The flight to London takes seven hours of pretending I'm not running away from everything I should be facing.
I leave Miles a note because I'm apparently incapable of having difficult conversations in person. It says: "Need to do something before everything is decided. Back soon. Don't fix any spreadsheets without me."
Cowardly? Absolutely. But the board vote is in two days, and I can't walk into that room without understanding why my father became the kind of man who'd sabotage his own daughter.
The answer lives in a gallery in Notting Hill.
Elisabeth Marchand—she dropped "Valmont" like a hot stock tip the moment the divorce finalized—runs a small art gallery specializing in contemporary pieces that probably mean something profound to people with more emotional intelligence than me.
I've known about it for years. Tracked her career through Google alerts I told myself were purely informational.
I stand outside for twenty minutes, watching through the window like the world's worst stalker. She's inside, rearranging a sculpture that looks like chrome intestines having an existential crisis.
Her hair is grayer than I remember, cut shorter, but she moves with the same deliberate grace that used to make me feel clumsy by comparison.
My mother. The woman who vanished when I was fifteen and left nothing but a note and my father's carefully constructed explanations.
The bell chimes when I enter. Elisabeth looks up, and her expression doesn't change—not surprise, not joy, not even the performative warmth you'd expect from someone seeing their estranged daughter for the first time in eleven years.
"Aurelia." She sets down the catalog she's holding. "I wondered when you'd come."
"You were expecting me?"
"For years, actually. I assumed you'd show up eventually, demanding answers. You always were persistent—got that from Laurent, unfortunately." She gestures toward a door at the back. "Come. This isn't a conversation for the gallery floor."
Her office is small, cluttered with art catalogs and empty coffee cups. She doesn't offer me tea or a seat, just leans against her desk and studies me with eyes that are exactly like mine.
"You've seen the news, I assume," I say. "The scandal. The leaked arrangement."
"I don't follow Valmont business news. Deliberately." She crosses her arms. "But I suspect you didn't fly six thousand miles to discuss tabloid coverage."
"I came because I need to understand." My voice sounds steadier than I feel. "Why you left. Why Father is the way he is. Why our family seems genetically predisposed to destroying everything we touch."
Elisabeth's laugh is short, humorless. "Straight to the existential crisis. Very efficient." She moves to the window. "What has Laurent told you about my departure?"
"That you had a breakdown. That the pressure of the family became too much. That you needed space to 'find yourself' and that space apparently required an ocean and complete radio silence for over a decade."
"Generous of him. And entirely fictional." She turns back to face me. "Do you want the truth, Aurelia? The actual truth, not the version that lets everyone maintain their comfortable narratives?"
"That's why I'm here."
"Then sit down. This is going to hurt."
I sink into a chair that's seen better decades. Elisabeth remains standing—power positioning, I recognize dimly.
"I never wanted children." The words land like stones. "I got pregnant accidentally during a period when Laurent and I were attempting to repair a marriage that was already fractured beyond recognition. He convinced me to keep you—said you deserved both parents, that we could make it work, that love would come with time."
My chest feels like someone's performing surgery without anesthesia. "And did it? Come with time?"
"I tried to perform it. For years, I performed motherhood like it was a role in a play I'd never auditioned for. But I felt nothing beyond obligation." Her voice is clinical, detached. "Growing resentment, eventually. Not toward you specifically—toward the life I'd never chosen, the expectations I couldn't meet, the constant performance of being someone I wasn't."
"So you left."
"So I left. Because the alternative was drowning in a life that was slowly killing me, and taking everyone else down with me." She moves to sit across from me, finally at eye level. "I'm not apologizing, Aurelia. Some people aren't meant to be mothers. Pretending otherwise helps no one."
The brutal efficiency of her honesty is almost impressive. Almost.
"Why didn't Father tell me any of this?" My voice cracks despite my best efforts. "He let me believe you abandoned us. Let me build my entire understanding of relationships around the idea that love turns toxic."
Elisabeth's expression shifts—something almost like sympathy. "Because he loved you enough to become the villain."
"What?"
"Think about it. What's easier for a child to process: 'Your mother left because she couldn't handle the pressure,' or 'Your mother never wanted you and felt nothing but obligation for fifteen years'?" She leans forward.
"Laurent chose to let you hate him for driving me away rather than let you know the truth—that I simply didn't want you. His controlling behavior, his inability to connect, his constant management of every situation—it's all twisted protection.”
Her eyes are cold just like my chest. “Fear of saying the wrong thing. Terror of you discovering that your mother's absence wasn't his fault."
The revelation reframes everything. Every cold dinner, every missed recital, every time Father steamrolled my opinions—not pure power hunger, but a man desperately trying to fill a role he was never supposed to play alone.
"The sabotage," I manage. "Leaking the arrangement. That was protection too?"
"Probably his version of it. Laurent has always believed he knows best. Catastrophically wrong, often. But motivated by something other than malice." Elisabeth stands. "I'm not asking for forgiveness, Aurelia. I'm not capable of being the mother you needed. But you deserved to know the truth."
I stand on legs that feel borrowed. "That's it? Eleven years of silence and you just—explain it like a business transaction?"
"Would you prefer I perform maternal regret I don't feel?" Her voice is gentle now, which somehow makes it worse. "I could cry, apologize, promise to do better. But we both know that would be another lie, and you came here for truth."
She's right. I hate that she's right.
"Some people aren't meant to be mothers," Elisabeth repeats. "I'm one of them. Accepting that freed me. Maybe accepting it can free you too."
I leave the gallery feeling cracked open, every assumption about my family scattered like shattered glass. The London air is cold, damp, exactly as unwelcoming as everything I've just learned.
My mother never wanted me. My father became a monster to protect me from that truth. The controlling behavior I've spent years resenting was fear wearing a power suit.
I walk for an hour through streets I don't recognize, processing revelations that refuse to organize themselves into anything manageable.
My phone buzzes. Miles: "Whatever you're doing, I'm here when you're back. No spreadsheets touched. Promise."
I stare at the message until the screen blurs. He's there. He's always been there—not because obligation required it, but because he chose it. Because he wanted to be.
Maybe that's what love actually looks like. Not performed devotion or twisted protection. Just showing up. Choosing to stay.
I book the next flight home.