Chapter 14
Chapter 14:
Callum saw the tears first.
Not the suitcase by the door, not the shopping bag from the department store, not the way Miriam was holding Lara’s hand with both of hers as if trying to memorize the shape of it. He saw the tears — Lara’s red-rimmed eyes, Miriam’s damp cheeks — and something inside him lurched sideways, the way a compass needle swings when the magnet moves.
“Lala. Miriam.” His voice came out sharper than he’d intended, concern wearing the disguise of authority. “Why are you crying p>
Declan was half a step behind, and his version of the same worry was louder, less controlled, the way everything about Declan was louder and less controlled. “What happened? What’s wrong p>
Between them, Bridget stood in polite silence, her hands folded in front of her, her face arranged into an expression of gentle concern that was either genuine or indistinguishable from it.
Lara released Miriam’s hand. She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist — a quick, efficient gesture, the kind you make when you want to erase evidence rather than seek comfort — and produced a smile that was structurally sound but emotionally hollow.
“It’s nothing. I hadn’t visited Miriam in a while, and saying goodbye got a little emotional. You know how it is p>
The lie was good. Lightweight, plausible, self-deprecating. The kind of lie that invites people not to look closer, and Callum and Declan — who had spent the past month perfecting the art of not looking closer — accepted it with the visible relief of men being offered an exit from a room they didn’t want to be in.
“Well, you’re in Halcombe,” Declan said, his shoulders dropping. “She’s twenty minutes away. You can visit anytime p>
“Exactly,” Callum agreed, the tension in his jaw releasing. “It’s not like you’re going far p>
Miriam stood behind Lara, and her face — which Lara couldn’t see but the two men could, if they’d bothered to look — was doing something complicated. Her mouth was slightly open, the way a person’s mouth opens when they’re about to speak a truth that will rearrange a room. She looked at Callum and Declan with the evaluating gaze of a woman who had watched these two boys grow into men and was now watching them fail spectacularly at the one thing they’d always claimed to be best at: caring for Lara.
She was going to say something. Lara felt it — felt the shift in the air behind her, felt Miriam draw a breath — and moved before the words could form.
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“And you two?” Lara gestured toward Bridget with the casual precision of a magician redirecting attention. “What brings you here p>
It worked. Miriam’s mouth closed. The truth retreated.
Callum and Declan exchanged a glance — the guilty, skittish glance of two men who have done something they suspect might be wrong but haven’t yet worked out why.
“Today is Midsummer Night,” Callum said. His voice was careful, each word placed like a foot on uncertain ground. “Bridget mentioned she’d never celebrated it. She was going to be alone in her apartment, so we thought p>
“We tried to call you,” Declan cut in, the words tumbling out with the defensive speed of someone who’d rehearsed this excuse in the car. “Multiple times. You didn’t answer p>
Lara hadn’t answered because her phone was on silent, face-down on Miriam’s kitchen table, beside a half-eaten chocolate tart and an envelope full of money and love. She hadn’t answered because she’d been doing something more important than taking calls from two men who wanted permission to replace her.
But she didn’t say any of that. She didn’t need to. The facts were already speaking for themselves.
Midsummer Night. The festival of family reunion. The night when you bring the person you’ve chosen to your parents’ house, and the meaning of that act is as clear as a ring on a finger: this is the one. This is my future. This is who I’m keeping.
For twenty years, Callum and Declan had competed to bring Lara home for Midsummer Night. She’d split the difference — dinner at the Hargrove house first, then dessert at the Thorne house — and both families had welcomed her with the warmth and ceremony reserved for a daughter-in-law who simply hadn’t made it official yet.
This year, they’d brought Bridget.
The meaning was not ambiguous.
Lara looked at the three of them — Callum rigid with unacknowledged guilt, Declan vibrating with the need to be forgiven, Bridget standing between them with the quiet patience of a woman who had already won and was now merely waiting for the formalities — and felt something she didn’t expect.
Not anger. Not even sadness. Something lighter. Something that might, from a certain angle, have looked like freedom.
“That’s fine,” she said. “Enjoy the evening. I need to head home and finish packing p>
She turned toward the elevator, already calculating taxi wait times, already moving forward, already leaving.
“Lala p>
“Lala p>
Both voices, simultaneous, identical in pitch and urgency. She stopped. Turned.
Found them watching her with expressions she recognized from a decade of almost-declarations: the look of men who want to say something enormous and are settling for something small.
Callum stepped forward and took her hand. His palm was warm. His grip was firm.
And in his eyes — briefly, like a match struck in a dark room — there was the old thing. The look that had once been hers alone. The look that said: you are the center of everything.
“Don’t worry about packing,” he said. “I’ll send my driver. We’ll handle the move to the new house p>
Declan nodded behind him, earnest, eager.
The new house. The house that didn’t exist. The house Lara had invented to sell the old one, to sever the last architectural tie between her life and theirs.
Lara looked at Callum’s hand around hers — at the familiar geometry of his fingers, at the warmth she’d spent twenty years memorizing — and gently, carefully, as though setting down something fragile, she pulled her hand free.
“It’s not necessary,” she said. “There are things I need to organize myself p>
She pressed the elevator button. The doors opened. She stepped inside, turned, and looked at them one more time — Callum’s outstretched hand, now empty; Declan’s face, caught between confusion and something he couldn’t name; Bridget, watching from behind them both with those wide, calculating eyes.
The doors closed.
Lara leaned against the elevator wall, pressed her forehead to the cool metal, and counted floors.