Chapter 8 - The Boundary That Could Not Be Undone
Delaney returned to the villa with boxes.
Not empty ones.
The boxes Marissa had packed.
She carried every one back into the living room and placed them beneath the portrait wall.
Grant watched from the hallway.
Marissa came downstairs midway through the third box.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking Mom’s things.”
“You can’t just empty the house.”
“I’m taking things that belonged to her.”
“This is my home too.”
Delaney faced her.
“And that’s the problem.”
Grant stepped between them before the argument escalated.
“Delaney, slow down.”
“No.”
She turned on him.
“You’ve been asking me to slow down since I was sixteen whenever you didn’t want to answer something.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither was lying to me for two years.”
Grant’s face hardened.
“I was respecting your mother’s wishes.”
“After she died?”
He stopped.
That distinction mattered.
For eighteen months, Elise had no longer been there to request silence.
Grant had maintained it anyway.
“Why?”
He looked away.
“Because I didn’t want you remembering her last year as a failed marriage.”
“That wasn’t your decision.”
“I know.”
“No, you know now because I caught you.”
Marissa laughed bitterly.
“Congratulations. Your father lied because he wanted to stay the good guy.”
Grant turned.
“Stay out of this.”
“I’ve been in it since before Elise died.”
“And maybe that was the mistake.”
Marissa stared at him.
Delaney heard the shift immediately.
So did Marissa.
“You don’t mean that.”
Grant didn’t answer.
Marissa’s face lost color.
Delaney lifted another box.
“I’m moving into an apartment. I’ll store Mom’s things there until I decide what I want.”
Grant stepped forward.
“You don’t have to leave permanently.”
“I do.”
The words hurt him.
They hurt Delaney too.
But she meant them.
She had spent the previous year coming home every weekend because Grant said the house felt empty.
She now understood she had been helping him avoid that emptiness.
“I need somewhere nobody can rewrite the past while I’m sleeping upstairs.”
Marissa’s eyes flashed.
“You think taking photographs makes you morally superior?”
“No.”
Delaney lifted the portrait from the trash incident.
“I think not throwing them away is a decent start.”
That evening, she signed a six-month lease on a small apartment in Alexandria.
When Grant learned she had actually done it, he did not argue.
Marissa did.
Not because Delaney was leaving.
Because Grant offered to pay the security deposit.
May you like
And the intensity of Marissa’s reaction exposed something none of them had been discussing.
She was terrified of Grant spending money Delaney didn’t know was already running out.
