Chapter 132: Sisterly Mediation
The air in Claire’s old bedroom tasted like nostalgia and rosewater. Damien leaned against the doorframe, watching his sister fold a stack of silk scarves with a precision that felt misplaced amidst the cheerful chaos of the room. Bolts of champagne-colored tulle leaned in the corner like gossiping ghosts. Open magazines fanned across her childhood desk, their pages showing smiling, airbrushed brides now curling at the edges.
“You know Mom hired a team to pack this up for you,” Damien said, his voice softer than it was anywhere else on the compound.
Claire didn’t look up. “They’d just throw it all in boxes. This… needs attention.” She finally set the scarves down and turned to him. Her eyes, the same green as his but without the layers of calculated shadow, were bright with unshed tears. “I missed her at the wedding, Dami. Really missed her. The cake was phenomenal, the foundation gift was… insane. But her chair was empty.”
Damien pushed off the doorframe and walked further into the room. His fingers trailed over the headboard of her white iron bed, the metal cool. “She was thinking of you.”
“That’s not enough.” Claire’s voice cracked. “I was so wrapped up in being a Rossi bride, I didn’t see what it cost her to be here. And Mom…” She shook her head, a frustrated gesture. “Mom actually wants to try. She said it to me. ‘How do I fix this?’ She doesn’t know how to ask, but she’s asking.”
A humorless smirk touched Damien’s lips. “Our mother asking for a manual. There’s a first.”
“Don’t.” Claire stepped forward, grabbing his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “Don’t deflect. You’re the bridge. You always have been. Tell me what to do. Tell us what to do. How do we make amends with your wife?”
He studied her face, the earnest plea there, so different from the polished social maneuvers of their world. This was real. It was also dangerously fragile. He extracted his wrist gently and moved to the window, looking out at the manicured gardens below. “You can’t ‘make amends,’ Claire. Not in the way you think. You can’t write a check or throw a party and erase the last decade. Beth’s economy doesn’t work on apologies.”
“Then what does it work on?”
“Proof.” He turned back to her. “Consistency. She needs to see you show up, again and again, when there’s nothing in it for you. No social advantage, no family drama to stir. Just you, and her.”
Claire wrapped her arms around herself. “Okay. How do I start?”
“You call her. You tell her you’re coming to Texas for a day, just to see her. You do not mention Mom. You do not bring Leo. You have lunch. You talk about anything except the past. You ask about her horses, her business, that terrifying foreman sister of hers. You listen. You show her that Claire Rossi, now Claire Moretti, wants a relationship with Beth Montgomery, not with Beth Rossi, the Don’s wife.”
“I can do that,” Claire whispered, nodding as if memorizing steps.
“As for our mother…” Damien sighed, the weight of a lifetime of complex loyalties settling on his shoulders. “Tell her to write a letter. A real one, on paper. No dictation to a secretary. She needs to sit in the silence with her own guilt and find the words. She needs to say ‘I was wrong.’ She needs to specify how. The coldness. The exclusion. The strategic overlooking. She needs to admit she saw Beth as a problem to be managed, not a daughter to be welcomed. And she cannot, under any circumstances, justify it with tradition or family pressure. Beth will see right through that. She values honesty, even brutal honesty, over pretty lies.”
Claire’s eyes were wide. “Mom will hate that. It’s… undignified.”
“Exactly.” Damien’s smile was thin. “It has to cost her something. A little dignity is a small price. Beth paid in years.”
Silence stretched between them, filled with the faint hum of the old chandelier. A stray beam of afternoon light hit the cracked vanity mirror, illuminating the flaw like a silver scar.
“She’s really the one, isn’t she?” Claire said quietly. “Even after all this. Even with the walls.”
Damien didn’t need to ask who she meant. He looked back out the window, where a fountain splashed in the perpetual, curated sunshine of the compound. He thought of a different sun, a hotter, wilder one, and a woman floating in a blue pool, choosing to reschedule Singapore for the simple act of holding his hand under water.
“She’s the only one,” he said, the truth of it absolute and unshakable. “Everything else is just background noise.”
Claire moved to stand beside him, their shoulders almost touching. “I’ll call her tomorrow. I’ll book a flight. Just lunch.” She glanced up at him. “Do you think she’ll say yes?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But the asking is the first part of the proof.”
He left her there, surrounded by the artifacts of her old life, trying to chart a course into a new, more honest one. The hallway outside was dim and cool, a contrast to the sun-drenched sentimentality of the bedroom. As he walked, his phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from Beth, a photo of a grumpy-looking piebald mare nuzzling her palm. The caption read: New arrival. She bites. I like her.
He stared at the image, at the elegant line of Beth’s wrist, the dirt under her fingernails. A concrete reality a thousand miles from velvet drapes and cracked mirrors. He typed back, Looks like my kind of girl. Then he added, Claire might be calling you. Just to talk. No agenda.
Three dots appeared, pulsed, then stopped. No immediate reply. He didn’t expect one. She was processing. That was okay. They were, all of them, in their own ways, learning how to stand in the uncomfortable quiet between an old wound and a possible, fragile mend. The proof was in the waiting, and for the first time, Damien found he didn’t mind the silence.