Chapter 16 Felicity's Story
I was seated alone in the garden on Sunday evening, I needed air away from the walls of the mansion and the garden seemed like the perfect place to find that.
After wandering out through the back door, I ended up on one of the stone benches at the garden, getting a clear view of the fountain.
I was there for about twenty minutes before I sighted Felicity.
She probably didn't notice me sitting there, because she just sat on one of the benches.
“Good Evening Felicity.” I greeted, l”I love the pattern on your cardigan.”
A smile broke out of her lips. “Liana, I didn't see you there.”
“Indoors was starting to get boring.” I replied.
“I get it.” She laughed.
We sat in the comfortable silence that lived permanently in this house, my mind flashing back to the wedding images of Ethan and Clara I saw yesterday.
Every single blog posted the images with infuriating captions, and despite how much I tried to convince myself that I didn't care about them, I knew I was telling a lie.
And what's the worse lie other than the one you tell yourself?
“You saw the pictures didn't you?” She said softly.
I nodded slowly. “Yesterday”
She nodded, her gaze drifting off, like she was thinking about what to say next.
“The flowers were the ones I told him about.” I continued, slightly fidgeting. “I described them to him years ago, and now he got them for her.”
Felicity was quiet for a moment, then she sighed.
“Men remember more than they let you know they do.” She said finally. “The useful things and the terrible things as well, they simply do with it whatever they please.”
I looked at her.
She wasn't looking at me as usual, her gaze was fixed on the fountain, with something in her expression that I hadn't seen before.
Not sadness exactly, more like the particular stillness of someone who's made peace with something difficult.
“You were married before.”
I wasn't sure she wanted to talk about it, I just brought it out, hoping she'd be willing to talk about it.
“Twenty six years ago,” she started. “I was thirty two, which felt old at the time and feels very young right now.”
I didn't say anything, just waited for her to keep talking.
“Robert Lane.” She continued. “He was brilliant, and so charming that he could make you feel like the most important person in the room.”
“That's beautiful.” I mumbled.
“No, the problem with that kind of attention is that it moves.” She chuckled.
“So… it moved?”
“Frequently,” she said coldly. “And I found out the way most women do. I found out last, after everyone around me had already known for a considerable amount of time.”
I stared at her, the words making sense to me, how the entire public knew about it, long before me.
“His secretary.” She answered the question I hadn't asked yet. “I know it sounds cliche and it was, but cliches exist because the same terrible things that keep happening to different people.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I left.” She said flatly. “It sounded easy, but that was the hardest thing I've ever done, because I loved him genuinely. The way you love someone, to the extent of building your entire future with the idea of their presence in it.”
She chuckled. “There wasn't any time I pictured my future without him in it.”
The garden was getting darker, and the lights from the fountain came up automatically.
“Just like you, I had nothing when I left.” She continued. “The money was his, the houses, the connections, the properties everything were his.”
“All I had was a suitcase, my qualifications and a friend in Edinburgh who let me sleep on her sofa for six months.”
I thought about my two suitcases, the beige hotel room and the cab to my parents house.
"The first year was the worst,” She said, "Not because of the divorce, but because I had spent so long being his, thwt i forgot wjat it felt like to no longer be. She glanced at me. “You know that feeling right?”
"Yes." I mumbled, the words echoing through my mind.
“The second year was much better,” she continued. “I got a job at the hospital, I worked until they couldn't ignore me, and that's where it all began.” She said, a smile breaking out of her lips. “Diahtech came twelve years later, and the Lane foundation three years later.”
I looked at this woman and for the first time since everything, I felt inspired and motivated, like it wasn't almost over.
Quiet, unhurried, yet a quietly powerful woman sitting beside me in a beautifully patterned cardigan, and tried to map the distance between the person she was describing and the person sitting here.
It was enormous.
“Does the anger ever stop?”
“Eventually, it changes.” she said after a moment of silence “it stops feeling like something that is happening, but something that has happened. The day it shifts tense is the day you'll stop counting how long it has been.
I pressed my hand to my stomach without thinking.
Felicity's gaze followed my every move, and then she said. “You're going to be remarkable in spite of it.”
I didn't trust my voice right at the moment, so I didn't use it.
After more silence between us, she finally sighed. "Come inside."
"It's cold and you're pregnant and I didn't build this house for people to sit in the dark in it."
I laughed, feeling a lot more relieved, and ready for whatever tomorrow holds…