Chapter 65 Moving Forward
Summer arrived quietly.
For the first time in over a year, Ariella woke up without dread, No trial to prepare for, No threats to avoid, No performance to maintain. Just morning, Coffee, and Aiden beside her.
Normal.
“We should do something,” she said, watching sunlight stream through the windows.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something we’ve never done because we were too busy surviving.”
They ended up at the coast. Just the two of them, driving west until the city disappeared and the ocean stretched endlessly ahead. They walked along Cannon Beach with sand in their shoes and salt air in their lungs, holding hands like the teenagers they’d never really gotten to be.
“When’s the last time you did something just for fun?” Ariella asked.
“I honestly can’t remember. Before my mom died, maybe? What about you?”
“Same. Before Ethan.” She paused. “That’s kind of sad.”
“Yeah. But we’re fixing it now.”
They stayed until sunset, watching the sky turn impossible colors. No phones, No schedules, No one needing anything from them, Just the two of them existing together.
On the drive back, Aiden said “I enrolled at Portland State, Architecture program, it Starts in the fall.”
“Really?”
“Really. I told the Frost Industries board I’m stepping back to pursue education. They weren’t thrilled, but they’ll survive. Marcus is helping transition my responsibilities.”
“How does it feel?”
“Terrifying And right.” He glanced at her. “What about you? Any decisions?”
“I applied to the culinary program at Le Cordon Bleu, The Portland campus. I should hear back next week.”
“That’s amazing.”
“If I get in.”
“You’ll get in.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you. You’ll get in.”
He was right. The acceptance letter came five days later.
Ariella stared at it, barely believing. “I’m going to culinary school.”
“You’re going to culinary school!”
They celebrated with Claire and Lily over a simple dinner at the bakery, champagne for the adults, cider for Lily. Nothing extravagant, Just family marking a moment that mattered.
“I’m proud of you,” Claire said, pulling Ariella aside. “Not just for getting in, but for choosing something for yourself. For letting yourself want something.”
“I learned from you.”
“No, baby. This is all you.”
In June, they finally moved out of the mansion.
Not completely it was still technically Aiden’s house, still held memories of his parents. But they got an apartment in the Pearl District. Small, affordable, theirs.
“It’s tiny,” Lily said, helping them move boxes.
“It’s perfect,” Ariella corrected.
Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen barely big enough for both of them to stand in. After the mansion’s excessive space, it felt like freedom.
They furnished it slowly, A couch from Ikea. A table from a thrift store, Mismatched dishes and secondhand books and plants Ariella would probably kill but wanted to try keeping alive anyway.
It looked nothing like the magazine-perfect mansion. It looked like home.
Their first night there, lying on a mattress on the floor because their bed frame hadn’t been delivered yet, Aiden said: “Is this okay? Are you okay with…” He gestured around. “This?”
“This is the best thing that’s happened to me in years.”
“Really?”
“Really. No armed guards. No bulletproof glass. No performing for cameras. Just us in our messy apartment with our questionable furniture choices.”
“The couch was a good choice.”
“The couch is orange.”
“It’s coral.”
“It’s orange and you know it.”
He kissed her, laughing. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Even with the orange couch?”
“Especially with the orange couch.”
July brought the first session of extended family therapy.
Claire, Ariella, Aiden, and Lily all four of them, sitting in a room with a therapist named Dr. Sarah Martinez who specialized in trauma and grief.
“I want to start by acknowledging what you’ve all been through,” she said. “The losses you’ve experienced. The battles you’ve fought. And the fact that you’re here, together, trying to heal, that takes courage.”
“Or desperation,” Lily muttered.
“Sometimes they’re the same thing.”
They spent an hour talking about what healing might look like. About processing grief without letting it consume them. About building new family dynamics that weren’t based on crisis.
“You’ve all been in survival mode for so long,” Dr. Martinez observed. “The challenge now is learning to do more than survive. Learning to actually live.”
“How do we do that?” Claire asked.
“Slowly. Carefully. With lots of mistakes and grace for those mistakes.” She looked at each of them. “And by being honest about what you need. Not what you think others need from you, but what you actually need.”
It was harder than it sounded.
Ariella was used to being strong for everyone. Used to carrying weight so others didn’t have to. Learning to say “I’m struggling” or “I need help” felt like admitting failure.
But in that room, with Dr. Martinez gently pushing and her family listening, she tried.
“I’m scared,” she admitted during their third session. “That I don’t know how to be happy. That I’ve spent so long being traumatized that peace feels wrong somehow.”
“That’s normal,” Dr. Martinez said. “Your nervous system has been in fight-or-flight for over a year. It doesn’t know how to rest yet. But it can learn.”
“How long does that take?”
“Longer than you’d like. Shorter than you fear. It’s different for everyone.”
Aiden spoke up. “I dream about my dad sometimes. Not nightmares exactly, just—conversations we never got to have. Questions I never got to ask. And I wake up angry at him all over again for dying before I could understand him.”
“Grief for complicated people is complicated,” Dr. Martinez said. “You can miss someone and be angry at them simultaneously. Both feelings are valid.”
“Even when it feels like I’m going crazy?”
“Even then.”
Lily was quieter than usual. When Dr. Martinez asked what she needed, she shrugged. “I just want things to be normal. I want to go to school and complain about homework and have friends who don’t know about any of this. Is that selfish?”
“That’s human,” Dr. Martinez said. “You’re fifteen. You deserve to be a kid.”
“I don’t feel like a kid anymore.”
“I know. But you can reclaim that. It won’t be the same innocence you had before, but you can find new ways to be young.”
They left each session exhausted but lighter. Like they were slowly unpacking weight they’d been carrying without realizing.