CHAPTER 19 Delia
Delia
The weeks after finding the journal were not a montage of instant healing or perfect romance.
They were messy. Complicated. Full of days when I couldn’t get out of bed and nights when I woke up crying for my mother.
But they were also full of Axel.
Axel, who wrote the date on the fridge every morning. Not big. Just enough so I didn’t lose the day entirely. Sometimes I stared at it longer than I should have, like it anchored me to something real.
When the fog got heavy, when even lifting my arms felt like too much, he washed my hair for me. Slow. Careful. His hands moved like this was something sacred, not something pitiful. I cried once, quietly, water and grief mixing, and he held me through all of it.
He prepared dinner in the evenings. Food that smelled like being taken care of. He set the plate in front of me while giving me space, the dignity of choosing whether or not I could eat.
When my chest caved in without warning, when a sob slipped out in the middle of the night, he just reached over, steady and sure, and rested his hand against my back like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He never asked me to be better.
He never asked how long it would take.
He just stayed.
It was exactly what I needed even when I didn’t know I needed it.
A month after the journal, I picked up a paintbrush.
Axel was at my kitchen table reviewing something on his laptop. I’d been sitting on the floor in front of a blank canvas for an hour. Just sitting. Staring. Trying to find the courage to start.
“You’re thinking too hard,” he said without looking up.
“I’m not thinking at all.”
“You’re definitely thinking. I can hear it from here.”
I threw a paint rag at him. He caught it without looking up from his screen. Show-off.
“Just paint something,” he said. “Anything. Stop waiting for it to be perfect.”
“What if it’s terrible?”
“Then it’s terrible. Paint something else after.”
“That’s not helpful advice.”
“It’s extremely helpful advice. You’re just being stubborn.”
I was being stubborn. I knew I was being stubborn.
But picking up the brush felt like admitting I was moving forward—like I was leaving my mother behind. Like creating something meant I was okay and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be okay yet.
“Your mom would want you to paint,” Axel said quietly. Like he could read my mind. “She’d want you to create. To make something beautiful out of all this ugly.”
He was right. That sounded exactly like my mom.
I picked up the brush.
What came out wasn’t beautiful. It was raw. Bare. Colors representing grief that kept slipping out of me. Reds and blacks and grays that looked like they were fighting each other on the canvas.
I painted my mother’s garden. The journal. I painted invisibility becoming visible. Patience becoming presence.
Axel watched me work from his spot at the table. Didn’t offer advice or try to interpret what I was creating. He just existed nearby while I bled onto canvas.
When I finally stepped back hours later, my hands were covered in paint and my face was wet with tears I didn’t remember crying.
“It’s good,” Axel said.
“You’re biased.”
“I’m honest. It’s so beautiful.”
“It’s angry.”
“You’re angry. Makes sense your art would be too.”
I looked at the canvas. At the chaos I’d created. “It’s not what people would want to see.”
“Who cares what people want to see? Paint what you need to paint.”
“That’s not how making a living as an artist works.”
“Then don’t make a living. Paint for yourself.”
“Easy for the billionaire to say.”
“Easy for the person who loves you to say.” He closed his laptop. He walked to stand beside me. “Your art doesn’t exist to make people comfortable. It exists because you need to create. Everything else is just noise.”
I leaned against him. He wrapped his arm around my waist and we stared at the canvas together.
“My mother loved my art,” I said quietly.
“I know.”
“She was the first person who told me I was good at something. That I could make beauty.”
“You still can.”
“Even when it looks like this?”
“You’re beautiful, Delia. Everything you create is.”
Sunday dinner happened at Daniel’s apartment now.
His apartment was modern and sterile—nothing like Mom’s warm, chaotic space. But it was neutral ground. A place we could rebuild family dinners without her ghost sitting at every empty chair.
Maria came. Sarah came with Lily. Axel came because he was mine now and I wasn’t hiding that anymore.
We ate takeout because none of us could cook like Mom. We told stories about her. We cried and laughed and learned how to exist in her absence.
After dinner, Daniel pulled me aside.
“I’m glad you’re letting Axel back in,” he said.
“Me too.”
“I was worried. Those weeks you wouldn’t talk to anyone…” His voice tightened. “I thought I was losing you too.”
The guilt hit sharp and immediate. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Grief makes people do strange things. I understand.” He paused. “Mom would be happy about you and Axel, too.”
I didn’t answer right away. I just stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him. He stiffened for half a second, surprised, then hugged me back just as tight, his chin resting on the top of my head like it used to when we were kids.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, muffled against his chest. “For scaring you. Again.”
He let out a small breath, something between a laugh and a sigh. “You don’t get rid of me that easily.” He pulled back just enough to look at me. “I love you, little sis.”
My throat closed, but I smiled. “I love you too, Danny.”
He squeezed me once more before letting go—warm and familiar, like being reminded I wasn’t alone after all.
One evening, Axel took me to the museum he’d built five years earlier.
He’d told me once—sitting in my mother’s bedroom—that I was the reason he did any of it. That his work, his obsession with light and space and preservation, had started with the way I saw the world. I hadn’t known what to do with that kind of confession then. It had felt too big. Too undeserved.
A gallery designed with my work in mind. A promise waiting patiently for a version of me I hadn’t been ready to become.
There was no ceremony as we walked in. No announcement.
Just Axel beside me, his attention fixed on me in that quiet way he had, like the night belonged to us alone.
I wore a simple dress, soft fabric skimming my knees, something I’d chosen without much thought but that suddenly felt like enough.
Like I didn’t have to dress up to deserve any of this.
Walking beside him now, I looked around in fascination.
Axel didn’t just collect art. He built places where it could breathe.
Where it could wait without being forgotten.
Every wall, every corridor, was about giving fragile things a chance to exist without apology.
Standing there, I realized his work wasn’t about legacy or prestige.
It was about faith. About believing something quiet and unfinished could still matter.
The thought settled warm and heavy in my chest.
I looked at him as we walked—dark blonde hair catching the light, grey eyes thoughtful and steady, the kind of man people trusted without quite knowing why. There was an ease to him, a charm that didn’t perform. He moved through the space like it belonged to him, but his attention never left me.
Love crept in softly. It had been there before—but never this overwhelming. Deeper. Truer.
I felt it then, clear and undeniable. I wasn’t just proud of him. I was in awe of him. Of the way he built his life around patience. Around belief. Around me.
“Here it is,” he said, leading me toward a smaller, more intimate gallery. Intimate. The evening sunlight streamed through tall windows designed to shift with the day, the light soft and forgiving, the kind that made colors breathe.
“This room was designed for emerging artists,” Axel said, though I knew he wasn’t really explaining it for my benefit. “Artists whose work deserves to be seen before the world decides whether it’s worthy.”
He stepped closer. “I’ve been imagining you in this room for five years,” he said softly. “I wanted it ready the moment you were.”
That did it.
The tears came quietly, spilling over before I even realized they were there. Not from sadness. From being seen. From realizing someone had believed in me long before I believed in myself.
I was still brushing them away when footsteps approached.
The curator I’d met years ago at a museum opening paused when she saw me, recognition blooming into a warm smile.
“Delia Santoro,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to finally meet you here.”
“Hi, Caroline. Sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”
“I work here.” She looked at Axel. “I see you finally brought her to her room.”
“Everyone knew about this?” I turned to Axel, who wore a sheepish grin.
“Axel’s been calling it Delia’s gallery since we opened. He drove the design team crazy making sure every detail was perfect.” Caroline studied me. “Have you been painting? We’ve been waiting for the day to see your art here.”
I looked at Axel again, still overwhelmed by everything, then I turned to Caroline, “Some. Recently.”
“May I see?”
I pulled up photos on my phone with shaking hands. The raw emotional pieces I’d been creating. Processing my mother’s death through color and chaos.
Caroline scrolled through them in silence. Studied each one carefully. Finally looked up. “This is stunning work.”
She handed back my phone. “We’re curating an emerging artists showcase in three months. Would you consider submitting?”
My heart stopped. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. This caliber of work deserves to be seen.”
I looked at Axel. He was trying not to smile. Trying to look neutral. Failing spectacularly.
“Yes,” I said before fear could talk me out of it. “I’ll submit.”
That night at Axel’s penthouse, I couldn’t stay still.
I paced from the windows to the couch and back again. “I can’t do this,” I said for what had to be the seventh time. “I’m calling Caroline. I’ll tell her I changed my mind.”
Axel looked up from where he was leaning against the counter, watching me like this was mildly entertaining. “You’re not.”
“I’m serious. Putting my work out there means people get opinions. Loud ones. On the internet.”
“They’ll have opinions no matter what,” he said calmly.
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s reality.”
I stopped pacing long enough to glare at him. “Being seen means being judged. Possibly rejected.”
He tilted his head, considering me. “You survived our first week of living together at your place. You’ll survive this too.”
I scoffed. “You’re comparing art critics to living with you?”
“According to you, I was very difficult to handle.”
That earned a reluctant smile, which only annoyed me further. “You’re enjoying this.”
“A little,” he admitted. “You always get this dramatic right before you do something brave.”
“I am not brave. I’m spiraling.”
“Same thing, different outfit.”
I shook my head, laughing despite myself. “You’re impossible.”
He crossed the room then, close enough that my pacing finally stalled. His arms wrapped around my waist.“You don’t have to be fearless,” he said, softer now. “You just have to show up.”
I looked at him, a second ticked, then two, almost like magic, I felt the panic loosen its grip.
“You’re annoyingly good at this,” I said, the panic loosening its grip.
“At you?” His mouth curved. “I’ve had practice.”
I exhaled, leaning into him without thinking. “I hate that you’re right.”
He kissed the top of my head, unhurried. “You love that I’m right.”
I did. God help me, I did.
The next six weeks were obsessive painting.
I created six pieces for the showcase. Each representing something different. Loss. Isolation. Choice. Love. Growth.
I titled the collection “Seventeen Years” and didn’t explain the name to anyone except Axel.
Sarah visited with Gianna, who’d just returned from her honeymoon. They stood in my apartment studying each piece in silence.
Finally Sarah said, “This is the best work you’ve ever done.”
“You’re my best friend. You have to say that.”
“I’m your best friend which means I’d tell you if it was terrible.” She looked at me directly. “Your mother would be proud.”
Gianna nodded. “She’d be insufferably proud. Would tell every person she met about her daughter the famous artist.”
The comment made me laugh and cry at the same time—the exact combination grief always seemed to demand.
Three days before the opening, I went to Mom’s memorial garden.
The bench Daniel and I had installed overlooked her favorite flowers. The plaque read: Elena Santoro - She taught us to see beauty.
I sat and talked to her like she was there.
“I found your journal, Mom. The one you kept to remember things.” My voice caught.
The wind rustled through the flowers.
“I’m showing my work. At the museum. The one Axel built.” I wiped my face. “I’m terrified. But I’m doing it anyway, because you always said I was too good to hide.”
More wind. Stronger this time.
“I know you’re happy now. With Dad. No more disease. No more forgetting.” I took a shaky breath. “Bless us from there, okay? Me and Axel. Me and Daniel. Bless us the way you always did.”
The breeze moved through the garden, warm and gentle and somehow like a hug.
I chose to believe it was Mom—saying she knew, that she was proud, that she’d been waiting for me to finally see what she’d seen all along.