I Was Finally Ready to Enter
I stared at Olivia’s photographs for almost an hour before I called her.
The Charleston garden looked exactly as I remembered from the first set she had sent months earlier: live oaks bending over brick paths, pale flowers near an iron gate, white chairs positioned beneath branches heavy with Spanish moss.
Back then, the pictures had terrified me.
They had looked like evidence that I was trying to replace one marriage before I had properly buried it.
Now they looked different.
Not like a promise.
Like a possibility.
“May seventeenth is still open,” Olivia said.
I sat at my studio desk while rain tapped the windows.
“Why?”
She laughed. “Because I frightened another bride by telling her Charleston has mosquitoes.”
“That seems professionally questionable.”
“I believe in informed consent.”
I smiled.
The word consent still carried weight for me.
For years, people had made decisions about my money, my marriage, my body, and my future while explaining that they knew what was best.
Now even choosing a date felt radical.
“I need to talk to Noah,” I said.
“Obviously.”
“I haven’t agreed to marry him.”
Olivia became suspiciously quiet.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You know something.”
“I know Noah called me three months ago.”
I stood so quickly my chair rolled backward.
“He did what?”
“He asked whether I would keep one Saturday open without telling you why.”
My heart began pounding.
“Olivia.”
“I didn’t say he bought anything. I didn’t say he planned anything. I said he asked a calendar question.”
“You’re terrible at secrets.”
“I’m excellent at secrets. You’re excellent at interrogations now.”
I ended the call before she could reveal more.
Noah arrived that evening carrying two paper bags from the Thai restaurant near my apartment.
I waited until he had removed his coat.
Then I said, “Did you call Olivia?”
He froze.
One bag slowly lowered toward the counter.
“Define call.”
I crossed my arms.
He sighed.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was thinking about asking you something.”
My breath caught.
Noah did not reach into his pocket.
He did not kneel.
Instead, he walked closer.
“I didn’t want to surprise you with a public proposal,” he said. “And I didn’t want to assume marriage was automatically the next thing you wanted just because we love each other.”
My eyes burned unexpectedly.
He continued.
“So I asked whether the garden you liked might still be available next spring. Then I decided that was getting dangerously close to planning your answer before you gave it.”
“That was smart.”
“I occasionally manage it.”
I looked toward the yellow door.
“What were you going to ask?”
Noah’s expression softened.
“Whether you could imagine marrying me someday.”
Not would you.
Could you imagine.
The difference nearly broke me.
I moved closer until our hands touched.
“Yes,” I said.
He swallowed.
“Yes, you can imagine it?”
“Yes.”
His smile appeared slowly.
“That is extremely good news.”
I laughed.
Then someone knocked on the door.
We both stared at it.
“Did you plan this?” I asked.
“No.”
The knock came again.
I checked the hallway through the peephole.
Grant stood outside.
Noah’s expression changed when I told him.
“I can leave.”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
That mattered too.
I opened the door but did not invite Grant inside.
He looked worse than he had at the studio months earlier.
His expensive coat was soaked at the shoulders.
“What happened?”
“My father disappeared.”
For a second, I thought I had misunderstood.
“What?”
“He missed a court appearance this morning. His attorney can’t reach him.”
Noah moved into view behind me.
Grant noticed him but did not react.
“The government believes Conrad moved money before the restrictions were entered,” Grant continued. “There are accounts nobody can locate.”
“That sounds like something you should tell investigators.”
“We did.”
“Then why are you here?”
Grant looked at me.
“Because one account is connected to a company created with money from your mother’s inheritance.”
The hallway seemed to tilt.
My mother had died twelve years earlier.
That inheritance had been the foundation of my first investment with the Whitmore family.
The investment Conrad later controlled.
My voice went cold.
“Say that again.”
Grant handed me a folder.
“I think my father used your name for something much bigger than the transfers Priya already found.”
I did not take it.
“Send it to Leah.”
“I already did.”
That stopped me.
Grant looked exhausted, but not manipulative.
Not this time.
“I came because you deserved to know before it reached the news.”
Behind him, thunder rolled over the city.
Noah stood beside me without touching me.
The life I wanted was inside the apartment.
The life I had escaped was standing in the hallway.
And somewhere between them was a missing man who had apparently decided that stealing from me once had not been enough.
I looked at Grant.
May you like
“Tell me everything.”
And for the first time, he did.
