Tides That Don't Return

Chapter 2

Chapter Two: She is Done Been the Loser

Serena stopped on the bottom step, hand frozen on the banister.

Marta chuckled softly. “And your mama’s birthday? Did you remember to wish her this morning?”

A tiny pause.

“I… I forgot again,” Livia whispered. “Please don’t tell her. She’ll be sad, and I don’t want to ruin tomorrow for Dad and Aunt Mara.”

Serena closed her eyes, breathed in the scent of coffee and orange blossom, and felt the last fragile thread of the day snap inside her chest.

Livia’s small voice carried clearly up the stairwell.

“Daddy and I already promised Aunt Mara we’d take her to the hidden cove tomorrow. If Mommy tags along it’ll be weird. She’s always so cold to Aunt Mara anyway.”

Marta gasped. “Livia Valmonte! That is your mother you’re speaking of. You mustn’t say such things.”

“I know, but Daddy and I like Aunt Mara better. Why can’t she just be my mom instead?”

The words struck Serena like a slap. She couldn’t hear Marta’s stammered reply; blood was roaring too loudly in her ears.

She had raised Livia herself for the first seven years, every fever, every bedtime story, every scraped knee. Then, over the last two years, the more weekends Luca spent in San Elarios “growing the business,” the tighter Livia had wound herself around him and around Mara, his ever-smiling, ever-helpful younger sister. When the new coastal headquarters opened last year, Livia had begged to transfer schools and live with her father. Serena had fought it, but the sight of her daughter’s tear-streaked face had broken her. She agreed, believing love meant letting go.

Now it seemed letting go meant being erased.

Serena stood paralysed on the stairs, the colour drained from her lips. She had come to San Elarios hoping to stitch the fraying threads of her family back together. The trip suddenly felt pointless.

She turned, walked back to the guest suite, and began folding the birthday gifts she had bought in three different countries, hand-stitched pyjamas for Elio, rare watercolours for Livia, the silk tie Luca would probably never wear, returning each one carefully into the suitcase.

Later, Marta knocked softly. “I’ve taken Miss Livia to the beach with her friends, señora. She’ll be gone all afternoon… in case you need anything.”

Serena only nodded. She sat on the edge of the bed feeling weightless, as though the woman who had boarded the jet yesterday had dissolved mid-flight.

She had sacrificed board meetings, delayed contracts, and cancelled speaking tours to be here. And for what? To discover she was an unwelcome guest in her own house.

Eventually she drifted through the villa’s silent corridors and out into the blinding noon light. By noon, she remembered, she and Luca were meant to have lunch. She had even reserved the corner table at La Sirena, the little seaside place where they’d celebrated their engagement.

She was still debating whether to go home or wait when her phone buzzed.

Luca: Something came up at noon. Lunch is cancelled.

No apology. No explanation. No punctuation.

Serena stared at the screen until the letters blurred. She had once rearranged continents for this man; now he couldn’t rearrange an hour.

Disappointment? She was long past that. What she felt now was closer to anaesthesia, cold, heavy, complete.

Aimless, she drove to La Sirena anyway. She was about to step inside when she glanced through the plate-glass window.

There, at their old corner table beneath the fishing nets, sat Luca, Mara, and Livia. Livia was laughing, her small hand resting on Mara’s arm while Luca leaned in, showing them something on his phone. The three of them looked… complete. Sunlit. Easy.

Serena stood on the pavement a long moment, the sea wind whipping her hair across her face. Then she turned, walked back to her car, and closed the door without a sound.

Inside La Sirena, Mara sat pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with Livia on the same side of the booth. She teased the girl’s ponytail, stole bites of her pastel de nata, and laughed in that bright, effortless way that made everyone feel lighter. Livia swung her legs happily, leaning into Mara the way she once leaned into Serena.

Luca served them both from the shared plates, his eyes never straying far from Mara’s face, as if the rest of the room had blurred into watercolour. This was the “something” that had come up. This was the priority that cancelled his wife on her birthday.

Serena watched them through the glass for a long, airless minute. Then she turned and drove away.

Back at Villa Azura she opened her laptop, pulled a template from her firm’s legal drive, and drafted a divorce agreement. The words appeared on the screen with clinical calm: dissolution of marriage, division of assets, custody arrangements. She read it twice, signed it electronically, printed two copies, and sealed one in a heavy cream envelope.

Luca had once been the boy every girl in their coastal town sighed over. Serena had been sixteen when she first saw him leaning against the pier railing, sun-bleached hair, reckless grin. She had spent years believing that if she simply loved him hard enough, he would finally look back and really see her.

He never had.

If it hadn’t been for one rain-soaked night and the weight of his grandfather Rafael’s expectations, he would never have put a ring on her finger at all.

Eleven years of marriage. Almost seven years since Livia was born. Seven years of hoping the next promotion, the next apology, the next promise would be the one that made him stay.

She was done hoping. She left the envelope on the marble console in the entrance hall with Marta’s name scrawled across it.

“Make sure Señor Luca gets this the moment he returns,” she told the housekeeper. Her voice sounded steady, almost like someone else’s.

Marta’s eyes filled with alarm, but Serena was already dragging her suitcase across the terracotta tiles.

“To the airport,” she said to the waiting driver, climbing into the back seat without looking back.

As the car rolled down the winding cliff road, the villa shrank in the rear-view mirror until it was nothing more than a white speck against the turquoise sea. Serena rested her head against the cool window and closed her eyes.

For the first time in years, the ache in her chest felt clean, like a wound finally lanced instead of left to fester.