Chapter 6: The Salt Garden
In Maine, the weeks turned into months, measured not by society galas, but by the quiet turning of the tides.
Clara spent her days walking along the rocky coastline with Evelyn bundled warmly against her chest in a canvas carrier. The cold Atlantic winds brought color back to her cheeks; the constant, rhythmic crash of the waves against the granite bluffs washed the lingering poison of Tristan’s gaslighting from her mind.
She transformed the cottage’s overgrown backyard into a productive, organic coastal garden.
With Hannah’s guidance, Clara learned to enrich the rocky soil with dried kelp and composted pine needles. She planted heirloom root vegetables, wild strawberries, and hardy medicinal herbs like chamomile, elderberry, and lavender.
Her smooth, manicured hands—once adorned with diamonds that had felt like golden handcuffs—became strong, capable, and lined with honest dirt.
In the afternoons, she sat at her mother’s old upright piano in the living room, playing gentle lullabies for Evelyn as the afternoon sun flooded the timber floorboards with golden light.
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Evelyn was thriving. Her big, curious hazel eyes followed every movement of the gulls outside the window, her soft baby giggles filling the cottage with an innocent, untroubled joy that made Clara’s heart feel whole again.
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