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𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐎𝐍𝐄

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[ 𝑨𝑵: to clarify any possible confusion, 'BCE' refers to logan's death xx ]

SARDINIA, ITALY. FOUR MONTHS, BCE

As the waiter rounded the corner that led from the cafe, they spied the dark haired woman sitting as she always did. At the edge of everything.

From afar she looked like any other expat. Not so stark in her foreignness to be considered a tourist but lacking the casual nature of a true local. She was dressed in plain linen clothes, dark hair wavy from several weeks of salt water and saltier air. A radiant healthy glow lit the lengths of her arms.

Her movements were tentative as she gripped a fountain pen, her head bowed in thought. At small intervals she glanced upwards to the vista, pausing on dappled waters and cornflower sky.

The waiter weaved through tables of patrons. They balanced a tall highball glass slick with condensation, amber liquid streaming warm light onto the tray below. The closer they drew to the woman, the better they were able to spy what she was working on. Looped cursive flowed from the tip of her pen. An eyebrow quirked, not from curiosity but bemusement.

She had been a steady regular over the past month, arriving close to opening and often leaving when the sun had fallen low in the sky. Always she arrived with a faded old tote bag, sporting a pair of tortoise shell sunglasses that she removed only when she had settled in for the day.

Sometimes she would pull out the notebook straight away to write feverishly, not looking up even when served, gripped by an unassailable muse that would only loosen once she had exorcised it to paper. Other days she would sit and stare, sunglasses lowered on the bridge of an aquiline nose. Chewing on her nails or resting her head against the surface of the table.

It had surprised the waiter when she had once asked them, early in her tenure, to sit with her and converse about Sardinia.

They had long thought the woman was a writer of a novel. Authors and artists of all breeds were common in Italy. On a place such as Sardinia, it was not irregular to stumble upon one with money - an assumption further backed by the frequency of her tips. Further conversation revealed she was not hoping to poach the Emerald Isle for some brooding epic set against lush hills and skeletal ruins of cement and stone.

"No." She had said after the question had been posed.

A curious glimmer reflected in eyes as she cast them to the ocean. She tended to rest in long pauses and soft sighs, wrapping her voice around each word to savour vowels like tasting the flesh of a peach.

"I'm just writing letters that will go unsent."

She preferred not to speak any longer on the matter, they had sensed, for she pushed the notebook away. Instead she seemed to want to know more about them.

What it was like to have grown up on the island, whether they had gone to school, if they got along with their parents. Each time the conversation drifted too closely to her past, she would gently nudge it away with a remark. Kind yet shallow, but she did not tense nor fidget. It seemed she simply preferred not to open that book. It was not yet time. Let this moment remain the most prominent one of all.

Glass met the table with a soft thud. She stirred from her thoughts, wiping perspiration from her brow with the back of her hand. A smile, familiar now, alighted on her lips.

"Your Chinotto," the waiter announced.

"Thank you." She replied, nudging the chair beside her from the table with the toe of her sandal. "Sit with me? If you're not too busy."

It was a bustling day at the café, but the waiter had worked there for years now, practically a member of the family, and so they sat down in the chair, placing the tray atop the tablecloth. As they settled against the wooden chair, the woman closed her notebook. She placed her elbows atop the table and rested her delicate chin against the bone of her knuckles.

"I went to that restaurant you recommended last week." Her lips quirked as she recalled a memory. The waiter awaited her verdict. "I liked it. The seafood was good, I'm usually not a big fan of fish. My company enjoyed the oysters especially."

"A gentleman?" The waiter queried. Dimples formed in her cheeks, a warm glow on her cheeks.

"You're cheeky."

The waiter shrugged. "I'm curious."

"I understand." There was a sweep of her hand through her hair. She played with the ends, rolling them between fingertips. "Yes. A gentleman. Well, I wouldn't flatter him so much to call him that. But that is a way he could be referred to."

"And was the company good?"

"Adequate." She replied after a pause, shifting in her seat. "Good enough."

"I guess that's all you can hope for."

Their eyes slid down to the table as the woman paused to take a sip from her glass. She sucked in her lips as she drew away from the rim, relishing the bubbles on her tongue. It tasted fresh and sanguine as the green myrtle leaves the orange had been harvested from.

"Still writing letters?" The waiter asked politely, nodding towards the notebook.

She blinked her eyes rapidly in response. For a moment, they feared they had upset her. She looked down at the table, to the fountain pen resting in one of the crevices, held in place with cerulean terrycloth.

To their surprise, she shook her head.

"I've progressed past letters." She admitted with hesitation. Delicate was her tone, like brushing against freshly healed skin. "It got away from me, like most things do."

"A story then?" They pressed, curiosity besieging them. She chuckled musically.

"Of a kind, I guess. Just vignettes, I think that's what they call them? Just things that have happened, or ... Sentences. Words. That's what writing is, I don't know why I got so specific. Just what I remember from my life."

"Can I see?"

She flushed but nodded. With gentle fingers, she plied the book open and held it up to her face. Carefully she flipped through, concentration constricting her eyes. Finally she found what she had been searching for.

Pages folded open, she pressed her lips together.

"It's very rough. I'm not a writer at all. I just wrote what felt like ... Right." She said with downcast eyes.

"I'm not a literary critic." The waiter replied. "So you don't need to worry about harsh judgment."

Satisfied with this answer, she nodded and passed them the notebook. The waiter grasped it between their fingers. Her handwriting on the page below was different, no slant or lingering tails. Each stroke was deliberate, a concerted effort. She had taken her time.

Silence rested between them as the waiter scanned the page, lingering on each turn of phrase. It read like a poem in parts, a stream of conscience in others but nonetheless there was a through line. Contained within was a fleeting glimpse of who the woman was and what had stained her - pain, loss, apathy and hope.

"What do you think?" She asked after the waiter had lowered the notebook. They thought for a second.

"I think you leave a lot unsaid."

"Then I should keep at it." She replied with a nod. "Thank you, I'll let you go now."

When the waiter glanced in her direction again, after continuing the rounds, the woman still had the notebook open in front of her but her pen went untouched. She had brought her legs to her chest, feet balancing on the bottom of the chair, arms wrapped around herself in a firm hug. Brushing fingers against her shoulders, touching new skin.

She was looking to the distance with keen eyes. Scanning the horizon and searching for something, something.

≪ °❈° ≫

Perhaps Cordelia Vernon had previously been a cat. She certainly felt like she had weathered nine lives.

The accident had been a t-bone that had sent her car sprawling off the road. The other driver had been drunk, a young man in his 20s driving with as much care for his life as she had possessed for her own. Maybe this was why she couldn't be mad at him. She was simply lucky be alive, waking up in a hospital with a moderate concussion, several fractured ribs and a sobering reminder of her own mortality.

Nothing was more jarring than finding Caroline Collingwood hovering outside her hospital door, speaking sharp Italian to one of the nurses. She was interrupted only when she noticed Cora had awoken. Her pinched expression fell away, replaced by the look one gives a child who has scraped their knee out of inevitability. She walked to the bedside as Cora blinked blearily, head pounding like the surface of a gong struck thrice.

"Oh darling, you've been through the wars, haven't you?"

Cora was soon given clearance to leave the hospital and taken back to the villa, which had become still and quiet in the wake of the wedding.

To her credit, Caroline was a surprisingly restrained caretaker. Perhaps if Cora hadn't been in the throes of injury and alcohol withdrawal, the guilt of interrupting Caroline's honeymoon plans would have been too great but she was forcibly incapacitated. Even if she weren't, she doubted that Caroline would have allowed her to leave. Looking back, she was grateful that her body had been a prison, without it she doubted she could have stomached Caroline's affection.

She was grateful for her after the storm of tremors and hallucinations passed, where every cough and panicked yelp had elicited soothing words. By far the car accident injuries faded into when compared to the symptoms of withdrawal. Cora hadn't realised how truly bad she had allowed things to spiral. That was the thing about addiction - vice becomes so incredibly ordinary. What was not ordinary was the rioting of her body, bringing her to her knees.

At times in that first month, she had become convinced she was going to die - more than once she was certain she had passed the threshold and had entered the inferno. Each time Caroline guided her back from the brink with a cool touch to the forehead, a wet cloth or the velvety skin of her fingers. Her patience was never ending. No matter how much Cora pleaded for reprieve, for a single drop to bring end to everything, Caroline would sit with her in the weeds until the moment faded and she slipped into unconsciousness.

As all storms do, it passed. One day Cora simply made it out of bed on her own and wandered downstairs in a daze, causing Caroline to drop her tea cup into its saucer. It spilled over onto the table, splashing her plate that housed a plump danish.

"Oh Cordy, you scared me half to death." She muttered, beginning to mop up the mess with a fabric napkin. Peter was seated across from her at the long picnic-style table, looking up from his newspaper with a serene expression. "You have quite the habit of doing that, don't you?"

"Good to see you're finally up." He said, as if all she had done was sleep past noon. He set down the paper and stood, smiling softly. "I suppose a round of tea is in order."

Conversation remained polite and sterile as Peter prepared a new pot in the nearby kitchen. Cora was faintly aware of Caroline's analytical gaze as it swept her. The older woman's eyes remained narrow with caution until Peter set the pot down in the centre of the table, along with a fresh pitcher of milk.

"I'll let you two catch up." He said, planting a kiss on Caroline's cheek. "But you won't be a stranger, will you? We were thinking of dinner at a winery later."

"I'll see how I'm feeling." Cora replied without considering the invitation's venue.

"Don't overwhelm her, the last thing she needs is a brush with temptation." Caroline said, swatting at him playfully. Her eyes softened, and Cora felt a pang of jealousy at the ease with which adoration swept her. "And don't stray too far."

"Never." Peter replied, bidding them both a farewell.

Caroline turned back to Cora, pouring them both a fresh cup. She added a short dash of milk into her own and a lone sugar cube. Cora couldn't remember the last time she'd had tea and, finding herself a little lost, made her drink pale with milk. She dropped a sugar cube and sipped cautiously at the edge of her overflowing cup.

"I'm sorry for all of the staring. It's just ... Well it's like you've emerged from a cocoon of sorts. I find you a little ... Unrecognisable." Caroline said, the corners of her eyes crinkling.

The world retained a dreamlike quality and neither the gawking nor the comments that accompanied it particularly affected Cora. She shrugged.

"Maybe. I feel different."

"There's just something about your hair." Caroline continued, as if she hadn't quite heard Cora. "Or the look in your eyes. You have a glow. You couldn't be pregnant, could you?"

Cora almost choked on her tea. She lowered her cup, shaking her head insistently. "I'm sure I'm not."

"Because you know I wouldn't dob you in if you were. I can't say any of them are interested in speaking to me after all of that nastiness with Logan and the company anyway." She paused, sucking in her cheeks pensively. "I did mention to Roman over email that you were safe, I thought perhaps he was owed that."

At the mention of Roman's name, Cora's lips curdled. Caroline noticed the shift.

"I know, by the way." She said, smiling softly, melancholy shadowing the corners of her eyes. "About everything. I got into a conversation with that assistant of yours. What was her name? Olive? Ophelia?"

"Olivia." Cora politely corrected. She looked down into her tea, suddenly very fascinated with her own reflection in order to distract from the heat of her face. If Caroline really did know the full extent of her actions, it felt inevitable that she was about to be chewed out.

Instead, Caroline nestled into the high backing of her wicker chair, resting the crook of her elbow against plush striped cushions. She sipped from her cup, the corners of her thin lips upturned.

"You've been a busy girl."

Cora let out a nervous bark of laughter. "Look, I'm ... I'm so-"

"What my adult sons choose to do with their time is not much of my business, they've made that abundantly clear." Caroline replied, her voice surprisingly warm. She shook her head. "I can't say I'm terribly impressed with any of you, but I also cannot judge you all that harshly. This is what happens without mothers."

"I suppose it is." Cora chuckled nervously.

"I'm sorry. An accidental low blow." Caroline said, sensing her mistake.

"Probably the least I deserve."

"Don't say that. You've punished yourself enough, I think."

Silence passed, deep enough for contemplation. Cora was grateful to Caroline, beyond any words she could think to express. The warmth of her grace was surprisingly welcome after so many months of frigid cold. What it conjured in Cora was not just an appreciation for the woman, but for those who had shown her passing glimpses of the same kindness.

Olivia, who had forgiven her. Stewy, who had reserved his judgement and empathised. Even Greg and his attempt on the yacht to help her when she had relapsed. She had dismissed them, the realisation panging deep in her gut.

The one person she had not dismissed was Tom.

At the time she hadn't possessed the wits to consider just why this was. Now she let herself linger, the realisation dawning gradually like unfolding the petals of a flower. Tom had been, above everything else, the only other person so intimately acquainted with her particular kind of heartbreak. The push and pull of orbiting a Roy. They had sensed it on one another, and when they had finally been brought within proximity, the kinship was implicit.

"You like your tea anemic, do you?" Caroline asked, guiding Cora from her thoughts.

"I think my stomach's going to be weak for a while." She confessed. She picked up her cup and took a look gulp. It was only when she lowered it back into its saucer that she noticed the absence of the engagement ring from her finger.

"It was chipped in the accident." The woman said slowly, placing her own cup down with a soft clack. "I took the liberty of sending it off to get it fixed. Just in case."

Cora's heart stirred in her chest. She felt a strange buzzing in her stomach as she processed this fact. She wasn't sure if she was relieved or not to be free of the ring. Her thumb ran palmside over the naked skin of her finger. So quickly the ring had become a part of her, no matter how false. Without it, she felt strangely vulnerable.

As though someone had pulled at the strings in her heart, she found herself opening her mouth before she had time to think.

"Can I ask, did you know? Logan and Reagan's whole ... Um, plan. With Roman and I?"

Caroline looked confused for a moment before she quickly clued in. The corners of her lips tightened faintly. She shook her head.

"No, but I'm unsurprised. Logan had a very ... Fixed idea about what a man should look like and I do confess, Roman was never going to be that person. Not without squeezing a square peg, or however the saying goes." She sighed heavily. "I think he convinced himself that if Roman had a clear template, something to keep him to account, well ... That perhaps overtime he would morph into Logan's design."

Cora nodded slowly, choosing to accept Caroline at her word. After all, what reason would she have to lie? Caroline did not have a habit of shying away from making others uncomfortable. Why would she start sparing Cora's ego now? Caroline was looking across the table expectantly. Cora cleared her throat as she summoned the courage to speak as plainly as the other woman had.

"I just ... When I found out about it, it really shattered everything for me." She confessed. Her shoulders sagged as she continued. "It made everything that had ever happened between us feel manufactured. Even now that I think about it, it's like this nagging in the back of my head. I don't know if I can ever get over it.

"He kept it all these years. I mean, it wasn't even him who told me, it was Kendall. He knew and yet he let certain things happen. I don't know how to reconcile the person I knew and the lie of it."

"Cordelia," Caroline began, "you can lead a man to water, but he'll only drink if it's his desire. I know my son. I don't know him as much as I would like, and perhaps that's because what I do know is more than he is comfortable with. But this much is true - he would not have hovered so close and for so long if it wasn't what he truly wanted."

Cora bit her lip. She wanted to believe that, but something stopped her. A stabbing in her chest, the all too familiar feeling of foreboding.

"It's not just that. It ... It makes me ... Well, it makes me feel justified in everything I do ... Everything I did. I know that's wrong. I never wanted to hurt him. I only ever wanted to hurt myself. But when I feel the sting of it all over again, I think ... I think of course I acted out. Why wouldn't I? I'm the sort of person who needed their mother to set them up so they could never fail. I'm useless."

"Well, no one wants to speak ill of the dead." Caroline smiled stiffly, her eyes glazing with a sense of melancholy. She stirred her tea, silver spoon clinking gently against porcelain. "I don't know if you are aware of this ... I doubt you could have known, actually, but I spent a considerable time with your mother, not too long before she passed."

Cora felt her ears perk up, trying to disguise her sudden morbid interest with a casual nod. "No, I didn't know."

"I doubt she ever told anyone. She was a ... Well, she was a character, your mother. Ruthless, yes. But terribly insecure, and with a flair for the neurotic. She had to take all of these horrid little pills to sleep, but you know how those things are. They always stop working. I remember she told me about the sort of concoctions she had to take just to get through all those flights from the States. You know how much time she spent in Europe and, well, our paths crossed. She was very lost when I saw her in Malta, a real wreck. I think it was around your sixteenth birthday."

She paused to take a sip from her teacup, eyeing Cora with a measured gaze.

Cora felt like she had been hollowed out completely. She had never heard someone speak so candidly about her mother and the effect it was having on her was chilling. Reagan had always been painted as monolithic and death had only calcified her legacy, thrusting Cora into a purgatory where she was forced to hold the two conflicting versions of her mother while truly grieving neither.

"She was very conflicted. I think she had realised how far she had strayed from you. Her mother was a royal bitch, she truly was. This was of course back when they used to use canes and the metal bit of electric chords. Very nasty business. Reagan was wilful as a child, she told me, but her family home whittled that away until, well, until there wasn't much left. I don't think she felt like a real person at any point in her life. Nothing was ever good enough, least of all herself.

"She didn't want that for you, still carried the fear of her mother in her heart. I think the irony was lost on her that even without direct punishment, she was forcing you down the same path. But we're all chasing the tails of our parents, it's a story as old as time. We all think we can do better, but I fear that hubris blinds us to the cycl- Oh, Cordy, I'm sorry."

Cora sniffed, wiping her cheek. Caroline reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a chequered handkerchief. Gratefully Cora took it, dabbing at her eyes. "Sorry, I've been doing a lot of crying lately."

"Don't apologise. I'd expect nothing less." Caroline paused, running her tongue against her bottom lip. She squinted her eyes for a moment. "What I want to talk to you about, at the wedding was this. Well, it wasn't this exactly but ... When your mother passed, she left a safety deposit box. You obviously went MIA, and Frank didn't have much of an interest in her affairs overseas. It was all too painful for him. He gave me the key and I went into it a few years ago.

"I've been holding onto keys for a few of her properties. One of them is here in Italy, it's on the island Sardinia. I wanted to give you it while you were in Tuscany. I confess I thought it would make a lovely honeymoon location. But now I think it might just be the perfect landing place. Because, and I mean this with love, returning to New York in your fragile state is ... "

Caroline let the words float off into the ether. Cora wiped her eyes, nodding. She felt faint, it was all so much to process. Cora took in a ragged breath.

"I think I probably need a minute, if that's ok?" She muttered, perspiration quickening on the back of her neck.

"Take all the time. I know this can only be hard for you."

Cora rose, taking her cup of tea with her. She considered briefly going back to her room, but the idea of being confined to an enclosed space disagreed with her. She downed the rest of her tea quickly, placing down an empty cup.

"I might go walk in the gardens."

"Of course." Caroline nodded.

As Cora started towards the edge of the patio, Caroline spoke again.

"And Cora, maybe you should consider getting something to keep you grounded? When you do leave that is. Maybe a houseplant? I hear they can do wonders." There was a twinkle in her eye. "It's never too late to learn how to care for something."

Cora stayed with Caroline and Peter one last day as she made her arrangements, shopping in the local boutiques with Caroline in the day and dining with them in the evening. She had only the luggage she had arrived at the wedding for and a fresh set of clothes seemed like a good start to a new beginning.

Her phone had been a fellow victim in the car accident, and with everything backed onto her Macbook, she felt no strong pull to replace it just yet. Something told her that the radio silence she would be met with would do her more harm than good.

Early the next morning, Caroline and Peter waved her off, though not without procuring a promise from Cora to keep in touch. Tuscany to Sardinia was at least an eleven hour drive, one that Cora knew she would not be able to make on her own. She had sourced a local driver and paid him handsomely for allowing her the passenger seat. She felt a stir as she watched the Tuscan villa disappear in the side mirror, like a feather stroking the inside of her chest. All the good and all the bad fading into nothing as the car made a sharp turn onto the highway.

While the Italian country raced outside her window, light jazz filled the interior while her driver Matteo played travel guide, reeling off facts about their destination at lightning speed. Sardinia was Italy's second-largest island, home to sprawling beaches with the bluest water and the brightest sand. Matteo waxed lyrical about the local craftsmen, the pastoral culture, the famous Sa Sartiglia carnival. He insisted she stop by his stall at the markets, for she was not the only cargo in the lemon yellow Fiat.

Cora listened with an interest that once might have felt alien, probing him with questions every now and then. She had a newfound curiosity about others, it played well with not wanting to touch the past.

The conversation lulled her nerves temporarily, but they grew with each passing hour. Where was she headed? What would she find when she arrived? The remnants of her mother's ghost, the things she had tucked from sight, that had gone untouched by familial hands for over a decade. But as the ferry crossed from the mainland and Cora stepped out of the confines of the car to breath salty sea air deep into her lungs, it was not foreboding that impressed itself upon her.

Hope, bright and effervescent. Something good. Something new.

≪ °❈° ≫

In the cafe, Cora slipped her notebook back into her tote bag and slung it over her shoulder.

The sun had begun to dwindle, casting lilac and amber on the coast line. Below the ocean shifted indigo. Gentle waves lapped against the sandy shore a stone's throw from the back deck of the cafe, dotted with feathery white bodies. Seagulls squawked, summoning the rising tide with every raucous call.

At the front of the cafe, Cora found her push bike still leaning against the wooden post where she had left it in the morning. It had been one of the belongings she had found in the back shed of the cottage when she'd first arrived. The sage green body had been covered in a thin layer of dust and cobwebs but otherwise remained functionally intact.

Gingerly she had practiced on the sloping gravel drive that petered from the cottage, eventually building the confidence to ride it into town along the stretch of dirt that adorned the highway. She remained understandably skittish about the prospect of getting behind the wheel of a car, and the temporary mode of transport fit her

Reagan's cottage was roughly twenty minutes, depending on how much Cora chose to dawdle. Most days she preferred to taste the countryside. The roads snaked around cliff sides of rolling green and light taupe rock, curves sculpted with the humble precision only afforded by nature. As the ride grew steeper, Cora's legs pumping desperately against the pedals, the world around her transitioned. Fields with squared plots, gentle plains that tilted inland as the earth gravitated to center of the island, bodies of sheep like small white clouds. A pleasant breeze brought fresh scents of cut grass and flowers bloomed.

Endless pleasures as far as the eye could stretch. Cora grinned to the surrounds with abandon.

She pulled off the beaten path, where the dirt fluted at the top of the cottage's driveway and slowed to a crawl. As she unlatched the wire gate that topped the slope below, she noticed fresh tyre tracks. Under her breath, she whistled.

When she reached the bottom, she found Matsson's chrome Aston Martin. It stuck out like a sore thumb against the natural terrain, much less the low stone cottage. He was waiting for her on a hewn chair beside the front door, glancing upwards from his phone with eyebrows raised. Silently he watched as she stationed the bike against the side wall of the cottage.

"You're still riding that thing." He said, rising. Matsson stretched his long limbs, a bored yawn echoing from his throat. Cora shrugged.

"There's no point to me getting a car."

"You keep saying that but I'm yet to see you come out of hiding. Come to Milan and say the same thing."

Her teeth brushed her bottom lip. He looked at her, waiting for a challenge that never came. Cora was not in the habit of elaborating on her plans these days, considering she had none.

"You're drifting." Matsson had said to her the first night they had spent together, the same evening she had made a call from her laptop. She'd caught a signal halfway up the driveway, holding the screen close to illuminate herself. She hadn't answered him then either. It seemed a moot point.

Of course she was drifting. She was unmoored like she had been at eighteen - this time it was her own car accident and not her mother's that had cut the chain. It made all the difference.

"You're free right now." Matsson stated as she passed by him, fishing in her tote bag for her keys. "Y'know, given that you don't really get up to much."

"Assumptions. They make an ass out of you and me." Cora remarked with a small smile. She pulled the door open, standing back to allow him by. He lingered, eyebrows raised. "You don't need to leave. You can wait in the living room."

"Answer the obvious." He replied, cocking an eyebrow. "What do you have in your blank calendar that you're scooting me aside for?"

"Lukas, you need to ask?" Cora replied, snorting softly. "I have an appointment with a shrink that I wouldn't dream of missing."