Chapter 136: The First Bloom
The invitation came via a handwritten note on thick cream cardstock, left on the dresser in Beth’s suite. Brunch on the east terrace. If you’re free. – S. The formality of it, after the raw exchange in the garden, made Beth smile faintly. Sophia was trying, in her own way.
The east terrace was a sun-drenched slab of stone overlooking the compound’s lesser-seen side: a stretch of untamed woods that bled into the state park. It felt less like a display and more like a place to breathe. Silver domes covered plates on a linen-draped table, and a pot of coffee steamed between two settings.
Sophia stood at the railing, her back to the door. She turned as Beth’s heels clicked on the stone. “You came.”
“I’m a sucker for good coffee,” Beth said, sliding into a chair. “And you didn’t sign it ‘Mrs. Rossi.’ Progress.”
A genuine, if nervous, smile touched Sophia’s lips. She sat, lifting a dome to reveal eggs Benedict. “I asked the kitchen. They said this was your preference.”
“It is.” Beth poured coffee, the rich smell mingling with the scent of pine from the woods. “Thank you.”
They ate in a silence that was more comfortable than before, punctuated by the chatter of squirrels and the distant whine of a power tool from somewhere on the grounds. It was Sophia who broke it, her voice carefully neutral. “Damien mentioned you’ve settled on a date. Late spring.”
“We have. At the ranch. Just us, Dove, a judge, and a few… essential people.” Beth dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “A bigger reception later, somewhere else. Maybe New York. Less… complicated scenery.”
Sophia’s knife hesitated over her pastry. “And am I…” She cleared her throat, setting the knife down. “Am I considered an ‘essential people’?”
Beth looked at her, the morning light catching the flecks of gold in Sophia’s anxious eyes. “Yes. You are.” She said it plainly, no theatricality. “With my mother where she is, and my father gone… it seems wrong for both of us to walk in completely alone. One of us should have family by their side. Even if it’s… new family.”
Sophia’s breath hitched audibly. She looked down at her plate, blinking fast. “Thank you,” she whispered.
The conversation drifted then, like leaves on the terrace. Guest lists, flowers that wouldn’t trigger Damien’s allergies, the impossibility of finding a photographer who wasn’t secretly on someone’s payroll. It was easy, almost. The bureaucratic poetry of a wedding planning.
“And your family?” Sophia asked later, over a second cup of coffee. She phrased it vaguely, but her gaze was specific. “The Novaks. Will any of them be at the larger reception?”
Beth’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. She leaned back, the wrought-iron chair cool through her silk blouse. “Uncle Dimitri, maybe. If he can travel. He never stopped sending birthday cards. Even when I was ‘the disgrace.’” She shrugged. “The rest… no.”
“Your cousins?”
“Polina and Isaak.” Beth said the names like testing old wounds. “Resentment is a family heirloom on that side. I got a double portion. They saw my mother’s choices as a stain. My existence as a dilution. Polina made her feelings abundantly clear at the gathering in Saint-Tropez three months back.”
Sophia remembered. Damien had come back from that trip taut as a wire, speaking in clipped phrases about ‘tense family dynamics.’ Beth had said nothing at all.
“What did she say?” Sophia asked, her voice soft.
Beth looked out at the woods. “She called me a polukrovka. Half-breed. To my face, on a balcony. I’m sure voices carried.” She took a slow sip of coffee. “She apologized before we left. Has been sending emails, letters, for three months. Wants to reconcile.”
“And you don’t want to?”
“It’s not that simple,” Beth said, turning her cup in its saucer. “Dove refuses to mediate. Says some fences aren’t worth the wire. And Dove… Dove usually knows which fences are meant to keep monsters out.” She met Sophia’s gaze. “I have a family. It’s small. It’s messy. It’s built on a foundation of… unconventional logistics. But it’s mine. I’m not begging for a seat at anyone else’s table anymore.”
The truth of it settled between them. Sophia sat very still, the last of her assumptions crumbling. All these years, she had viewed Beth through the lens of her own world—a social climber, a girl from a infamous, messy background wanting the legitimacy the Rossi name could provide. She had seen ambition and mistaken its target.
She hadn’t seen the lonely child of a ghost and a prisoner. The young woman who clung to a reckless marriage because it felt like a home. The adult who, rather than clawing her way into another dynasty, built her own damn fortress from the ground up and staffed it with people who would walk through fire for her.
Beth wasn’t chasing status. She’d been perpetually, achingly searching for a foothold. A place to belong. And Sophia, with her chilly politeness and disapproving silences, had just been one more person telling her she didn’t quite fit.
“God, I was a fool,” Sophia murmured, the words slipping out before she could stop them.
Beth didn’t contradict her. She just watched, waiting.
“I thought you wanted what we had,” Sophia continued, her voice thickening. “The name, the history, the… the china pattern. I never realized you already had your own legacy. I never realized you were just… looking for a family. And I made you feel like you couldn’t have one here.”
The wind picked up, rustling the linen tablecloth. Somewhere down in the compound, a car door slammed.
Beth placed her napkin on the table, a gesture of finality. “You know now. That’s what matters.” She stood, pushing her chair in. “I have a call with Dove in ten. She’s deciding whether to buy a new bull and she thinks I have an opinion on hoof size.”
It was a dismissal, but a gentle one. An offer of normalcy after the vulnerability.
Sophia stood too, her emotions a tangled knot in her chest. “A bull. Right.” She managed a smile. “Tell her I said… good luck with the hooves.”
Beth paused at the terrace door, a shadow against the bright interior hall. She looked back, her green eyes unreadable for a moment. Then she gave a short, genuine nod. “I will. And Sophia? Thank you for brunch.”
She disappeared inside.
Sophia remained, gripping the cold railing. The sun was high now, burning off the morning mist from the trees. For the first time, she saw Bethany Montgomery not as a problem to be managed, or a puzzle to be solved, but as a fact. A formidable, self-contained fact. A woman who had carved a family out of the hard rock of her own making, and was now, cautiously, seeing if there was room for an extension.
The loneliness of that search, spanning decades, finally sunk its hooks into Sophia’s heart. She hadn’t just been a bad mother-in-law. She’d been another closed door. And Beth had simply, quietly, gone and built her own house.
Sophia turned back to the empty table, to the remains of their meal. She picked up Beth’s unused dessert fork, her fingers tightening around the cold silver. A new resolution, quiet and fierce, solidified within her. She wouldn’t be a closed door anymore. She would learn the blueprint of the house Beth had built, even if she had to start by just sitting humbly on the porch.