Chapter 226: I’m This State Of Inertia…

ADRIEN’S POV

The first thing I notice about Louise’s funeral is how clean everything looks.

The grass has been trimmed, the gravel paths have been swept, and the white flowers arranged around her grave appear untouched by the rain falling over the cemetery.

Even the people attending have been carefully arranged.

They stand in small, respectable groups, dressed in black, speaking in low voices and offering one another the occasional sympathetic glance.

There is something almost offensive about the orderliness of it all.

Two days ago, Louise died in a hotel bathroom. Her final hours were surrounded by locked doors, unanswered questions, and the sort of silence that makes a place feel haunted long after everyone has left it.

There was nothing peaceful about the discovery of her body. Nothing about the circumstances invited the gentle mourning people now seem determined to offer her.

Yet here we are.

A priest reads from a small book while two men stand beside a polished mahogany casket. A woman behind me quietly blows her nose into a white handkerchief. Somewhere to my left, somebody whispers a prayer.

The ceremony continues without interruption.

I look at the casket.

It is an expensive thing, made from polished wood with brass handles and a smooth, shining surface.

The flowers resting on top are white roses, arranged in a manner that suggests somebody has spent a considerable amount of money making sure Louise receives a respectable farewell.

I wonder whether she would have liked them.

The thought comes unexpectedly, and I almost laugh.

Would Louise have liked white roses? Would she have complained about the arrangement? Would she have preferred something more expensive, something that made people turn their heads when they entered the cemetery?

I cannot answer any of those questions.

That is perhaps the strangest part of standing here. I have known Louise for years. I have lived through family dinners, arguments, humiliations, and enough unpleasant encounters with her to last several lifetimes.

I have seen her furious, amused, spiteful, and occasionally so quiet that her silence made me more uncomfortable than her insults.

I have known the sound of her footsteps in the corridors of the Dubois manor. I have recognised her perfume before she entered a room.

I have known exactly which expression would appear on her face whenever she saw me standing before Alice.

And yet, I cannot say that I knew her.

The person being lowered into the earth feels like a stranger.

A cold breeze passes through the cemetery, lifting the edges of my coat. I tighten my fingers around the handle of the umbrella Orion is holding above us. His own hand rests over mine, keeping the umbrella steady despite the wind.

He has said very little since we arrived.

Then again, Orion rarely feels the need to fill silence simply because other people are uncomfortable with it.

He stands beside me in a black suit, his expression composed, his attention seemingly fixed on the ceremony.

His presence attracts occasional glances from the other mourners, but nobody approaches him. Maybe they are intimidated by him. Maybe they simply understand that this is not the occasion to demand his attention.

I am grateful for that because I have no desire to speak to anyone.

My eyes return to the casket.

Louise spent years making sure I knew how much she disliked me. She never needed to explain it. Her expressions did that work for her.

Sometimes she would smile at me with such unpleasant sweetness that I would spend the next several minutes wondering what she had planned.

She knew where to strike.

She knew which subjects to bring up at dinner, which memories to mention, and which names would make my stomach tighten. She had an unfortunate talent for making even the simplest conversation feel like an accusation.

But there were moments when I caught something else in her. Something I could never quite identify.

I remember the way she looked at me when she spoke of Alice during our final confrontation. It was not ordinary anger.

There was something old and personal in it, something that seemed to have been growing for years. Louise had spoken of her as though she was a person she had once loved and had spent the rest of her life trying to forgive.

I still do not understand what happened between them.

I know enough about us to understand that affection was never a simple thing in the Dubois household.

People loved one another and punished one another for it. They protected their own interests while calling it loyalty. They destroyed relationships and then complained about the damage.

Perhaps Louise was simply another person shaped by that environment.

But that does not explain everything.

Why did she want to hurt Alice so badly? Why did she choose to expose certain things when she knew the consequences would reach beyond the people she intended to wound? Why did she drag my name into matters that had very little to do with me?

And why, after everything, did she leave me with those words?

What an underwhelming dream you have, Adrien Dubois.

I hear her voice as clearly as though she is standing beside me.

It is an unpleasant memory.

She had looked at me when she said it, and there had been something almost amused in her expression. Not happiness. Not satisfaction. Something harder to recognise.

I remember wondering what she meant. I still wonder.

Perhaps she was mocking me. Louise had always possessed a talent for making ordinary words sound like personal attacks. Perhaps she simply could not resist delivering one final insult before leaving me with the consequences of her actions.

But there is another possibility I cannot dismiss.

Perhaps she was referring to something I have never understood.

I look down at the white roses again. I wonder whether she had ever genuinely cared about anyone.

My thoughts return to the girl I remember from years ago.

Not the woman who spent the last several years moving through our lives like an approaching storm, but somebody younger, somebody who had not yet learned how to turn every feeling into a weapon.

We were not friends in the way ordinary children were friends, but there were years when our lives overlapped without the bitterness that eventually came to define them.