Chapter 20 - Better Than Yesterday
Gabriel waited thirty-seven days before asking again.
Emma counted.
She pretended she did not.
He chose an ordinary Sunday morning instead of a ballroom, restaurant, or family event.
No cameras were invited.
No photographers waited outside.
No relatives stood in a circle expecting a performance.
Emma arrived at the Moretti house wearing jeans, a cream sweater, and the expression of someone who had been promised pancakes by two determined little girls.
Ava opened the door before a staff member could.
“Emma!”
She launched herself forward.
Emma caught her.
“You are getting heavy.”
“I am growing.”
“That explains it.”
Lily followed more slowly.
She no longer used the metal walker.
Her right leg still turned slightly when she was tired, and Dr. Chen said strength would continue improving with time.
Lily did not care about the clinical details.
She cared that she could reach Emma without waiting for someone to carry her.
She crossed the foyer in eight careful steps.
Emma crouched.
Lily reached her and wrapped both arms around her neck.
“You did better than yesterday,” Emma whispered.
Gabriel stood near the staircase watching.
The sentence still affected him.
Maybe it always would.
A year earlier, he had measured everything in outcomes.
Revenue.
Votes.
Contracts.
Wins.
Losses.
Emma measured progress against yesterday.
It was a gentler scale and, somehow, a more demanding one.
Pancakes became chaos.
Ava wanted blueberries arranged like a face.
Lily wanted everything Ava had even when she did not like blueberries.
Gabriel burned the first batch because he answered a phone call.
Emma took the phone from his hand and placed it facedown on the counter.
“You made a rule.”
Gabriel looked at it.
“No work calls during breakfast.”
“You remembered.”
“I remember all rules I did not make.”
Ava pointed at the pan.
“Daddy killed the pancake.”
Emma laughed.
Gabriel stared at the blackened circle.
“It had a difficult life.”
After breakfast, the girls went to the garden with Rosa.
Emma helped clear plates despite three people telling her she no longer worked there.
“I know.”
She carried a stack to the sink.
“I am capable of touching dishes voluntarily.”
Gabriel followed her.
“I need five minutes.”
Emma looked suspicious.
“Why?”
“Because apparently surprise has become impossible with you.”
“Good.”
He led her to the sunroom.
The room had changed.
The therapy equipment was mostly gone.
A low shelf held books and puzzles.
Sunlight fell across the rug where Lily had taken her first independent steps.
Emma stopped.
Gabriel stood beside her.
“I almost did this here last time.”
“I remember.”
“You threatened my proposal before I made it.”
“I protected us from bad timing.”
“Yes.”
Emma smiled.
Gabriel did not kneel immediately.
First he handed her a folded piece of paper.
Emma frowned.
“What is this?”
“Read it.”
She unfolded it.
It was not a contract.
It was a copy of Luca's final letter, with private financial sections removed.
One sentence had been underlined.
Do not confuse control with safety.
Emma read it slowly.
Then she looked at Gabriel.
“He wrote that?”
“Yes.”
“He knew you.”
“Unfortunately.”
Emma smiled.
Gabriel continued.
“I spent most of my life believing protection meant having enough power that nobody could make choices I didn't approve.”
Emma listened.
“That worked in business often enough to make me think it worked everywhere.”
He looked through the windows at Lily and Ava in the garden.
“It doesn't.”
Emma folded the letter carefully.
Gabriel took a breath.
“You taught Lily that safety was having room to choose.”
Emma's eyes filled.
“You taught me the same thing.”
“Gabriel.”
“I am not asking because you helped my daughter walk.”
His voice remained steady.
“I am not asking because I owe you.”
“I am not asking because I rescued you, because I didn't.”
Emma's mouth trembled into a small smile.
“You did some rescuing.”
“So did you.”
“Fair.”
Gabriel reached into his pocket.
This time Emma did not stop him.
He opened the ring box but stayed standing.
Emma noticed.
“No knee?”
“I can kneel if you want.”
She laughed through tears.
“That is not the important part.”
“I am learning.”
Gabriel held the ring between them.
“Emma Brooks, will you choose this life with me?”
The wording mattered.
Not become part of my life.
Not let me take care of you.
Choose this life with me.
Emma looked toward the garden.
Ava was trying to convince Lily that a watering can was a musical instrument.
Rosa had given up stopping them.
Emma looked back at Gabriel.
“Yes.”
He exhaled as if he had been holding his breath for thirty-seven days.
Emma smiled.
“You really were nervous.”
“Terrified.”
“Good.”
He laughed and slid the ring onto her finger.
Then he kissed her.
The moment lasted approximately four seconds before Ava burst through the door.
“Did she say yes?”
Gabriel looked at Emma.
“You knew?”
Ava rolled her eyes with the weary patience of a much older person.
“Daddy had a ring.”
Emma laughed.
Lily entered behind her sister.
She saw everyone hugging and immediately demanded inclusion.
The proposal became a four-person pile on the sunroom rug.
Gabriel would later decide it was better that way.
The following months were quieter, though not simple.
Legal proceedings continued.
Celeste faced charges related to financial fraud, forgery, unlawful surveillance, and witness intimidation.
Her attorneys contested parts of the case, and Gabriel refused to predict the final outcome before the courts did.
Marco entered a cooperation agreement that required repayment of substantial misdirected funds and disclosure of financial records.
Harold Vane returned to face proceedings after providing evidence from Zurich.
Dr. Price lost his position at the clinic and faced professional discipline while the fraudulent documents were investigated.
Gabriel did not celebrate their humiliation.
He celebrated distance.
Distance between them and his daughters.
Distance between the old family system and the new one.
The Luca Moretti Trust was restructured under independent professional management.
No relative could use a child's medical condition to obtain unilateral financial authority again.
Recovered money funded two things.
Most returned to the trust and affected businesses.
A portion legally designated from settlement funds established the Elena and Luca Family Mobility Initiative, an independent nonprofit supporting families navigating pediatric rehabilitation costs.
Emma refused to run it alone.
“I am not becoming your charity mascot.”
Gabriel had expected that answer.
“You can join the board with clinicians and parents.”
“That is different.”
“Is that a yes?”
“It is a maybe.”
Three weeks later, it became yes.
A week before the wedding, Emma visited the old nursery alone.
The hidden camera was long gone.
So was the shelf where it had been concealed.
Gabriel had replaced it after Emma admitted she could not look at the books without remembering the lens behind them.
The new shelf was lower, brighter, and impossible to hide anything behind without moving it visibly.
Emma ran her fingers across the wood.
Gabriel appeared at the doorway.
“I can have the room changed completely.”
Emma shook her head.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She looked around.
“I don't want every place where something bad happened erased.”
Gabriel leaned against the doorframe.
“Why not?”
“Because then they still decide what the room becomes.”
He considered that.
Emma picked up the red book with the gold moon.
After investigators returned it, Gabriel had placed it on the new shelf instead of locking it in a safe.
The key was gone, but the story remained.
Emma opened the cover.
“Elena loved this?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever read it to the girls?”
“Not after she died.”
Emma looked at him.
“Too hard?”
“Yes.”
She handed him the book.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
Gabriel took it.
“Why tomorrow?”
Emma smiled.
“Because today you only have to do better than yesterday.”
He laughed softly.
The next evening, Gabriel read the book to Lily and Ava.
His voice broke on the second page.
Ava corrected his character voices.
Lily tried to turn three pages at once.
Nothing about the moment was graceful.
That made it easier.
By the end, Gabriel was laughing.
Emma listened from the hallway and understood that healing did not always arrive as closure.
Sometimes it arrived as reuse.
A room became a nursery again.
A book became a story again.
A camera became equipment instead of a threat.
A family name became something they could choose how to carry rather than something they had to obey.
On the wedding morning, Gabriel asked Dominic to reduce security visibility in the garden.
Dominic looked personally offended.
“You know there will still be security.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you want them farther back?”
Gabriel looked toward the aisle Lily planned to walk.
“Because I want the girls to see people who came to celebrate them, not people scanning for danger.”
Dominic nodded after a moment.
“That is inconveniently reasonable.”
“I have been told I am improving.”
Dominic almost smiled.
“Better than yesterday?”
Gabriel looked at him.
“Exactly.”
Emma continued working at the Queens mobility center.
She completed additional training in family support and rehabilitation assistance.
She never claimed credentials she did not hold.
She also stopped minimizing the experience she did have.
That change mattered to her.
For years, people had treated her life as a collection of deficits.
Too heavy.
Too distracted by family obligations.
Too financially strained.
Not licensed enough.
Not polished enough.
Not convenient enough.
Lily had never cared about any of those things.
The child had cared whether Emma waited.
Whether she stayed calm.
Whether she made the next step feel possible.
Sometimes being seen clearly by a one-year-old was more healing than being approved by a room full of adults.
Gabriel and Emma married the following spring in the garden behind the Moretti house.
The ceremony was deliberately small.
Diane sat in the front row after a morning dialysis session she refused to reschedule because, in her words, “marriage should work around kidneys, not the other way around.”
Rosa cried before the music started and denied it immediately.
Dominic wore a suit that made him look uncomfortable and spent the first half hour identifying every exit by habit.
Bianca attended quietly.
Her relationship with Gabriel was still complicated.
Trust returned slowly, if it returned at all.
She had cooperated with investigators, entered therapy, separated her finances from the family system, and stopped making excuses for the things she had enabled.
Gabriel did not call that redemption.
He called it a beginning.
Ava wore a pale blue dress and took her flower-girl responsibilities with terrifying seriousness.
Lily wore red.
Emma chose the color because it reminded her of the dress Lily wore on the day the camera captured her first steps.
Before the ceremony, Gabriel found Lily holding the edge of a garden chair.
She was nervous.
Her job was simple.
Walk a short path beside Ava and carry a ribbon.
Nobody had required her to do it.
Lily had insisted.
Gabriel crouched several feet away.
“You don't have to.”
Lily looked at him.
Then she looked toward Emma waiting near the garden arch.
Emma did not gesture.
She did not call.
She simply smiled.
Lily released the chair.
One step.
Two.
Three.
The garden became silent.
Gabriel almost told everyone not to stare.
Then he stopped himself.
Lily was not afraid of being seen anymore.
Four steps.
Five.
Six.
Ava slowed beside her.
Seven.
Eight.
Lily reached Emma.
Emma crouched and hugged her.
There was applause now.
Gentle at first.
Then warmer.
Lily smiled instead of crying.
Emma whispered something in her ear.
Gabriel knew the words before he heard them.
“You did better than yesterday.”
Lily laughed.
Gabriel looked toward the house.
Through the sunroom window, he could see the large security monitor mounted on the far wall.
For months, that screen had shown him danger.
It had shown him hidden cruelty.
It had shown him betrayal.
It had also shown him four small steps that changed the direction of his life.
After the ceremony, Gabriel entered the sunroom alone for a moment.
The security system displayed the garden from three angles.
Emma appeared on one screen laughing with Diane.
Ava chased bubbles across another.
Lily walked slowly beside Rosa on the third.
Gabriel reached for the monitor controls.
He turned off the display.
The room went quiet.
For years, he had believed seeing everything was the same as protecting everyone.
Now he understood the limits of watching.
Cameras could reveal what people hid.
Evidence could expose lies.
Power could create distance from danger.
But none of those things could teach a frightened child to trust the next step.
That required patience.
Presence.
Choice.
Gabriel walked back into the garden.
Emma saw him and held out her hand.
He took it.
Lily came toward them without a walker.
Ava slowed to stay beside her.
Nobody counted the steps aloud.
Nobody needed to.
May you like
Tomorrow could ask for more.
Today only needed to be better than yesterday.
