Chapter 483: Nothing That Mattered Enough

Dinner had run long with everyone catching up at once, Kyle’s amusement park stories, Gilbert’s clean report from Yunxia, and Arianne still hadn’t said a word about her own afternoon. Lexx had given up fighting sleep somewhere around his third yawn, slumped against Franz’s shoulder, one small hand splayed flat over his chest, feeling for the heartbeat instead of fighting it the rest of the way down. Franz kept swaying anyway, more habit than necessity at this point. Arianne leaned against the doorframe still in the blouse she’d worn to the school pickup, arms crossed loosely, and watched the two of them for a while before she said anything.

"I ran into Diana today. At the twins’ school, when I picked them up."

Franz’s rocking didn’t stop, but his eyes came up to hers. "That’s not a name I expected to hear tonight."

"Neither did I." Arianne came in and took the rocking chair across from him, kicking off her shoes and tucking one leg underneath herself, low enough that their voices wouldn’t reach past the room. "She asked to talk. We went to a cafe near the school while the kids ate cake."

"And?"

"She apologized. Eight years late, but she said it to my face instead of leaving it as something I heard about secondhand." Arianne kept her voice even, the way she’d told the story to herself twice already before saying it out loud to him. "She also told me she’s filing for divorce. Already filed, actually. It isn’t public yet."

"How did the twins take running into Nicholas? I imagine that complicated the afternoon a little."

"They didn’t know who he was to me. As far as they’re concerned, he’s just a boy who likes the same milkshake flavors Lily does." Arianne almost smiled at that. "They’ve already arranged a playdate. I didn’t have the heart to complicate it for them."

"Good. Let them have that much, at least."

Franz’s rocking paused for a second, processing that against whatever picture of Dominic and Diana he’d been carrying around without examining it too closely. "Diana filed. Not him."

"Diana filed. Dominic’s letting her, from what she said." Arianne watched Lexx’s hand go slack against Franz’s chest, sleep finally winning all the way. "I knew the marriage wasn’t doing well. I didn’t expect either of those two things specifically."

"How do you feel about it?"

The question sat there a second before she answered it, because she’d been asking herself the same thing since the cafe and still didn’t have a clean answer. "Strange, mostly. Not in the way I would have expected."

"Strange how."

"I kept waiting to feel something. Anger, maybe. Some kind of vindication, hearing that her marriage is ending the same way things between him and me ended, just years later and with an actual wedding attached." Arianne folded her hands in her lap, watching Franz rather than the middle distance. "Instead I just felt nothing. Not empty nothing. Just nothing that mattered enough to hold onto."

Franz adjusted Lexx a little higher against his shoulder, giving her the room to keep going without filling the silence himself.

"Those two people caused me more pain than almost anyone else alive once." She said it plainly, no weight thrown behind any single word. "But that was a different version of my life. Whatever damage they did, it happened to someone I used to be, not someone I still am."

"That doesn’t mean you owe them anything for it. Not the nothing, and not forgiveness either."

"I know. I told her that outright, actually. That I didn’t know if I could forgive her, and that feeling nothing didn’t change the answer." Arianne’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. "She said she wasn’t asking for it. I believed her."

Franz didn’t answer right away, and when he spoke, there was no give in it at all. "I’ll never forgive either of them. Not Dominic, not Diana. Whatever you feel or don’t feel about it, that part isn’t up for negotiation on my end."

"You don’t have to carry that for me."

"I’m not carrying it for you. I’m carrying it because of what they did to you, which is different." Franz’s hand found hers over Lexx’s small back, steady in a way that needed no further explanation. "You get to feel nothing if nothing is honest. I get to keep the anger I have on your behalf. Both things can be true in the same room."

Arianne didn’t answer right away, watching the two of them, Lexx’s breathing gone slow and even against Franz’s chest. "For what it’s worth, I don’t need you to be angry for me. I’ve made my peace with all of it a long time ago."

"I know you have." Franz pressed a kiss to the top of Lexx’s head, careful not to wake him. "That doesn’t mean I have to."

She reached over and smoothed a hand down Lexx’s back, the small motion more for herself than for him. "Diana kept custody of Nicholas, at least. He seemed happy that afternoon. Whatever else fell apart around him, that part’s intact."

"Good." Franz stood carefully, Lexx settled fully against him now, dead weight in the particular way only a sleeping child managed. "Let’s get him down. Then you can tell me the rest of it, if there’s more to tell."

"There isn’t. That’s the whole of it." Arianne stood too, following him toward the crib. "Eight years, and it ended in a cafe over milkshakes and cake. I don’t think I expected that either."

Franz laid Lexx down with the same care he used every night, one hand lingering against the small of his back until his breathing settled fully into sleep. Arianne watched him do it from the doorway, the two of them framed in the low nursery light. Eight years ago, none of this would have counted as her life at all, not the room, not the man, not the child sleeping in it now.

"Come to bed," Franz said, once he’d finally straightened. "Whatever’s left of tonight, I’d rather spend it not thinking about either of them."

"That," Arianne said, taking his hand, "sounds like the easiest thing I’ve been asked to do all day."

They left the nursery door open a crack, the way they always did, and walked down the hall together without either of them saying another word about Dominic or Diana for the rest of the night.