Chapter 13 - Whispers in the Spring
Spring arrived slowly, washing away the winter snow with torrential April rains that turned the Elm Ridge gardens into a sea of green shoots, mud, and bursting tulip bulbs.
The estate had fully adapted to our rhythm. The domestic staff had grown into a tight-knit, joyful household team, and Maren—now nearly four years old—was enrolled in a local Montessori preschool where she spent her mornings finger-painting, climbing trees, and making friends with children who didn't care about aesthetic perfection or brand narratives.
I had permanently restructured my role at ColeCorp. I spent three days a week working from my second-floor home office and two days at the downtown corporate headquarters, ensuring I never missed dinner, bedtime stories, or weekend adventures in the mud.
One Saturday afternoon in late April, while Maren was napping and Nana Bello was out running errands in town, I sat on the back terrace with a cup of coffee, reviewing a quarterly financial report on my tablet.
My phone buzzed on the glass table.
An unknown number with a Swiss country code.
I stared at the screen for a moment before swiping to answer.
"Julian," a voice said on the other end.
It was Vivienne.
Her voice was controlled, measured, and entirely devoid of the sharp, icy edge I remembered. It sounded thin, like parchment left out in the sun too long.
"Vivienne," I said neutrally. "How did you get this number?"
"It's not hard to find a private line if you know where to look," she replied quietly. There was a long pause on the line, the sound of distant traffic hissing softly in the background—Zurich streets, clean and orderly. "I saw the press piece about ColeCorp’s restructuring last week. They said you stepped back from full-time operations."
"I did."
"Why? You built that company from a basement server rack. It was your entire life."
"It was an empire," I corrected softly, watching a robin hop across the green lawn near the apple tree. "Now it's just a business. My life is up here."
Another long silence stretched between us across thousands of miles of ocean. When Vivienne spoke again, the armor in her voice had cracked just enough to let a sliver of raw, painful truth slip through.
"Did you ever love who I was, Julian? Or were you just looking for someone to fill a hole in the house?"
The question hung in the warm spring air. It was a fair question—one I had asked myself a hundred times in the dark months after she left.
"I wanted to believe you were a savior, Viv," I answered honestly, without malice or anger. "And you wanted me to be a trophy. Neither of us loved each other. We just loved the idea of what we looked like together. But love isn't a showroom floor. It's messy, it's loud, and it requires you to actually show up."
Vivienne didn't reply for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely a whisper.
"It's very quiet here in Zurich, Julian."
"I know," I said gently. "Quiet can be a prison if you don't let anyone in."
She let out a soft, dry breath that sounded almost like a laugh—or a sigh. "Goodbye, Julian."
"Goodbye, Vivienne. I hope you find what you're looking for."
May you like
I hung up the phone, placed it face down on the table, and didn't look at it again.
Inside the house, I heard the soft patter of small feet coming down the hallway. Maren was awake.
