Page 16 of Stolen Harmony

“I should go,” he said finally, his hand unconsciously pressing against the pocket where the letter rested.

“You don't have to.”

“I do.” He stood up slowly, like moving hurt. “I need to... I need to think.”

I walked him to the door, helped him into his coat even though he was perfectly capable of doing it himself. His hand went to the pocket again, making sure the letter was secure. We stood in the hallway again, but the tension between us had shifted. Not gone—there was still too much unresolved for that—but different. Softer around the edges.

“I'm staying above the bookstore,” he said without looking at me. “On Harbor Street.”

“Okay.”

I hesitated, then added, “Better keep an eye on Fred. He’ll try to rent you a bike he swears is safe. It isn’t.”

For the first time all night, Rowan’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “Already met him. He tried to upsell me on a helmet with duct tape holding it together. Said it had ‘character.’”

“That sounds like Fred.” I couldn’t help it—I smiled too. “Don’t let him talk you into his chili, either. Some mistakes you only make once.”

The moment stretched, lighter than the silence that had weighed us down all evening. He shifted, his shoulders loosening just slightly.

“I’m still angry with you,” he said, but his voice had softened.

“I know that too.”

“But I’m angrier with myself.”

“Rowan—”

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For taking care of her. For loving her. For… for not reading the letter.”

Then he was gone, disappearing into the rain and leaving me alone with the weight of everything we’d said and everything we hadn’t.

I stood in the doorway until I couldn’t see him anymore, then closed the door and leaned against it. The house felt different now, not empty but expectant. Like something had been set in motion that couldn’t be stopped.

Chapter 5

Old Wounds, New Distractions

Rowan

The rain tasted like salt and rust, metallic on my tongue when I breathed through my mouth. Every step felt heavier than it should, like the pavement was trying to drag me down into the earth where I probably belonged.

The conversation with Elias from the night before played on repeat in my head, each word cutting deeper with repetition. The way his face had looked when I'd accused him of lying. The careful way he'd said my mother's name, like it was something sacred he was afraid of breaking. The desperate hunger in his voice when he'd asked about her letters.

I'd fucked it up. Of course I had. Walked into his house carrying two years' worth of rage and grief and thrown it all at him like he was responsible for every wrong turn my life had taken. Like he was the reason she was dead, like he was the one who'd kept us apart, like he owed me explanations for choices that were never his to make.

But that was the thing about grief. It made you stupid, made you cruel, made you lash out at anyone who was stillbreathing when the person you really wanted to scream at was six feet underground. Two years gone and people expected you to be “better” by now, to have processed it all into neat little boxes of acceptance and healing. They wanted your pain to follow some prescribed timeline, to fade politely into something manageable that didn't make them uncomfortable at dinner parties. But grief didn't follow anyone else's schedule. It lived in your bones, showed up uninvited at random moments, turned ordinary conversations into minefields. Some days it felt fresh as an open wound, other days like a dull ache you'd learned to carry. Either way, it was always there, and pretending otherwise just made everything worse.

A group of kids had gathered on the corner outside Murphy's old stationery shop, one of them strumming a battered acoustic guitar while the others sang along. Their voices cracked in the cold air, hitting notes that were almost right but not quite, the kind of imperfect harmony that only worked when nobody was trying too hard.

I didn't mean to stop, but the sound pulled me in sideways. The melody was simple, familiar, one of those songs that gets passed down from musician to musician like folklore. The kid playing guitar couldn't have been more than sixteen, all elbows and enthusiasm, fingers moving across the fretboard with the confidence that comes from not knowing how much you don't know.

I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets and forced myself to keep walking.

The kids' laughter followed me down the street, tugging at the corners of my mind like hands trying to pull me back into a world where music meant joy instead of loss. I walked faster, jaw clenched, wanting distance from the sound and from the part of myself that still responded to it.

I passed the turnoff to the cemetery withoutlooking, but the awareness of it sat heavy on my neck like a hand I couldn't shake off. She was up there somewhere, under a headstone I'd never seen, in a plot I'd been too fucked up to visit after the funeral. The guilt was a constant weight, pressing down on my shoulders with every step I took away from the road that led to her.

The smell of fresh bread drifted from Margaret Dane's bakery, thick and sweet in the damp air. Another memory hit me: my mother at Christmas morning, flour dusted across her cheek, hair pulled back in a messy bun while she hummed something wordless and warm. She'd been making cinnamon rolls, the kind that took all day and filled whatever cramped kitchen we were using with the smell of sugar and spice and love made edible.