Page 132 of Stolen Harmony

Dad’s own tears went without argument. They went because there was nothing left to hold them back. He didn’t try to hide them. “When Victor found out,” he said, voice shredded, “he didn’t raise his voice. He never does. He told me he knew, and he told me what he would do if I didn’t help. He said there were cameras—here, at the studio, at Rowan’s. He said even if there weren’t, he could make it look like there were. He said all it would take was one rumor with the right push. I believed him. I still do.”

“Because he’s right,” I said. “Because this town loves a story more than it loves the people inside it.”

“I am sorry, Elias…”

The room felt small. The walls breathed in with me and didn’t give enough back. “Is there anything you didn’t give him?” I asked, not sure I wanted the answer.

Dad blew out a shuddering breath. “He doesn’t have the only copies,” he said. “He thinks he does, but he doesn’t. The night he made me sign the agreement about the house, I made my own copies of everything he slid across the table. Contracts.Funding memos. The redevelopment plan with the parcel numbers circled. The emails with dates. I kept them because—” He hesitated, and his mouth twisted. “Because I knew someday I’d need a way to hurt him back.”

“And you’re telling me now,” I said.

“I’m giving them to you now,” he said, and reached for the end table drawer with hands that shook. He drew out a small metal key on a frayed leather loop and pressed it into my palm like a benediction that came twenty years too late. “Storage unit on Miller. Back wall, red toolbox. Don’t go alone.”

The key burned cold against my skin. I closed my fingers around it, then opened them again, because there was too much history in the shape we made when we passed things between us. His hand was still there, warm and old and familiar. I could have taken it. I didn’t.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” I said, and the room went very quiet around the truth of it. “I don’t know if I want to. I don’t even know who I am in here anymore without the part that believed you would always pick me.”

He gave a small, broken nod. “You don’t have to forgive me,” he said. “You never have to. But let me help you take him down. Let me pay for what I did in a currency that spends.”

“I don’t want your blood,” I said.

“You already have it,” he said softly, and something like a smile—ruined, tired—ghosted over his mouth. “I gave it to you the day you were born. It’s the only thing I did right the first time.”

I sat back down because my legs gave up. He stayed where he was. We breathed. The fire settled into a low, steady burn. Outside, the rain beat a drum on the porch roof, patient as the past.

“I loved her,” he said at last, and I didn’t have to ask who he meant. “Your mother. I loved her in all the wrong ways and allthe right ones, and I lost her because I chose pride where I should have chosen joy. I have been trying to fix that mistake ever since by making new ones. Rowan is not a mistake. You loving him is not a mistake. The mistake is thinking you can bargain with a man like Victor for the right to be happy.”

I pressed my fingers to my eyes until stars burst. “He’s on a train,” I said to the darkness behind my lids. “He’s gone because I told him he had to be. Because I let your fear wear my voice.”

Dad’s chair creaked. I heard him stand. The floorboards complained the way they always had in this room, the left one by the hearth a half-tone higher than the rest. He came to stand beside me but didn’t touch me. “Then go get him,” he said quietly. “Or don’t. But whatever you do next, let it be yours. Not mine. Not your brother’s.”

I let my hands fall. The room swam back in. His face looked carved out of the same wood as the mantle—worn, nicked, still standing.

“I can’t fix what I broke,” I said. “Not with a key. Not with proof. But I can decide what breaks next.”

“And what holds,” he said.

“And what holds,” I echoed.

We looked at each other for a long time, the way men look when they are taking inventory of what remains after a storm. His eyes were red. So were mine. There was nothing elegant about any of it. We were two people in a room with a fire and a handful of facts and a future that had stopped pretending to be polite.

“I loved you,” he said, and I heard the tense like an accusation and an offering. “I love you. Not well. Not enough. But I do.”

“I know,” I said, because it was the cruel thing and the kindthing at once. Tears kept going, stubborn as the rain. “And I hate you for it tonight.”

He nodded like that was fair—like he’d brought exactly this to the door and should have expected to carry some of it back out.

I stood. My knees trembled and held. I put the key in my pocket. The metal thunked against my thigh with the weight of a decision that hadn’t been made yet.

At the doorway I paused. The house breathed behind me. The fire kept its small, faithful chaos. Dad stayed in his chair, hands clasped like a man praying to something that doesn’t answer quickly.

“Lock the back door,” I said, because it was easier than saying anything that mattered, and because old habits still crawl to the surface when everything else is stripped.

“I will,” he said.

I opened the door. Cold air rushed in and kissed the sweat and salt on my face. The porch light made a wet halo of the rain. I stepped into it. I didn’t look back.

Chapter 26