So did Lydia.
Four months into rehabilitation, she could activate muscles in both legs more consistently. At six months, with braces and parallel bars, she stood long enough to complain that everyone was staring.
At eight months, she took three assisted steps.
They were ugly steps.
Slow, shaking, mechanically supported.
Lydia loved them.
She still used her wheelchair most of the time.
Her therapists never treated the chair as failure. It gave her speed, independence, and a way to live while her body decided what else it could learn.
That mattered because Charles had spent years making the chair feel like evidence of helplessness.
Lydia turned it back into a tool.
She moved from the estate to an accessible apartment near her rehabilitation center while the court decided the long-term ownership structure of the property. The manor ceased to be the center of her world.
Some guests from the party reached out.
She ignored most of them.
One woman sent a video from the lawn without commentary. It showed the moment Eli quieted Argent, the shove, Lydia’s gasp, and Charles’s face immediately afterward.
Lydia watched it once.
Then she saved it with the legal files and never watched it again.
The moment did not need replaying to remain true.
A year after the party, Lydia visited Argent at the new barn.
Eli met her by the gate.
She arrived in her wheelchair with braces under her jeans and forearm crutches secured behind the seat.
Argent lifted his head when he heard them.
Eli had replaced the old show bridle with a softer setup.
“No tight strap?” Lydia asked.
“No tight anything unless it needs to be.”
Argent approached carefully.
Lydia held out her hand.
The stallion breathed against her palm.
She closed her eyes.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Lydia set the wheelchair brakes.
