Chapter 272: Chapter 274: The Green House(Vitalis Radix)
DAMIEN’S POV
He came home at six to the smell of food.
Not Mrs Chen’s cooking....he knew Mrs Chen’s cooking, could identify it from the hallway. This was something else. Something coming from the kitchen that smelled like the specific combination Mei used when she was making the dish Aria had mentioned once that her mother always cooked when something was worth celebrating.
He stood in the kitchen doorway.
Mei was at the stove. Aria was beside her, sleeves pushed up, following instructions with the focused expression she wore when she was learning something new and taking it seriously. Mrs Chen was sitting at the kitchen island watching them both with the air of a woman who had been displaced from her own kitchen and had decided to be gracious about it.
None of them had noticed him yet.
He watched Aria listen to something her mother said and adjust what she was doing, and Mei said something that made her laugh, and Aria knocked her shoulder against her mother’s shoulder the way you did with someone you’d been standing beside your whole life.
Mrs Chen looked up and saw him in the doorway.
She raised her eyebrows very slightly.
He shook his head. She nodded once and said nothing.
He went upstairs to change.
Dinner was the four of them — Aria, Mei, Marcus who had appeared at half five for reasons he didn’t explain and hadn’t been told to leave, and Damien. The food was extraordinary. Aria admitted she’d done the easier parts and Mei had done everything that actually mattered and Mei didn’t deny it.
Marcus had two servings.
"This is incredible, Mrs Chen," he said.
Mei looked at him. "You can call me Mei."
Marcus looked slightly thrown, which was not an expression his face did often. "Thank you. Mei."
Aria caught Damien’s eye across the table.
He kept his face straight. She pressed her lips together.
After dinner Mei and Marcus ended up in the sitting room somehow, Mei asking questions about the security systems that Marcus was answering with the air of a man who had not expected to spend his Tuesday evening explaining motion sensors to Aria’s mother but was finding it surprisingly manageable.
Damien washed up.
Aria appeared beside him and picked up a dish towel.
"You don’t have to do that," he said.
"I know."
She started drying. He washed. The kitchen was quiet except for the low sound of conversation from the sitting room and the ordinary sounds of the house settling into the evening.
"Morrison confirmed next week," she said.
"I know. He called me."
She looked at him. "He called you."
"He calls me every few days. He has done since the hospital."
She processed this. "Why."
"Because I asked him to." He handed her a glass. "I wanted to know how you were from someone who could be objective."
"You wanted a second opinion on whether I was telling you the truth about how I was feeling."
"I wanted to make sure you weren’t pushing yourself because you don’t know how to do anything slowly." He looked at her. "Those are different things."
She dried the glass. "Are they."
"One is distrust. The other is knowing you." He went back to washing. "Morrison says you’re ready. I believe Morrison."
She was quiet for a moment.
"I’m nervous about going back," she said.
He looked at her.
She was looking at the glass in her hands. "Not because I can’t do it. Just...." She set the glass down. "Everyone is going to know what happened. The poisoning. The kidnapping. All of it. And I’m going to walk in there and everyone is going to look at me and I’m going to have to just....be normal in front of them."
"And?"
"And I haven’t decided how to do that yet."
He turned the tap off. Dried his hands. Turned to face her properly.
"You’ll walk in," he said. "And they’ll look at you for about ten minutes. And then someone will have a patient who needs you and you’ll be Dr Aria again and the looking will stop." He held her gaze. "That’s what’ll happen."
She looked at him.
"How do you know."
"Because that’s who you are in that building." He picked the dish towel up from her hands and set it on the counter. "They’ve seen you work. They know who you are. Some of them were the ones keeping you alive." He paused. "They’re not going to look at you like you’re fragile. They’re going to look at you like you came back."
She was quiet.
Then she said, very quietly: "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay." She looked up at him. "Thank you."
He reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear the way he did, his hand staying against her face for a second.
"Stop thanking me," he said.
"Stop doing things worth thanking you for."
He almost smiled.
She turned back to the remaining dishes.
He picked up the dish towel.
They finished the washing up in the quiet of the kitchen with Mei’s voice drifting in from the sitting room explaining something to Marcus with great authority, and the estate dark and still outside the windows, and everything where it was supposed to be.
Later, when Mei had gone home and Marcus had gone wherever Marcus went when the day was done, Aria was in bed reading when Damien came in and sat on the edge.
"I want to show you something tomorrow," he said.
She looked up from her book. "What."
"The greenhouse."
She looked at him.
The greenhouse. She knew what was in the greenhouse. She’d known since the first week she was here, the first time she’d walked the grounds with her maid’s map and her maid’s careful attention to everything and located the one place she’d come for.
The Vitalis Radix.
She’d never gone back. Not after everything. Not after the real reason she’d come became the smallest part of the story and everything else became larger.
"Why," she said.
"Because it’s yours," he said simply. "I had Morrison confirm the dosage requirements. I had the cultivation team verify the yield." He looked at her steadily. "Since your mother’s treatment. It’s already being handled. Has been since...." He paused. "For a while."
She stared at him.
"Damien."
"I should have told you sooner. I kept meaning to and then everything kept happening." He held her gaze. "It’s handled, Aria. It’s been handled. Even if her sickness should relapse, she’s not going to need to worry about the treatment."
She looked at him for a long moment.
She thought about the girl who had stood in Dr Morrison’s office and heard the words Vitalis Radix for the first time and felt the shape of a plan forming in her head. The girl who had walked through these gates with a false name and a desperate logic and no idea what she was walking into.
She thought about how far that was from here.
From this bed, this room, this man sitting on the edge of it telling her quietly that her mother was taken care of and had been for a while and he’d just been waiting for the right moment to say so.
She put her book down.
"Come here," she said.
He lay down beside her and she put her head on his chest and he wrapped his arm around her and she looked at the ceiling and didn’t say anything for a long time.
"It started with that plant," she said finally.
"I know."
"I broke into your house for it."
"I know that too."
"And now...." She stopped.
"And now it’s keeping your mother well," he said. "And you’re here." A pause. "And I’m not angry about any of it."
She closed her eyes.
Outside the estate was quiet and dark. The grounds, the greenhouse, the garden she’d been sitting in every morning with her coffee. All of it just...there. Belonging to her life in a way it hadn’t when she arrived and in a way she hadn’t dared to let herself believe until recently.
She pressed closer to him.
He tightened his arm around her.
Neither of them said anything else.
