Chapter 135: Olive Blossom
The scent of crushed rosemary and damp earth clung to the morning air in the Rossi garden. Beth moved through the manicured rows with a purpose that was more ritual than chore. The pruning shears in her hand were cold, efficient. Snip. A deep red bloom, just past its prime, fell into the basket at her feet. Snip. Another. Damien’s office needed fresh ones. He’d mentioned it offhand, and she’d seized the task, needing the physical simplicity of it after the emotional fugue of the night before.
The silence of the compound was different in daylight. Less intimate, more watchful.
She heard the footsteps on the gravel path before she saw her. A deliberate, hesitant rhythm. Beth didn’t turn. She examined a tight bud, her thumb brushing a dewdrop from its crimson petals.
“Bethany.”
Sophia’s voice was softer than Beth remembered. Less like polished marble. Beth finally glanced over her shoulder. Damien’s mother stood a few feet away, her hands clasped in front of a simple linen dress. She looked older. Or maybe just less guarded.
“Sophia.” Beth turned back to the rose bush. “I’m just getting some for Damien’s desk.”
“I see.” A pause, filled with the drone of a bee. “They’re his favorite. The Black Baccara. He always has liked things that are… a little dramatic.”
A faint, unwilling smile touched Beth’s lips. She snipped another stem. “He does.”
“May I… interrupt?”
Beth straightened, lowering the shears. She didn’t leave. That, she realized, was her answer. She waited.
Sophia took a visible breath, her eyes tracing the labyrinth of hedges as if the words were written there. “I looked for you at Claire’s wedding,” she began, her voice gaining a faint tremor. “Not in the crowd. I mean, I did that too. But I looked for you in the preparations. In the chaos of the dressing room. I kept turning, expecting to see you pinning a curl, or fixing her veil, or just… being there. The way a sister should be. The way I… I had hoped you would be.”
Beth felt the words land, a dull ache in a place she’d sealed off years ago.
“I was a terrible mother-in-law to you,” Sophia said, the admission rushing out now. “Dismissive. Passive-aggressive. I saw a spoiled girl from a messy family trying to claw her way into mine. I was blind. Willfully, arrogantly blind to the woman you actually are.” Her gaze finally found Beth’s, and the gloss of tears was there, held back by sheer will. “I missed you. Not just as a guest at my daughter’s wedding. I missed the daughter I never had the courage to claim.”
The garden was very quiet. Beth could hear her own heart, a steady, resilient drum against her ribs. She looked down at the shears in her hand, the dark soil on her boots. This was the woman whose silent disapproval had been a constant, chilling draft in her first marriage. This was the woman who had never once asked about her parents, her work, her life.
She set the shears down on the stone bench with a soft, final click.
“Damien and I didn’t elope because I hated your family,” Beth said, her own voice surprising her with its calm. She looked directly at Sophia. “We were twenty-two. We were stupidly, desperately in love, and the thought of a big wedding… the thought of walking down an aisle alone…” She swallowed. “My father was dead. My mother was… unavailable. It wasn’t a rebellion. It was just pain we were too young to dress up in lace and show to five hundred people.”
Sophia’s hand flew to her mouth, a stifled sound escaping. The comprehension that dawned on her face was genuine, and laced with a fresh, profound shame. She had never considered that. She had only considered the slight to her.
“I accept your apology,” Beth said, the business mogul in her laying out terms. “And I’m willing to start over. But slowly. And honestly. No more polite fiction. If you want to know me, you have to ask. And you have to be prepared for the answers. It can’t be… garden-party conversations anymore.”
Sophia nodded rapidly, a tear escaping to trace a line through her powder. “Yes. Yes, of course. However you’ll have me.” She took a tentative step forward, then another. Her eyes were earnest, stripped of all social pretence. “Claire’s letter… she told me you responded. Just that it was a good start. It gave me the courage to come out here.”
“It was a good start,” Beth confirmed softly. She looked at the older woman’s outstretched hand, hovering between them. An offering. A request.
After a beat that stretched between the past and a possible future, Beth reached out. Her fingers, still cool from the morning air, met Sophia’s. The touch was brief, dry, a pact sealed not with grandeur, but with fragile intent.
“I should finish these for Damien,” Beth said, withdrawing her hand and turning back to the roses, the moment needing the relief of a simple task.
“Let me help?” Sophia’s question was barely a whisper.
Beth hesitated, then handed her the basket. “Hold this.”
Together, in the sunlight dappled through the ancient oak, they worked. Not as mother and daughter-in-law. Not as rivals. But as two women, both fiercely protective of the same complicated man, beginning the careful, uncertain work of building a new kind of family from the roots of the old. The shears snipped, the blooms fell, and for the first time, the garden didn’t feel like enemy territory.