All Chapters of FORSAKEN WIFE, NOW A BILLIONAIRE'S GREATEST REGRET: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

High summer lay upon the coast like a contented cat, warm and heavy. The scent of hot pine needles and salt hung in the still air. The Tidewater Trail was a dappled green tunnel, buzzing with life and the lazy footsteps of the season’s last tourists. The Keeper’s Commons was no longer raw earth; it was a lush patch of new grass and young trees, its pathways already worn by the feet of children and dog-walkers.We had entered what Arthur called “the benevolent plateau.” The urgent work was done. The maintenance was habitual, distributed, almost unconscious. Our lives had achieved a kind of equilibrium so deep it felt geological.My wildflower notecards were funding a scholarship for local kids to study environmental science. Lanc’s dinghy, The Second Thought, was a familiar sight puttering around the estuary, often with a scowling Hank at the tiller and a sunburned Arthur as crew. Lena’s council work was a steady hum of sensible progress. Ben’s housing development had families moving i

Spring crept in, not with a fanfare of blossoms, but with a persistent softening. The snow retreated to stubborn shadows, and the mud of the Tidewater Trail became a glorious, sucking testament to thaw. The world smelled of damp earth and possibility.We were emerging from our winter cocoons, blinking in the brighter light. The visit from the Norwegians had settled among us like a strange, wonderful seed. We’d exchanged a few emails—Miranda was particularly excited about their fjord’s unique diatom populations—but the profound gift of their journey lingered: our story was a tool in someone else’s hands now. We were a reference manual, not a relic.The “Keeper’s Commons” was coming alive with the fuzzy green of new growth. Lanc’s folly, now officially historic, had a small, tasteful plaque at its base. He pretended to hate it, but I’d seen him polishing it with his sleeve one morning.Our gatherings resumed on the pier as the evenings grew longer. The talk had a new, speculative qualit

The autumn that followed was a long, slow exhale. The fierce colors of the bluff softened to rust and ochre, and the air grew sharp with the scent of woodsmoke and decaying leaves. The bustle of summer was a memory; the town settled into its slower, more thoughtful self. We did too.The plaque in the Keeper’s Commons was now just a part of the landscape, occasionally used by toddlers to steady their first steps. Our gatherings were no longer events, but inevitable convergences, like rivers finding their old beds. We’d bump into each other at the post office, the library, and end up leaning against a sun-warmed wall, talking for twenty minutes about nothing at all.One such afternoon, I found Lanc and Ben having a heated, genial argument outside the hardware store, a schematic for a community greenhouse unrolled on the hood of Ben’s truck.“The glazing has to be angled for the winter sun,” Lanc insisted, jabbing a finger at the drawing. “You’re thinking like a house-builder. This is a

Summer arrived with a leisurely confidence, draping the coast in a haze of heat and the drone of cicadas. The Tidewater Trail was a tunnel of dappled green, and the Keeper’s Commons rang with the shouts of children freed from school. Isobel, our artist-in-residence, had become a quiet fixture, like a particularly observative species of wildlife. She was often seen perched on the observation deck with a large sketchpad, or slowly walking the perimeter of the new greenhouse with Ben, asking questions about load-bearing stresses as if they were poetic meter.The “preventive maintenance” weekend with Arthur had left a lasting, low-grade hum of contentment between us. We’d started having “non-town” dinners once a week—no talking about council motions or drainage issues. We talked about books, memories, absurd hypotheticals. It felt like dating again, but with the deep, comforting bedrock of shared history beneath us.The Salty Dog gatherings were now often invaded by the next generation. B

Winter arrived not with a blizzard, but with a gradual, bone-deep chill that settled into the cliffs and hushed the town. The Tidewater Trail's boardwalks wore a rime of frost each morning, and the Keeper's Commons stood stark and beautiful in its dormant state. The "Whisper & Shout Archive" had been accessed over a thousand times, a quiet hum in the digital background of the town's life. We, the voices on those recordings, had retreated into a cozy hibernation, our lives focused on wood stoves, thick socks, and the deep, quiet pleasure of having nothing urgent to do.Arthur had taken up baking bread with the same intensity he'd once applied to legal strategy. Our kitchen was perpetually flour-dusted and smelled of yeast and contentment. I was transcribing my grandmother's recipes, not for publication, but as a gift for Mia, Ben's daughter, who had shown an interest. It was a different kind of legacy, passed from one woman's hands to another's, through me.Our Salty Dog gatherings wer