Franz guided her to the couch before she could protest.

"Sit," he said. "Rest. I’ll handle the sorting."

Arianne opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. The tears had left her drained, her body heavy with an exhaustion that had nothing to do with the pregnancy. She lowered herself onto the small couch, her hand finding its familiar place on her belly, and held herself motionless. The baby moved, a small flutter like a fish turning in deep water, and she focused on that sensation instead of the photographs scattered across the shelf.

Franz rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

He started with the desk, opening drawers one by one and bringing their contents to the coffee table in front of her. Documents. Music sheets, their edges yellowed with age, the ink faded but legible. Contracts bearing Ysabella’s elegant signature. Property deeds for land Arianne hadn’t known her mother owned. The pile grew steadily, and Arianne sorted through it methodically, separating what needed to be kept from what could be discarded.

"These are organized," she said, her voice neutral. "My father’s things were chaos. Hers are—"

"Efficient," Franz finished. "She knew where everything was."

"Yes."

He moved to the bookshelves next. More documents were tucked between leather-bound volumes, along with small objects: a porcelain bird, a glass paperweight, a silver letter opener. He brought each item to Arianne for inspection, and she set each one aside with the same careful attention.

She hadn’t spoken much since her outburst. Franz didn’t push. He worked steadily, glancing at her occasionally as he moved through the room. She was sorting papers with the same focus she brought to everything, but her eyes were distant. The discovery of the photographs had unsettled something in her, something she hadn’t yet found words for.

What she’d said earlier stayed with him. All my life, I thought she never cared. And now she was sitting in her mother’s private studio, surrounded by evidence that suggested otherwise. Photographs of every milestone. A hidden collection of moments her mother had preserved in secret. It didn’t erase the coldness. It didn’t excuse the distance. But it complicated the narrative Arianne had carried for decades, and Franz watched her trying to reconcile the two versions of Ysabella—the mother who kept her at arm’s length and the mother who kept her photographs in a locked room.

Under different circumstances, things might have been different. If her father hadn’t named her after a dead woman. If Ysabella hadn’t been forced into a marriage she didn’t want. If any of the choices that had shaped Arianne’s childhood had been made differently. But there was no changing the past. There was only this room, and these photographs, and the slow, painful work of understanding.

"Discarding everything would be impossible," Arianne said, setting down a stack of music sheets. "These aren’t my things. But they’re my parents’ belongings. It’s not easy to throw them away."

"I understand." Franz opened another drawer. "But the guest house can’t hold everything in this estate. We need to be selective—the essentials, the things that matter most."

"I’ll ask Gio about selling some of the furniture. The older pieces might have value to antique dealers."

"That’s a good idea."

He opened the next drawer and found a stack of old photo envelopes. More pictures. He opened the first one and a smile crossed his face before he could stop it.

Young Arianne, perhaps three years old, sitting in a patch of sunlight on the floor of the living room. Her dark hair was a mess of curls, and she was laughing at something off-camera, her mouth open, her eyes bright. In another, she was maybe six, dressed in a school uniform a size too big, clutching a backpack almost as large as she was. In another, she was eight or nine, standing beside the piano in the living room, her small hands poised over the keys, her expression serious and proud.

She smiled in every picture, a real smile, unguarded and bright, the kind he rarely saw on her face now. She had probably stopped smiling like that after her parents died. After she found her mother’s body. After the weight of everything that followed.

"What are you looking at?" Arianne asked.

"More pictures of you." He crossed to the couch and sat beside her, handing her the stack. "You were adorable."

She glanced at the photographs. Her expression flickered—something soft, something painful—before settling back into neutrality. "I was young."

"You were happy."

"I didn’t know any better yet."

She looked at one photograph for a long moment, a picture of herself at five, holding a crayon drawing up to the camera, beaming with pride. Then she set it down with the others.

"If she cared enough to keep these," she said, her voice low, "why did she keep her distance? Why the coldness? Why the room I wasn’t allowed to enter?"

Franz didn’t have an answer. He didn’t think there was one she would find satisfying.

"I don’t know," he said. "But maybe—" He stopped. "Maybe the journals will tell you."

She looked up at him. "What journals?"

"I haven’t found any yet. But a woman who kept this many photographs, who preserved every milestone in secret—she might have written things down too. Thoughts she couldn’t say aloud." He stood. "Let me keep looking."

Arianne didn’t respond. She turned her attention back to the photographs, her fingers tracing the edge of one picture, and Franz returned to his work.

He finished with the bookshelves and moved to a row of leather-bound volumes against the far wall. Some were old novels, their spines cracked with age. Others were reference books, art history, music theory, the kind of texts a woman of Ysabella’s education would have collected. He ran his fingers along the spines, checking for anything tucked between the pages, and that was when he found it.

Behind the books. A small safe, recessed into the wall. It was old, mechanical, with a combination dial that had probably been installed decades ago.

He didn’t ask Arianne for the code. He tried her birthday. The dial turned. The safe clicked open.

Inside were more documents, Conway family papers, property deeds under Ysabella’s name, legal records that would need to be reviewed. And beneath them, arranged in careful chronological order, were fourteen leather-bound journals.

Franz picked up the first one. The cover was worn at the edges, the leather soft with age. He opened it to the first page and read the date. The year Arianne was born. The first entry was dated several months before her birth.

I felt the baby move today. Something I was not prepared for. Not the sensation — I knew it was coming. But the fear that arrived with it. I am going to be someone’s mother. I don’t know if I am capable of that. I don’t know if I have what it takes, or if what I have to give will be enough. What if I hold her and feel nothing? What if she looks at me one day and knows?

Franz closed the journal immediately.

Reading it felt like intruding. These were not his words to read. These were Ysabella’s private thoughts, written in her own hand, meant for no one but herself. The one who should read them was Arianne. Not him.

He gathered all fourteen journals and carried them to the coffee table. He set them down, the stack heavy and solid, fourteen years of a woman’s innermost thoughts.

"I found your mother’s journals," he said. "Fourteen of them. They start the year you were born."

Arianne stared at the stack. Her face was unreadable, but her hands—her hands had gone motionless on the photographs in her lap. She didn’t reach for the journals. She didn’t speak. She looked at them, her dark eyes fixed on the worn leather covers, and the silence stretched between them like something fragile.

Franz waited. He didn’t push. He knew she would read them when she was ready. Or she wouldn’t. Either way, the choice was hers.

After a long moment, Arianne stood. Her movements were careful and contained, the way they always were when she was holding something back. "I should check on the twins. They’ve been with Aunt Estella for a while."

"Arianne."

"I’ll be back."

She walked to the door. Her hand rested on the frame for a breath—a hesitation so brief he almost missed it. Then she stepped into the hallway, and her footsteps faded down the corridor.

Franz stayed where he was. The journals sat on the coffee table, unopened. Fourteen volumes of her mother’s thoughts. Fourteen years of words Arianne had never known existed.

He looked around the studio, at the violin on its stand, the cello in the corner, the covered canvases against the wall. At the photographs of a smiling girl who had stopped smiling too young. At the journals that might explain why.

Then he stood and resumed sorting. There was work left to do. And Arianne would come back when she was ready.