The housekeeper, Mrs. Harper, an elderly woman with kind eyes and a soft voice, immediately took a liking to Clara and Noah.
“Oh, Leo used to run through these halls with jam on his face,” she laughed one morning, placing porridge on the table. “This house hasn’t heard that kind of laughter in years.”
Noah began to feel at home. He recovered quickly, enjoyed exploring the estate, and even helped Mrs. Harper in the kitchen.
But Clara was uneasy.
“This place… it’s beautiful, but it doesn’t feel like mine,” she confessed to Richard.
“It doesn’t have to,” he replied. “It’s Noah’s. And yours. If you want it.”
“I’m just not used to marble floors and oil paintings,” she said with a half-smile.
Richard laughed gently. “Neither was I, once.”
They were growing closer—slowly, cautiously. One snowy evening, Clara found Richard sitting alone in the hallway, staring at an old photo of Leo.
“He was seventeen here,” Richard murmured. “Top of his class. I was on a call, even in that moment.”
“You were always working?” Clara asked.
He nodded. “I thought I was building a future for him. But I missed the present.”
Clara looked at the photo of young Leo, smiling with a diploma in hand, and said softly, “You’re doing better with Noah.”
He looked at her, and for the first time, reached for her hand.
“I want to do right by him. And by you, too.”
Clara didn’t pull away.
“I’m still afraid,” she whispered.
“I know,” Richard said. “But I won’t let go.”
