Free Web NovelChapter 373: Trapped In A Marriage She Never Chose
The important documents were secured. Gio had taken what he needed from their father’s study—contracts, property deeds, legal records that would require review—and packed them carefully into the car. Franz had finished checking the last of Ysabella’s studio, sealing the journals in a box that he handled with more care than any of the other items. They were heavy. Not in weight, but in what they carried.
Fourteen years of a woman’s private thoughts, and the woman who should read them wasn’t ready to open a single page.
Arianne hadn’t returned to the studio.
She had stayed in the sitting room with the twins since leaving, her composure carefully reassembled. When Franz passed the doorway, he saw her on the couch beside Lily, looking through one of the old photo albums. Her face was calm. Her voice was steady. She was answering Lily’s questions about the people in the pictures with the same patient neutrality she brought to everything. Anyone who didn’t know her would have thought she was fine.
Franz knew her. She wasn’t fine. But she was holding herself together, and he understood that pushing her before she was ready would only make her retreat further.
Gio appeared in the sitting room doorway, a stack of folders under his arm.
"I’ve got what I need from the study. I’ll need to come back with someone to retrieve the rest. Some of the furniture is too heavy to move alone, and the documents I couldn’t carry will need to be boxed."
Arianne looked up from the album. "Bring someone. Secure it properly. I don’t want anything damaged in transit."
"I’ll handle it."
"Thank you."
Gio nodded once and turned to leave. There was no need for further discussion. He would manage the logistics, as he always did, and Arianne would not have to think about it again until the boxes arrived at the guest house.
The drive home was quiet. The twins chattered in the backseat about the photo albums—Lily had found a picture of Arianne at age seven holding a trophy, and she wanted to know what the trophy was for and if she could get one too and if Leo could get one as well so they would match. Leo typed occasional questions on his tablet, and Franz answered them when he could. Arianne sat in the passenger seat, her hand on her belly, her eyes on the window. The autumn landscape slid past in shades of gold and brown. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.
When they arrived at the estate, she excused herself almost immediately.
"I need to rest," she said. "It’s been a long day."
Franz watched her climb the stairs, her back straight, her steps even. The same controlled composure she had worn all afternoon. He didn’t try to stop her. He knew she needed space to process what she had found in that studio—the photographs, the milestones, the image of her mother holding her as a child. The journals that were now sitting in a box in the foyer, waiting.
Lily tugged at his sleeve. "Is Mommy Aria okay? She looks sad."
"She’s tired," Franz said. "It was a long day. She just needs to rest."
"Was it because of the pictures? Of her mommy?"
"Partly."
"I don’t have a lot of pictures with my mommy either," Lily said. "But I have some. Grandma Jess gave them to us. Leo and I look at them sometimes. It makes us sad but also a little bit happy. Because we remember them."
Franz knelt to her level. "That’s a good way to put it. Sad but a little bit happy."
Lily nodded, satisfied that she had explained something important. She took Leo’s hand and pulled him toward the sitting room, already talking about the trophy Arianne had won and whether trophies came in different sizes. Leo typed something in response, and their voices faded down the hallway.
Aunt Estella was in the kitchen, putting away the small box of photographs they had brought back from the estate—the snapshots from Ysabella’s studio, the ones Arianne had looked at and then set aside. She glanced up when Franz entered, and something in his expression made her pause.
"What happened?" she asked. "What did you find in that room?"
Franz sat down at the kitchen table. The weight of the day settled over him, and he realized he hadn’t stopped moving since they arrived at the estate that morning.
"We found her mother’s studio. The room her mother kept locked. Arianne said she had never been inside before today."
Aunt Estella’s hands stilled on the box. "She went inside?"
"Yes."
"And?"
He told her everything. The instruments. The canvases. The photographs—baby pictures, school pictures, every milestone Arianne had reached, preserved in secret by a woman who had never held her in waking life. The picture on the desk: Ysabella holding a sleeping Arianne, her face soft, her expression tender. Arianne’s tears. The way she had broken down, surprised by her own grief.
"We found her journals too," Franz said. "Fourteen volumes. They start the year Arianne was born. But she’s not ready to read them. She left the room before she could open any of them."
Aunt Estella was quiet for a long moment. Then she sighed—a deep, weary sound that seemed to carry decades of sorrow.
"I knew Miss Ysabella loved her. I always knew. But ever since she married Gabriel—ever since she heard what happened to Arianna Brennan after the wedding—her mind was never the same. She believed she had ruined another woman’s life by marrying him. She carried that guilt for the rest of her years."
"Arianne told me about Arianna. About the suicide."
"Miss Ysabella didn’t know Arianna. She had never met her. But when she heard that a woman had taken her own life because of the marriage, because Gabriel had been forced to abandon her—" Aunt Estella shook her head. "Miss Ysabella was a gentle soul. She was raised to be a wife, to be ornamental, to smile at parties and make connections for the family. She wasn’t prepared for a husband who resented her. She wasn’t prepared for the guilt of being the reason another woman died. It broke something in her. Something that never healed."
"Did she ask for a divorce?" Franz asked.
"She begged him. For years. There was no love between them—there never had been. She would rather have been divorced, disgraced, stripped of her status, than continue to be humiliated by him. The mistresses. The illegitimate children. Every affair was a public reminder that he had never wanted her. She wanted to take Arianne and leave. Start over somewhere new. But Gabriel refused."
"Did Arianne know?"
"She probably knew some of it. She was young, but she was perceptive. She saw the way her father treated her mother. She heard the fights. She knew her parents didn’t love each other. But she never knew the full story. And Miss Ysabella never told her." Aunt Estella’s voice was heavy. "Gabriel blamed the Conways and the Summers family for Arianna’s death. He blamed everyone except himself. He refused to see that Miss Ysabella was as much a victim of the circumstances as Arianna was. Trapped in a marriage she never chose, to a man who never loved her, raising a child who carried another woman’s name."
Franz thought about the photograph on the desk. Ysabella, holding her sleeping daughter, her face soft and peaceful. A moment Arianne didn’t remember. A moment that had been hidden in a locked room for decades.
"The journals," he said. "Arianne asked me why her mother kept her distance. Why the coldness. She said if Ysabella cared enough to keep those photographs, why couldn’t she show it?"
"The journals may hold the answer to that question. Miss Ysabella was not good with words—not spoken words. She couldn’t tell Arianne how she felt. But she could write. She had always been a writer. If she left fourteen volumes behind, then she left fourteen years of explanations." freёweɓnovel.com
"Arianne isn’t ready."
"No. She’s not. But when she is—" Estella looked toward the stairs, toward the room where Arianne was lying down. "When she’s ready, those journals will give her what she’s been searching for her entire life. An answer to the question that has haunted her since she was a child."
"Why didn’t you tell her?" Franz asked. "All these years. You knew Ysabella loved her. You knew about the divorce. You knew everything. Why didn’t you tell Arianne the truth?"
Aunt Estella’s expression was sad, but steady. "Because it wasn’t my truth to tell. Miss Ysabella was my friend. I loved her. And I loved Arianne. But the story of their relationship—the distance between them, the silence—that belonged to them. Not to me. I couldn’t explain Miss Ysabella to her daughter. I could only be there for Arianne when she needed me. And hope that one day, she would find the answers on her own."
Franz nodded slowly. "She found them today. She’s just not ready to look at them yet."
"She will be. Give her time."
The kitchen was quiet. Outside, the autumn evening was settling over the estate, the light fading to gold. Upstairs, Arianne was lying in their bed, her hand on her belly, staring at the ceiling. The box of journals sat in the foyer, unopened. Fourteen volumes of her mother’s thoughts. Fourteen years of words that might finally explain the distance. Fourteen chances to understand the woman who had kept photographs in a locked room and never learned how to say I love you.
Franz would wait. He had been waiting for Arianne his entire life. He could wait a little longer.
