Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN WHO LEARNED TO STAND ALONE
By the sixth week, Carmela had begun sleeping through the night.
Not every night.
Some mornings she still woke convinced she smelled smoke.
Sometimes she reached for her phone before remembering that she could not call her father.
But the nightmares were becoming less frequent.
She spent her mornings reviewing documents with Rebecca.
Her afternoons were devoted to the old coastal house.
Elena, her mother's cousin, had welcomed her without questions.
“You can stay as long as you need,” she said.
Carmela thanked her.
Then asked whether she could repair the porch.
Elena laughed.
“It's been falling apart for twenty years.”
“Then it's overdue.”
They hired local workers.
Carmela drew plans.
She researched materials.
She measured windows and studied the structure.
For the first time since her marriage, people asked for her opinion and expected an answer.
One afternoon, a carpenter named Noah Bennett examined her drawings.
“You did these?”
Carmela nodded.
“They're rough.”
“They're good.”
She looked at him suspiciously.
“You don't have to say that.”
Noah smiled.
“I don't say things I don't mean.”
The simplicity of the statement unsettled her.
She had forgotten what straightforward kindness felt like.
Noah was thirty-five, divorced, and raising a daughter named Lily.
He worked with his hands and drove an old pickup truck.
He had no interest in New York society.
No knowledge of Silas Romano.
To him, Carmela was simply a woman helping restore a house.
She liked that.
Over the following weeks, she began taking long walks along the beach.
She cooked with Elena.
She read books she had bought years earlier but never opened.
She stopped examining her reflection as though it were a problem to solve.
Her body had not changed.
Her worth had.
Or rather, her understanding of it had.
One afternoon, Elena found her standing before a mirror in a simple green dress.
“You look beautiful,” Elena said.
Carmela smiled sadly.
“Silas hated green.”
Elena shrugged.
“Then Silas had terrible taste.”
Carmela laughed.
The sound surprised her.
It had been months since laughter came so easily.
That evening, Rebecca called.
“We found something.”
Carmela sat down.
“What?”
“Your father kept a second set of records. The original documents were stored with an independent accounting firm.”
“Can we access them?”
“With the estate's authorization and the appropriate legal process, yes.”
Carmela's heart began pounding.
“Do they prove the fraud?”
“They may establish the forged transfers and identify who benefited.”
“And the fire?”
“Investigators are pursuing that separately.”
Carmela looked toward the ocean.
For weeks, she had been hiding.
Now she began to understand that hiding could not be her entire future.
“Rebecca?”
“Yes?”
“When this is over, I want to go back.”
“To New York?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
Carmela looked at her reflection in the dark window.
“I don't want to spend the rest of my life running from a man who never deserved me.”
Rebecca was silent.
Then she said:
“Good. Because there's something else.”
Carmela's stomach tightened.
“What?”
“Silas has filed a missing-person petition and offered a reward.”
Carmela closed her eyes.
“How much?”
“Five million dollars.”
She stared.
For three years, Silas had made her feel worthless.
Now he was offering a fortune to bring her back.
May you like
She laughed bitterly.
“Tell him he should have tried respect. It would have cost him nothing.”
