Chapter 15 - Cecelia Returns The Original Wedding Roses
Two years after the wedding, Cecelia asked to meet Chloe.
She brought a small preservation box.
Inside were four dried roses.
Chloe recognized them immediately.
The bouquet.
After Margaret left the ballroom, hotel staff collected the flowers.
Cecelia had kept them.
“Why?”
Cecelia looked embarrassed.
“At first? Because I was afraid the note was still inside.”
Chloe almost laughed.
“Of course.”
“Later I kept them because I didn’t know what to do with them.”
She handed over the box.
“They’re yours.”
Chloe touched one brittle petal.
The bouquet had once been part of a trap.
Then it became an escape signal.
Now it was simply flowers.
Cecelia apologized again for telling Margaret that Chloe belonged to the
Sterling family.
“My mother said that to me on my wedding day.”
Chloe looked up.
“And you hated it?”
“Yes.”
“But repeated it.”
“Yes.”
Cecelia had spent years reproducing a rule she once resented.
Chloe understood how that happened.
She did not excuse it.
“Families pass down strange things.”
Cecelia smiled sadly.
“Some should stop.”
“Yes.”
They drank coffee.
No dramatic embrace.
No promise that Cecelia would become a second mother.
Just a conversation.
Before leaving, Cecelia asked whether Chloe wanted the roses.
Chloe considered throwing them away.
Instead she took them home.
Maxwell saw the box.
He looked uncomfortable.
“Do you want me to get rid of them?”
Chloe shook her head.
“No.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Maxwell nodded.
He did not decide for her.
May you like
The smallest habits were sometimes the clearest evidence that something
had changed.
