Maris nodded slowly. She felt no surge of triumph, no lingering bitter spark of spite. Hearing about his decline felt as distant as reading about an unfamiliar company’s liquidation in a financial journal.
“Do you ever think about going back?” Eleanor asked quietly. “Not to him. But to… any of it?”
“No,” Maris said softly. “Revenge would mean I built all of this just for him. I didn’t. I built it for me.”
She walked over to her desk, picked up a small, framed photo, and set it near the window. It wasn’t a picture of her modern corporate headquarters, nor was it a shot of her graduation. It was a simple, faded photograph of a ten-year-old girl sitting alone at a quiet desk, pencil in hand, drawing stars in the late-night light.
Maris turned back to her mother, offering a calm, unshakeable smile.
“I spent my whole life waiting for someone to build a chair for me at his table,” Maris said, looking out over the endless horizon of the city below. “Turns out, the sky has a much better view.”
