Forgiveness, Trust & Forever

Emily

The flat had never been ugly.
That was part of the problem.
Ugly would have been easier.
Ugly could be stripped.
Painted.
Replaced.
Turned into something else with enough dust sheets and stubbornness.
But the flat above Clara-Bellas was beautiful because we had made it beautiful before we knew how many ways beautiful things could hurt.
Hero and I had not bought it like normal teenagers with student loans, second-hand sofas, and optimism held together by supermarket pasta.
We had bought it with trust funds, family money, lawyers, and the sort of confidence that came from growing up around people who discussed property like other people discussed takeaway.
We were young.
Spoilt, probably.
Certain, definitely.
We had been meant to start university together and live above the studio like it was our own private world. Hero had acting work and inheritance. I had dance, Clara-Bellas, and a family who had always made sure money was never the thing that stopped me.
Money had not saved us from anything important.
It had bought polished floors.
Custom cabinetry.
Soft lighting.
Linen curtains.
A kitchen with marble counters I had chosen because I thought adulthood meant knowing the difference between three shades of white.
It had bought a beautiful flat.
It had not bought us courage.
Or timing.
Or the ability to survive grief without cutting each other open.
Now, after police, security, lockdown, and Ava, the flat looked almost the same.
That was what hurt.
The living room was still elegant.
The sofa still deep and pale and stupidly expensive.
The curtains still hung perfectly against the tall windows.
The kitchen still looked like the kind of kitchen people photographed for interiors magazines, even though Eleanora had recently smeared banana across one cabinet and called it "art" with her whole chest.
The bedroom was still calm.
The hallway still had framed black-and-white photographs from our early years, though half had been turned face down on the console while I decided whether memories were allowed back on walls.
The nursery was the only room that had changed enough to admit something had happened.
The patched wall had been painted buttery yellow.
Not because the old room was cheap or unfinished.
Because it had been watched.
Because Ava had made the soft green walls feel stolen.
Because I needed one wall to say mine.
Ours.
Boo's.
Hero had called it the sun wall.
I had called him disgusting.
Then kissed him in front of it.
Briefly.
Carefully.
Not enough.
Too much.
Both.
Lockdown had turned the flat into a strange kind of island.
The world outside stayed restricted.
Rules changed slowly.
Outside spaces first.
Distance.
No indoor mixing.
No ordinary.
Inside, we had everything money could buy and still had to learn how to live like people who had not just been placed in expensive rooms but belonged in them.
That was harder.
Hero stood by the living room window with Eleanora balanced on his hip, both of them looking down at the quiet street below.
She had one hand pressed to the glass.
He had one hand lightly around her waist.
Careful.
Always careful now.
"Car," Eleanora announced.
"That is a van," Hero said.
"Car."
"Fair."
"Da car."
"I do have a car."
"Boo car."
"You do not have a car."
"Boo car."
"She's manifesting," I said from the sofa.
Hero looked over his shoulder.
"She gets that from your side."
I raised an eyebrow.
"My side manifests taste. Your side manifests chaos."
"My side owns the chaos."
"Unfortunately, so does mine."
He smiled.
Not the public smile.
Not the actor one.
The home one.
The one that made me want to look away and go closer at the same time.
Eleanora slapped the glass.
"Out."
Hero and I both went still.
One small word.
Huge.
Out.
The world was starting to open, and our daughter had noticed before either of us had decided whether we were ready.
"Not yet, Boo," Hero said gently.
Eleanora frowned.
"Out."
"Soon."
"Now."
I laughed before I could stop it.
Hero looked at me.
"She has your patience."
"She has your sense of entitlement."
He gasped.
"I am humble."
"You once asked a hotel to change the lighting in the lobby because it made you look tired."
"I was tired."
"You were seventeen."
"Seventeen-year-olds can suffer."
"Rich seventeen-year-olds suffer dramatically."
He grinned.
That was another thing we had started doing.
Saying it.
Naming the ridiculous privilege that had cushioned our lives and still failed to protect us from the things that mattered.
We had both come from money.
Different kinds.
Mine quieter, steadier, tied up in family property, private lessons, trust funds, Melinda's careful planning, Dad's investments, my mother sending expensive guilt from America.
Hero's louder, older, tangled with industry, family names, inheritance, and the strange reality of being known before he was ready to be understood.
We had never been poor.
We had been broken anyway.
That had taken me longer than it should have to accept.
Pain did not become less real because the curtains were expensive.
Trauma did not politely leave because the kitchen counters were marble.
Motherhood did not arrive easier because the cot had been handmade and delivered by men wearing gloves.
Eleanora had still come ten weeks early.
I had still not gone to NICU.
Hero had still stood there every day.
Ava had still found a way in.
The nursery had still become a crime scene.
And yet.
The money mattered too.
It meant security.
Lawyers.
A safe house.
A studio we could close without losing everything overnight.
A flat we could return to and make safer with a phone call.
It meant our fresh start had doors other people never got.
I hated that.
I was grateful for it.
Both.
Always both.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table.
I looked at it.
Did not flinch this time.
Progress.
Jen.
Hero glanced over.
"Speaker?"
I nodded.
Secrets hated daylight.
I answered.
"Please be boring."
"I have good news and structured emotional inconvenience."
I closed my eyes.
"Jen."
"That is the gentlest version."
Hero came over and sat beside me with Eleanora on his lap. Our daughter immediately tried to steal the phone.
"No, tiny solicitor," Jen said through the speaker.
Eleanora froze.
Then shouted, "No!"
Hero looked delighted.
"She likes you."
"She respects power."
I took the phone slightly out of reach.
"Good news first."
"Ava has entered pleas on the main surveillance and malicious communications charges."
The room went quiet.
Hero's hand found mine.
I let it.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"It means no full trial on the worst of the private evidence. Some matters will still be heard for sentencing and restrictions, but the nursery photographs, the hospital box material, and the unlawfully obtained images should not need to be picked apart publicly."
My breath left me slowly.
Not relief.
Not fully.
Something like being allowed to put down a bag I had forgotten I was carrying.
Hero's fingers tightened.
Eleanora leaned against his chest, suddenly still, as if she understood tone even when words meant nothing.
"Okay," I whispered.
"Yes," Jen said. "Okay."
"What are the restrictions?"
"Restraining order terms are being finalised. No contact with you, Hero, Eleanora, Hero's family, your father, Melinda, Teddy, Sammy, Mimi, Jo, Hayden, anyone connected to Clara-Bellas, or any distribution of materials. Digital surrender and monitoring conditions are requested. Sentencing will confirm the rest."
Hero's jaw tightened at the list.
So many names.
So many people Ava had pulled into her private theatre.
"And Jo?" he asked.
"The studio has severed ties with Jo's manager. Jo remains represented separately. She has provided a statement accepting she shared private information and participated in misleading publicity discussions, though she continues to describe herself as manipulated."
I laughed once.
Flat.
"Of course she does."
"Her letter to you remains with me," Jen said. "Unread. Untouched. Waiting."
"I don't want it."
"Then it waits."
"Maybe forever."
"Then forever can have filing."
Hero almost smiled.
I did too, despite myself.
"And Hayden?"
"Bail conditions remain. He is cooperating where it benefits him and pretending that counts as moral growth."
"Sounds like Hayden."
"Indeed."
Eleanora reached for my hand.
"Mmm."
I looked down.
She lifted my fingers to her cheek, then pointed at the window.
"Out."
The timing was cruel.
Or perfect.
Jen heard her.
"Is that Eleanora?"
"Yes," Hero said. "She wants out."
"So does the rest of the country."
I looked at the window.
The street.
The small slice of world beyond our perfect, locked, too-safe flat.
"What does the law say?" I asked.
"Outdoor meetings are expanding, carefully. Distanced, limited numbers, no indoor visits. You can see family outside if you follow rules."
Hero's eyes met mine.
Family.
Both sides.
All the people waiting at the edge of our healing, trying not to push.
Trying, mostly.
Titan existed, so mostly was generous.
Jen continued. "Given Ava's pleas and the protective order direction, security risk is lower but not gone. Outdoor meetings are manageable. Press interest has cooled but not vanished. No public locations announced in advance. No social posts. No photos of Eleanora."
"No photos," I repeated.
That had become law.
Not legal law.
Ours.
Eleanora could have a childhood that existed without becoming content, evidence, or leverage.
Even if we had to be ruthless to give it to her.
"Structured emotional inconvenience?" Hero asked.
"Mimi's letter has arrived."
My body tightened.
There it was.
The sister-shaped door.
I had known it was coming.
Still, my lungs forgot how to work.
Hero's thumb moved once over mine.
Jen said, "I have not read it in full. Only checked there are no attachments or immediate safeguarding concerns. She wrote it by hand."
Of course she did.
Mimi had always loved drama with stationery.
"What does she want?" I asked.
"She says no response is expected. She says she will meet outside, distanced, whenever you are ready. Or never, if never is what you need."
My throat tightened.
Never.
I had wanted never.
I had used never like a wall.
But the story was running out of walls.
Not because anyone told me to forgive.
Because holding every door shut had started to feel less like protection and more like living in a house with no air.
"I'll read it," I said.
Hero's head turned.
Jen paused.
"Today?"
"No."
There was a tiny silence.
Then Jen said, "Good."
"I'm becoming reasonable. It's disgusting."
"It was bound to happen eventually."
"I disagree."
"Noted."
I looked at Eleanora.
At her little hand on mine.
At Hero's hand over my other one.
"Send it with Anna when she comes by."
"Anna is not your emotional postwoman."
"Anna enjoys controlled chaos."
"She does."
"She can put it in the letter tray by the studio door. I'll decide when to open it."
"I'll arrange it."
Hero looked at me.
Not proud in the loud way.
Just warm.
Steady.
I squeezed his hand before he could say anything.
Jen gave final practical updates, threatened Hero about interviews, threatened me about doomscrolling, then hung up.
The room felt larger afterwards.
Ava pleading did not undo anything.
It did not make the camera less real.
It did not give me NICU back.
It did not erase the photographs, the court, the birth certificate, or the folder Jen refused to name.
But it moved something.
A door closing.
Not slammed.
Legally fitted with locks.
I would take it.
Eleanora wriggled off Hero's lap and toddled to the window again.
"Out."
Hero looked at me.
"She's persistent."
"She's bored."
"She's one."
"She's lived through more lockdown than outdoor life."
My voice caught slightly.
That was true.
Her world had been rooms.
Safe house.
Flat.
Studio.
Car.
Screens.
Arms.
Fear.
Love, yes.
But love inside walls.
The world was opening.
Maybe she needed to feel grass without everyone behaving like the sky might fall.
Maybe I did too.
I picked up my phone and opened Dad's thread.
Then stopped.
Hero waited.
No question.
I typed before fear could turn the words into a committee.
Outdoor visit this weekend? Somewhere quiet. Distanced. You, Melinda, Teddy and Sammy. No photos. One hour. Then decide.
I stared at it.
Sent.
My stomach dropped.
Hero smiled faintly.
"One hour."
"Then decide."
"Our emotional business model."
"Terrible branding."
Dad replied in under a minute.
Yes. Whatever you need. Boys will be told rules. Melinda says bridge, not push. Dad x
I cried.
Annoyingly.
Hero's hand touched my knee.
"Good cry?"
"No."
"Bad cry?"
"No."
"Both?"
"Obviously."
Eleanora slapped the window.
"Out!"
I wiped my face.
"Fine. We're going out."
Hero's eyebrows rose.
"Now?"
"No. This weekend. Controlled. Planned. Sensible."
Eleanora shouted, "Now!"
Hero grinned.
"She disagrees with sensible."
"She would. She's yours."
"Ours."
The word landed softly.
I looked at him.
"Ours," I said.
He smiled.
I leaned forward and kissed him.
Not long.
Not hidden.
Not pretending it was accidental.
Just because I wanted to.
Eleanora watched us.
Frowned.
Then shouted, "No!"
Hero pulled back laughing.
"Judged by our child."
"She has standards."
"Clearly inherited from you."
"Correct."
That weekend, we met my family at Anton Lakes.
Not a dramatic place.
That helped.
Water.
Paths.
Ducks.
Benches.
Enough space to stand apart.
Enough normal people around that we did not feel staged.
Security stayed back, plain-clothed and bored-looking, which was the best version of security.
The sky was pale.
The air smelled of damp grass.
People moved carefully around each other, still learning the choreography of distance.
Dad and Melinda arrived first.
Of course they did.
Dad stood beside the path, hands in his coat pockets, trying to look relaxed and failing because he had raised me and I knew every version of his not-relaxed.
Melinda stood slightly behind him with Teddy and Sammy, one hand resting lightly on each boy's shoulder.
Not holding them back.
Reminding them.
Bridge, not push.
Teddy held a small packet of baby biscuits.
Sammy held a plastic dinosaur with one missing arm.
Eleanora saw them before I was ready.
"Rawr!"
Sammy's face lit up.
"She remembered!"
"She remembers dinosaurs better than relatives," Hero said quietly.
I elbowed him.
"Not helping."
"Emotionally accurate."
Dad's eyes went straight to me.
Not Eleanora.
Me.
That still undid me.
For so long, I had been furious that everyone had looked at the baby first.
At risk first.
At evidence first.
Dad looked at me now, like he was reminding both of us that he had loved me before there was anyone to protect from me.
"Hi, Em."
"Hi, Dad."
Melinda's eyes were already wet.
I pointed at her.
"No."
She laughed through it.
"I haven't said anything."
"You're thinking loudly."
"I am."
"Stop."
"I'll try."
Teddy leaned around Dad's leg.
"Can Boo have a biscuit?"
Eleanora heard her name and immediately tried to walk directly into a puddle.
Hero caught the back of her coat before she could baptise herself in mud.
"Boo no."
Eleanora looked offended.
"Boo go."
"Boo stay dry," I said.
"Boo no."
"Advanced argument," Dad murmured.
I glanced at him.
His mouth twitched.
There he was.
My dad.
Not the court man.
Not the man who had carried my daughter to Hero while I disappeared into the worst of myself.
My dad, who once told my dance teacher that "constructive criticism" was not the same thing as making a twelve-year-old cry in a changing room.
The ache in my chest shifted.
Not gone.
Different.
Teddy held out the biscuit packet but stopped himself from coming closer.
Good boy.
Rules remembered.
I crouched with Eleanora.
"Do you want a biscuit from Teddy?"
Eleanora looked at Teddy.
Then the biscuits.
Then Teddy.
"Bick."
Teddy gasped.
"She said biscuit."
"She said bick," Sammy corrected.
"That counts," Teddy said firmly.
I smiled.
"It does."
Teddy placed one biscuit on the bench between us, then stepped back.
Eleanora toddled forward, picked it up, and shoved half into her mouth with absolutely no dignity.
Melinda laughed softly.
Then covered her mouth like she had done something wrong.
I looked at her.
"You can laugh."
Her eyes filled.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"No."
A laugh escaped me.
Small.
Unsteady.
Real.
Dad watched us.
Pain and hope moving across his face like weather.
Sammy lifted the dinosaur.
"This is Stompy. He has one arm because Teddy stood on him."
"I said sorry," Teddy snapped.
"You said sorry to Mum, not Stompy."
"Stompy is plastic."
"Rude."
Hero whispered, "I like them."
I looked at him.
"They are chaos."
"Yes."
"You like chaos."
"I love chaos."
His eyes stayed on mine after he said it.
Too long.
Enough.
I looked away first, but smiling.
Dad absolutely noticed.
Melinda noticed too.
Neither said anything.
Bless them.
Eleanora finished the biscuit and immediately said, "More."
Teddy looked at me.
I shook my head.
"Later."
Eleanora frowned.
"No."
Dad laughed.
Then stopped himself.
I looked at him.
"What?"
"She sounds like you."
I should have flinched.
I did, a little.
Then I looked at my daughter.
At her biscuit crumbs.
Her stubborn chin.
Her fierce little frown.
"Good," I said.
Dad's face changed.
As if that one word had given him something back.
Good.
Maybe I did not have to hate every part of myself she inherited.
Maybe some parts were worth giving her.
We walked slowly around the lake.
Not too close.
Not too far.
Hero carried Eleanora when she got tired, then set her down when she demanded "walk."
Dad kept pace beside me.
Melinda stayed with the boys a few steps ahead, deliberately giving us space.
I knew.
I loved her for it.
I was still angry.
Both.
Dad cleared his throat.
"I want to say something."
I groaned.
He smiled faintly.
"That sounded exactly like you at fifteen."
"It's how I feel now."
"I'll be brief."
"You never are."
"Fair."
He looked out across the water.
"I have replayed that day more times than I can count."
I knew which day.
Not Ava.
Not court.
The day I left Eleanora with him.
The day he waited.
Then stopped waiting.
The day he took her to Hero.
My hands went cold.
Hero was ahead of us now, showing Eleanora ducks from a safe distance while Sammy tried to explain Stompy's tragic backstory to him.
"I used to tell myself I had no choice," Dad said.
My throat tightened.
"Did you?"
"No." He looked at me. "I had choices. All of them were awful."
That was new.
I turned to him.
His face was pale but steady.
"I chose the one that kept Nora safest. I still believe that."
"I know."
"But I let that choice become the only thing I said to you for too long."
My eyes burned.
"Dad-"
"No. Please." His voice cracked. "I called Hero. I hid out with her. I watched Melinda feed her and cry because you weren't answering. I watched those boys whisper because they knew something was wrong. I watched Hero arrive looking like someone had ripped his lungs out. And I turned all of that into certainty because certainty was easier than grief."
I swallowed hard.
He stopped walking.
So did I.
A few feet ahead, Eleanora shouted, "Duck!"
Hero gasped theatrically.
"Yes, baby. Duck."
Dad smiled through tears at the sound.
Then looked back at me.
"You were not safe to make decisions for her that day."
The sentence hurt.
It also did not destroy me.
Not anymore.
"No," I whispered.
"But you were still my daughter."
My face crumpled.
"And I should have found a way to tell you I was protecting her without making you feel abandoned by me."
A tear fell down my cheek.
"Maybe I wouldn't have heard it."
"Maybe not."
"I hated you."
"I know."
"I still did until recently."
His eyes filled.
"I know."
"You were right."
His face twisted.
"So were you."
I shook my head.
"No, I wasn't."
"You were right that we chose Nora in a way that left no space for you to come back without crawling."
I could not breathe.
Dad stepped half a pace closer, then stopped.
Rules.
Distance.
Respect.
It made it worse and better.
"You don't have to crawl, Em."
The sob came out before I could stop it.
Ugly.
Sharp.
Dad's hands flexed at his sides.
He wanted to hold me.
I wanted him to.
Restrictions.
Fear.
History.
Everything between us stood with its arms out.
I wiped my face.
"I don't know how to come back standing."
He nodded.
"Then we'll sit outside for a while."
A laugh broke through my tears.
Stupid.
Perfect.
Dad smiled.
"One hour," he said.
"Then decide."
I nodded.
"One hour."
He looked towards Hero.
"He loves you."
My stomach flipped.
Subtle, body.
Very subtle.
"Dad."
"I'm just saying."
"Don't."
"He always did. In a way that made me want to lock you in your room until you were thirty."
I stared at him.
"That is disturbingly honest."
"I'm growing."
"Everyone keeps doing that. It's unnerving."
Dad laughed.
Hero turned at the sound.
Eleanora on his hip.
Ducks behind him.
Sammy mid-roar.
Teddy holding the biscuit packet like treasure.
Melinda watching me carefully from a distance, tears on her face, not coming closer.
A bridge.
Not a push.
I looked at my father.
Then at my family.
Both families, really.
Some by blood.
Some by love.
Some by injury.
Some by choice.
"I love him," I said quietly.
Dad's eyes softened.
"I know."
"I don't know what that becomes."
"No."
"But I want to find out without everyone deciding for us."
His face changed.
The court.
The taking sides.
The old damage.
"I won't decide for you again," he said.
I looked at him.
"You might have to decide things for Eleanora sometimes."
"Yes," he said carefully. "But I won't confuse that with owning your life."
That was enough.
For today.
We finished the walk.
Eleanora fed half a biscuit to a duck before any of us could stop her and then shouted "more duck" for twenty straight minutes.
Sammy roared at a swan and was immediately humbled by its size.
Teddy asked Hero if actors got to keep swords from films.
Hero answered with far more seriousness than the question required.
Melinda walked beside me for exactly seven minutes.
I counted.
She did not apologise until minute six.
When she did, it was quiet.
"I should have come to you after court."
I looked at her.
"You tried."
"Not hard enough."
"I wouldn't have let you in."
"I know." Her mouth trembled. "But I should have sat outside the door longer."
My throat tightened.
"I would have hated that."
"Yes."
"I would have loved it too."
Her eyes filled.
"Both?"
"Always both."
She smiled through tears.
Then looked ahead at Eleanora.
"She looks like you when she frowns."
"Apparently that's good."
"It is."
I looked at her.
Melinda's face was open.
Not careful now.
Honest.
"You were always strong," she said. "But sometimes we praised that so much we forgot strong people still need someone to carry the bag."
My eyes burned again.
"Melinda."
"I'm sorry I made love feel conditional."
There it was.
The text turned into voice.
I breathed in.
Out.
"I'm not ready to say it's okay."
"I know."
"But I heard you."
She nodded.
"That's enough."
It was not enough.
Not forever.
But today?
Yes.
On the drive home, Eleanora fell asleep clutching Stompy the one-armed dinosaur, the bee blanket tucked over her knees.
Hero and I sat in the back with her between us.
My hand lay on the seat.
Open.
After a moment, his covered it.
Warm.
Steady.
I looked at him.
He looked back.
No performance.
No pressure.
"I told Dad I love you," I said.
His eyes widened.
"You did?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
"That's all you've got?"
"I'm trying not to be unbearable."
"You're failing silently."
"Catastrophically?"
"Always."
His thumb moved over mine.
"And?"
"And he knows."
Hero swallowed.
"Good?"
"Yes."
"Bad?"
"Yes."
"Both?"
I smiled.
"Our word."
He smiled too.
At home, the flat greeted us with filtered afternoon light through linen curtains we had chosen years ago, not new ones, not fresh-start props, but ours from the beginning.
That mattered.
We did not need to replace everything to prove we had changed.
Some things could stay.
Some beautiful things had survived.
The sofa.
The curtains.
The kitchen.
The polished floor.
The flat we had bought when we were young and rich and reckless enough to believe love just needed somewhere pretty to live.
Now it had something better.
Rules.
Truth.
A baby sleeping in the nursery under a yellow wall.
A letter from Mimi waiting in the studio tray.
A legal case moving towards closure.
Family allowed back in through outdoor air.
A man standing beside me in the living room, holding my hand like it was both precious and ordinary.
I looked around.
"It doesn't look different enough," I said.
Hero's hand tightened.
"Does it need to?"
I thought about that.
Ava had been here.
Grief had been here.
My worst days had been here.
But so had Eleanora's first "Bellas."
Hero dropping keys down a drain.
Brandon laughing at our terrible property skills.
My dad leaving notes.
Melinda sending cardigans.
The yellow blanket coming home.
The first careful kiss after the world collapsed.
Maybe fresh starts did not always need new furniture.
Maybe sometimes they needed the same beautiful room and different people standing inside it.
"No," I said softly.
"Not everywhere."
Hero looked at me.
I stepped closer.
He met me halfway.
Always halfway now.
I kissed him in the living room we had chosen years ago.
Not to fix anything.
Not to prove anything.
Because I loved him.
Because Eleanora slept.
Because the world outside was opening.
Because the story of us was finally becoming something we were writing ourselves.
When I pulled back, Hero rested his forehead against mine.
"I love you," he whispered.
"I love you too."
The words still scared me.
But they no longer felt like a trap.
From the nursery came a sleepy murmur.
"Boo home."
Hero closed his eyes.
I laughed, quietly, tears already there.
"Yes," I whispered.
"Boo's home."
And for the first time, I believed the rest of us might be too.