No flowers for the dead - Chapter 26: Chapter 26
You are reading No flowers for the dead, Chapter 26: Chapter 26. Read more chapters of No flowers for the dead.
They stopped measuring time by quarters or fiscal years.
Now, time was measured in firsts.
First words.
First lost tooth.
First skinned knee that had Elias more panicked than any boardroom betrayal ever had.
⸻
Elara had his eyes—dark, unreadable. But her smile? That was all Alina. Wide and open and honest, like a secret garden always in bloom.
She was growing fast.
Too fast.
Some days Alina would sit with Elias on the porch, coffee in hand, and wonder aloud where the baby had gone—this tiny, swaddled secret they once protected with their lives.
“She’s still here,” Elias always said, his voice low, reverent. “Just louder now.”
⸻
They didn’t talk much about the past anymore, but it lived with them in quiet ways.
A scar on Elias’s ribcage.
The habit Alina had of locking every door twice at night.
The unopened letters still occasionally sent to their address by people who used to matter.
But these were shadows.
And shadows couldn’t hold you unless you let them.
⸻
They hosted their first dinner party one spring, a small thing. No billionaires. No barons. Just neighbors and friends—artists, schoolteachers, a florist from two blocks over who brought a lemon tart that made Alina cry from joy.
“Who are we?” Elias murmured that night, brushing his hand over her hip as they watched Elara fall asleep in the lap of an old painter with a voice like gravel.
“Happy,” she replied simply. “That’s all.”
⸻
Occasionally, someone from the outside would recognize Elias.
A flash of memory. A whispered name.
But he never corrected them. Never confirmed, never denied.
He was no longer the heir of steel.
He was the man who carved toy boxes by hand. The father who showed up to every parent meeting. The husband who kissed his wife’s shoulder before she even opened her eyes.
⸻
Alina’s novels had started to gain quiet traction. She refused big interviews, gave readings only in small rooms. But her stories—stories of girls who burned down legacies for love, of boys who carried softness like a secret weapon—were spreading.
And every time she released a new book, Elias was the first to hold it, to kiss the dedication page before anyone else could.
For the boy I never stopped choosing.
For the man who became my peace.
⸻
And in the quietest room of their house, on the last page of a diary she never showed anyone, Alina wrote:
We were the fire.
Then we were the ashes.
Now we are the garden that grew from it.
Now, time was measured in firsts.
First words.
First lost tooth.
First skinned knee that had Elias more panicked than any boardroom betrayal ever had.
⸻
Elara had his eyes—dark, unreadable. But her smile? That was all Alina. Wide and open and honest, like a secret garden always in bloom.
She was growing fast.
Too fast.
Some days Alina would sit with Elias on the porch, coffee in hand, and wonder aloud where the baby had gone—this tiny, swaddled secret they once protected with their lives.
“She’s still here,” Elias always said, his voice low, reverent. “Just louder now.”
⸻
They didn’t talk much about the past anymore, but it lived with them in quiet ways.
A scar on Elias’s ribcage.
The habit Alina had of locking every door twice at night.
The unopened letters still occasionally sent to their address by people who used to matter.
But these were shadows.
And shadows couldn’t hold you unless you let them.
⸻
They hosted their first dinner party one spring, a small thing. No billionaires. No barons. Just neighbors and friends—artists, schoolteachers, a florist from two blocks over who brought a lemon tart that made Alina cry from joy.
“Who are we?” Elias murmured that night, brushing his hand over her hip as they watched Elara fall asleep in the lap of an old painter with a voice like gravel.
“Happy,” she replied simply. “That’s all.”
⸻
Occasionally, someone from the outside would recognize Elias.
A flash of memory. A whispered name.
But he never corrected them. Never confirmed, never denied.
He was no longer the heir of steel.
He was the man who carved toy boxes by hand. The father who showed up to every parent meeting. The husband who kissed his wife’s shoulder before she even opened her eyes.
⸻
Alina’s novels had started to gain quiet traction. She refused big interviews, gave readings only in small rooms. But her stories—stories of girls who burned down legacies for love, of boys who carried softness like a secret weapon—were spreading.
And every time she released a new book, Elias was the first to hold it, to kiss the dedication page before anyone else could.
For the boy I never stopped choosing.
For the man who became my peace.
⸻
And in the quietest room of their house, on the last page of a diary she never showed anyone, Alina wrote:
We were the fire.
Then we were the ashes.
Now we are the garden that grew from it.
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