Chapter 22
Paris winter sunlight always carried a touch of tenderness.
Aria pushed open the glass door of her bookshop, wind chimes singing their familiar welcome.
The shop wasn’t large–six hundred square feet filled with French and English books, a oak table by the window perpetually decorated with seasonal flowers.
Today’s arrangement was white daisies.
“Ms. Winters, where should I put the new picture books?” young employee Marion asked, arms full of boxes.
“Children’s section, by the window,” Aria repfied in fluent French, her accent nearly indistinguishable from a native speaker.
This was her third year in Paris. Her bookshop had grown from complete obscurity to become a well–known cultural salon in the Left Bank, hosting weekly book clubs and flower arranging classes.
She was organizing new arrivals when her fingers found a particularly beautiful art book.
The cover showed an ink–wash painting of a Jiangnan water town–blue tiles and gray eaves, misty rain, carrying echoes of home.
Opening to the first page, she found an inscription: *For someone who always looks forward.*
No signature, but she knew that sharp, bold handwriting intimately.
Aría gently closed the book and placed it in the display area.
Outside, the Seine sparkled as cruise boats drifted past. She no longer felt the heart–wrenching turmoil that once came with reminders of the past.
Now she had learned to coexist peacefully with memory.
Millbrook’s rainy season continued its endless cycle.
Lucas stood at the window of Serenity Bookstore, watching raindrops trace down the glass. For three years, he’d come here once a month, like completing some silent ritual.
“Sir, we’re closing soon,” the clerk reminded him softly.
Lucas nodded, scanning the shelves one final time before spotting a hand drawn book in the corner. The cover read “Language of Flowers” in neat pencil script
13:21 C
My Husba
Chapter 22
He opened it to find blue irises on the first page, annotated: *Desperate love*
Page by page, each illustration had detailed notes.
At the white daisy entry, he found familiar handwriting:
*Daisies mean reunion, but I know some people, some things, belong to the past. People must learn to look forward.
Lucas clutched the book to his chest as if grasping at vanished warmth.
Normandy’s sea breeze carried salt and stories. Aria walked barefoot along the sand, hair whipping in the wind.
Waves repeatedly washed over her ankles before retreating.
In the distance, children built sandcastles, their laughter carried on the breeze.
She paused to watch, remembering how Adrian had once promised to show her the ocean. Now she stood on foreign shores with no regret, only gentle nostalgia.
Her phone buzzed–a message from the bookstore. A customer wanted to order that Jiangnan watercolor book, asking if a signed edition was available.
Aria replied that she’d try to contact the artist, then continued her coastal walk. Sunset stretched her shadow long across the sand–solitary but free.
Evening settled over the cemetery in profound quiet. Lucas placed white daisies at Adrian’s grave beside a copy of Language of Flowers.”
‘Adrian, I came to see you again.” He sat cross–legged on the grass, fingers tracing the cold marble. “Three years, and I still can’t… move past this.”
Breeze stirred the petals gently.
Lucas pulled out a photograph from his jacket–a Left Bank bookstore where Aria arranged books by the window, sunlight gilding her profile.
‘She’s doing well… better than when she was with me.” He placed the photo beside the flowers.
Dusk deepened as Lucas’s silhouette hunched before the headstone. This man who commanded business empires now seemed fragile as a lost child.
“I regret it… I really regret everything…”
His whispered words dissolved into evening wind, unanswered.
15:22 O
Chapter 22
Lights twinkled on Seine cruise boats as Aria stood at her second floor window, gazing out at nighttime Paris.
She softly closed her book, lips curving in a peaceful smile. Past pain had become part of her life’s fabric–no longer causing suffering, no longer defining her existence.
Thousands of miles away in Millbrook, Lucas stood at his office window holding a ring he’d never given, looking at
the same moon.
15:22
My Husband’s Guide to
fly Good Wife in
e kall s
