She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 50

Chapter 50 The Frames on the Wall

(Chase)

Lily will not sleep.

She was fine during the show, fine through the chaos of the evening, perfectly content while Mason was here and the room was full of noise and movement.

The moment things quieted down she decided she had opinions about it.

I walk her through the townhouse in slow loops, one hand supporting her back, the other cupped under her small, warm weight.

She isn’t crying exactly.

She’s making the sound that falls just short of crying, a persistent, restless complaint directed at no one in particular.

I understand the feeling.

The kitchen light is still on.

I can hear Natasha moving around in there, the soft clatter of dishes, the tap running.

She offered to take Lily so I could go home, and I told her to let me.

She looked briefly surprised and then went back to the kitchen without arguing.

We’re finding a language, the two of us.

It doesn’t have words yet.

Just small negotiations.

Small concessions that neither of us names out loud.

I carry Lily into the narrow hallway off the sitting room, bouncing her gently in the rhythm that usually works, and that’s when I see the photographs.

A cluster of frames on a shelf I’ve never paid attention to before, catching the light from the hallway lamp.

New, or newly arranged.

Something about the grouping feels intentional, like someone took care with the placement.

I stop walking.

The first frame is a graduation photograph.

Natasha stands between the Kellys in the bright, over-exposed light of a June afternoon.

She’s in a gown and cap, laughing at something off-camera, one arm thrown around Mrs. Kelly’s shoulders.

She looks young

Unguarded in a way I’ve never seen in the years I’ve known her.

Lily makes her restless sound and I bounce her absently, my eyes still on the shelf.

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The second photograph stops me completely.

As a beach shot.

Informal, slightly sun-washed, the kind of picture taken on a cheap digital camera rather than a phone.

Natasha is younger in this one.

Barely more than a girl, really, sitting on a flat rock with the ocean behind her.

She’s looking directly at the lens with a smile that has no performance in it whatsoever.

But it’s not Natasha that holds my attention.

It’s the beach.

The particular angle of the rocks.

The way the coastline curves in the background.

The quality of the light, flat and bright and surely specific to that stretch of the coast.

I know that beach.

Or I feel like I should, but try as I might, I can’t locate the memory.

Can’t find a name anywhere in my mind.

But the recognition sits in my chest with the absolute certainty of something real, and it refuses to move.

“She’s beautiful in that one, isn’t she?”

Mrs. Kelly appears from the kitchen doorway with a dish towel in her hands, nodding at the photograph.

“We brought these from home this trip,” she says, moving to stand beside me.

She looks at the frames with the quiet satisfaction of someone who’s been wanting to put them up for a while.

“I want little Lily to grow up seeing her mother as a young woman. To know where she came from.”

“This one,” I say, nodding toward the beach photograph. “Where was it taken?”

Mrs. Kelly smiles.

“Shell Cove. Just up the coast from here. Natasha’s father had a beach house there when she was small. They spent summers there for years.”

She looks at the photo with something fond and slightly sad.

“After everything happened with her mother leaving, her father sold the house. Natasha asked me to take that photograph when she was a freshman at NCLU. She wanted one picture of her favourite spot before she lost it completely.”

She pauses, adjusting the frame by a fraction.

“Her father burned all the pictures from that time. After her mother went. So this is the only one she has of that beach as a young lady.”

Shell Cove

Ca

So the kines on the West

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