Chapter 10 - The Table by the Sea
One year later.
The terrace at Villa Bellisima looked exactly as it had twelve months ago, but the people sitting around the long marble table were completely different.
There were eight of us.
Rebecca was at the far end, arguing fiercely with Marco about the correct vintage of Barolo to accompany the wild boar ragù. Liam and Clara from my office were leaning over the balustrade, taking photos of the sunset that bathed the cliffside in amber and rose.
Beside me sat David.
David was thirty-one, a landscape architect with laugh lines around his warm hazel eyes and hands that knew the difference between tending something carefully and forcing it to grow. We had met eight months ago during the renovation of my new garden flat in Richmond—the flat I had purchased with my own career bonuses and the clean, quiet deed my father had signed over to me.
"A penny for them," David murmured, his shoulder resting gently against mine.
"Not even a penny," I smiled, leaning into his warmth. "Just thinking how quiet it is."
"It's about to get loud," he warned, nodding toward the head of the table.
Arthur sat there.
He looked older, his hair completely silver now, wearing a simple linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He was laughing—a genuine, deep, unhurried belly laugh—at a story Aunt Sarah was telling about her new ceramics class in Brighton.
He didn't look at his plate. He didn't hide behind a newspaper. He hadn't touched a piece of roast beef in twelve months.
When the divorce was finalized in March, Evelyn had taken her half of the depleted estate and moved to an apartment complex outside Marbella, Spain, where nobody knew about the Gatwick video or the forged mortgages. She spent her days posting filtered photos of communal swimming pools to Facebook accounts that none of us followed anymore. Chloe had moved into a small terrace house in Reading, working thirty hours a week as a receptionist at an estate agency, finally learning how much a loaf of bread and a childcare voucher actually cost.
They were not invited. Their names were not mentioned. They had become like old, faded ink on a document that had long since been superseded by a better contract.
Marco approached the table, holding a wide platter of sea bass baked in sea salt, steam rising into the cool evening air.
"Signorina Henderson," Marco said, his voice brimming with theatrical pride. "Dinner is served."
Arthur stood up from his chair. He picked up his wine glass, tapped it gently with the handle of his butter knife, and looked down the table.
The conversation quieted. The sea breeze stirred the white linen tablecloth.
"I won't make a long speech," Arthur said, his voice steady, though his eyes were thick with emotion as he looked directly at me. "A year ago, I sat at a table where cruelty was served as the main course, and I didn't have the courage to push my plate away."
He paused, taking a slow, steady breath.
"It took my daughter walking out of that room to show me that a family isn't something you inherit through blood or endure through shame. A family is something you choose. It's the people who see your spreadsheets and love you for them. It's the people who make sure you have a seat before they sit down themselves."
Arthur raised his glass high toward the Italian sky.
"To Maya," he said softly. "The one who booked the trip, who paid the price, and who finally brought us home."
"To Maya!" Rebecca shouted, slamming her hand on the table.
"To Maya!" they all chorused, their voices rising over the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks three hundred feet below.
I looked around the table.
There were no plastic folders. There were no hidden markups. There was no spite hidden beneath sweet words, no waiting for the knife to fall, no cold silence in the car afterward.
May you like
There was only the warm bread, the salt air, the laughter of people who truly loved me, and an empty, beautiful horizon stretching out forever into the clean, starlit dark.
I raised my glass, took a sip of the cold, golden wine, and smiled.