Page 73 of Her Holiday Arrangement
The staff car waited in the driveway, engine purring softly against the stillness of the night. Snow drifted from the sky, slow and delicate, settling over the Hale estate like a picture-perfectholiday card. It should have been beautiful. It should have felt magical. But to Riley, it felt like a funeral.
She pulled her coat tighter, suitcase wheels crunching softly over the shoveled path. The air was sharp in her lungs, the cold biting her cheeks, but she welcomed it. Pain she could feel on the outside was easier than the kind tearing her apart inside.
The driver, a kind-faced man who’d greeted her when she arrived, took her bag without a word. He seemed to sense she didn’t want conversation.
As Riley reached for the car door handle, something made her pause. A prickle on the back of her neck, a weight in the air. She turned slightly and saw her.
Elizabeth stood at the edge of the steps, arms wrapped around herself, snow dusting her hair and the shoulders of her dark coat. She looked impossibly regal and heartbreakingly fragile all at once, like a statue on the verge of crumbling.
Their eyes met across the white stretch of driveway. For a moment, time stalled. Riley’s breath caught in her chest.
All she wanted was for Elizabeth to say something. Anything.Stay. I’m sorry. Don’t go.The words hovered in the frozen air, so close she could almost hear them.
But Elizabeth didn’t move. She just stood there, silent, watching.
Riley’s throat burned. The ache in her chest swelled until she thought it might swallow her whole. She gripped the car door tighter, grounding herself against the urge to run back up those steps.
Because she would, if Elizabeth asked. Even now, even after everything. And Elizabeth knew it.
But she didn’t ask.
Riley opened the door, slid into the backseat, and kept her eyes forward. The leather was cold against her legs. The driver shut the trunk, then the door, sealing her inside.
As the car eased down the long, winding drive, Riley’s gaze flickered to the window despite herself. Elizabeth was still there, dark against the snow, motionless as a shadow.
Riley forced herself to turn away.
She didn’t look back again.
The silence between them was louder than any shouting, sharper than any fight. It was final, absolute. The kind of silence that meant the bridge had burned, and all that was left was ash.
Riley leaned her head against the window, eyes stinging. The estate grew smaller behind her, swallowed by the trees and the falling snow.
In that silence, she understood: it wasn’t the pretending that had hurt. It was realizing Elizabeth had never been pretending at all and still chose to let her go.
14
December 25th - Elizabeth
The silence was the first thing Elizabeth noticed. A silence so complete, it pressed into her chest and made it hard to breathe.
Her eyes blinked open to the pale light of Christmas morning, the snow-muted glow that seeped through the heavy velvet curtains of her childhood bedroom. She reached out instinctively, only to find the other half of the bed cold.
Empty.
Elizabeth sat up slowly, the duvet pooling around her waist, her pulse pounding in her ears. The air still carried the faint scent of Riley’s shampoo, something floral and clean, stubbornly clinging to the pillow. For a disorienting second, she let herself believe Riley had simply woken early, gone to get coffee, or was laughing downstairs with the staff.
But then her gaze fell to the pillow beside her.
The note was still there.
Her hand trembled as she picked it up again, even though she’d read it a dozen times already. The words blurred before her eyes, stark against the thick white card.
I loved pretending. Because it didn’t feel like pretending to me.
She pressed the card to her lips, shutting her eyes. The words repeated in her head like a song she couldn’t shake, each line cutting deeper, tearing down the walls she’d spent a lifetime building.
Downstairs, she could hear the faint echoes of her family, wrapping paper tearing, champagne corks popping, polite laughter that had never sounded emptier. Designer gifts under a ten-foot tree, polished and perfect. Everything her parents thought Christmas should be.
