Chapter 39 Callum
Callum
The library door sighed shut behind us, and the hush inside pressed close. Late morning light slanted through the east windows, striping the Persian rug in ochre and indigo.
James crossed to the drinks trolley, uncorked the decanter, and poured two fingers of whiskey—none for me. He made a show of the omission, as if it might sting. I leaned against the marble-topped sideboard, hands braced on its edge, and waited for the opening volley.
He offered none—simply swirled his drink.
“A bit early to be drowning your sorrows, isn’t it?” I said, finally breaking the silence.
James’s gaze sharpened behind the rim of his glass. “What would you know about sorrows?” His tone was a slow scalpel slide. “Or responsibility?” He set the glass down. “And you’re hardly in a position to lecture me on appropriate behavior.”
Heat prickled at my collarbone, but I kept my shoulders set, arms folded. “Well, go on then,” I said. “Let’s have it. A homecoming wouldn’t be complete without a sermon from my perfect older brother.”
He didn’t rise to my tone, only shifted his weight, slow and deliberate. “You know what I hate about the prodigal son story?” He let the question hang, daring me to mock it. “It was forced on us every Sunday, if you recall.”
“I do,” I said, wary. “I didn’t realize you were so fond of Sunday school parables.”
James ignored me. “The younger brother’s a wastrel. He fucks off, squanders their father’s money, ignores every expectation, and then—when he’s wrecked, when he’s bled the world dry—he stumbles home, and his father throws him a bloody feast.”
He tossed back the last of his whiskey, voice leveling out. James stared at the cut crystal glass, as if clarity might emerge from the play of refracted light.
“They drilled that story into us for years. But the punchline was always the same, wasn’t it?
” He looked up, a tight smile curving at the edges of his mouth.
“The elder son stays behind. Sacrifices. Holds the line for the family. And where does that get him?” He traced a finger along the rim of the glass, eyes fixed on its slow revolution.
“No feast. No celebration. No gratitude. Just more bloody work.”
I braced myself against the sideboard, the cold bite of marble grounding me. “If you’re saying you’ve never had anything handed to you, forgive me if I don’t quite buy it.”
James’s laugh came out low and bone-dry.
“Oh, I’ve been handed plenty, little brother.
The business. The expectations. The duty.
The slow, choking certainty that I’ll die of boredom at a board meeting or one of Father’s interminable charity events.
” He set the glass down, face hardening.
“You, though—” He pointed, the gesture sharp as a chess move.
“You get to fuck up. Publicly. You get to crash and burn—kill your fiancée, shag your student, whatever you bloody well like.”
That was the point where most men would’ve thrown a punch. I just locked my jaw and let the fury settle into ice. “Anything else?”
James’s smile sharpened, mean and precise.
He leaned close, voice dropping. “Do you know what’s most galling?
No matter what you do, someone’s always there to clean up after you.
Wipe the slate. Sweep away the mess. What mess is it this time, hmm?
” His gaze flicked up, cold and bright. “The American girl upstairs? Did you at least give her top marks for fucking you?”
A pulse hammered in my throat, slow and savage. The library blurred—sideboard, dust motes spinning in the slant of sun, bone-white knuckles around a clenched fist. I forced air through my nose, measured and deliberate. “You’re out of line.” Each word balanced on the thin edge of my control.
“I’m out of line?” He stepped closer. I caught the bite of aftershave, the sour drift of whiskey. “You can’t even see the line. You never could.” He took a step back and gave me a once-over, all clinical disdain. “Or could it be that you’ve knocked her up?”
The words hit like a whipcrack, every old wound rising at once.
I lunged—fast, thoughtless. The decanter rattled as my fist stopped just shy of his jaw.
I could picture it—his bones cracking, blood blooming, my raw, fleeting satisfaction.
None of the rules we’d grown up with—not age, etiquette, discipline—held a candle to the heat flaring in me.
“No,” I spat, my hand trembling an inch from his face. “She’s not pregnant, you absolute bastard.” My breath tore in and out, wild and raw. I swallowed hard, the taste of blood sharp in my throat. “Say one more word about her—about us—and I’ll put you through that fucking window.”
James didn’t flinch. Not even a tick in his jaw. “Go on,” he said, almost gently. “One more mess for me to clean up.”
My fist hovered, suspended between impulse and consequence.
The past unspooled—the somber pageantry at Claire’s funeral, the stinging shame of my first Oxford faculty meeting after the tabloids bled our story down every corridor.
Humiliation, helplessness, rage—seething in my temples, cracking down my wrists like cold fire.
I wanted to hit him. For the world to fracture beneath my knuckles.
But I didn’t. Not for him. Not for the ancestral ghosts in the walls. For myself. For Gabrielle. Because striking him would mean he’d won. It would make me the beast he always said I was.
I let my hand fall, slow and controlled, and stepped back. My chest shook with the effort to leash the rest of me.
“When are you leaving?” James asked, like it had just occurred to him, voice flat with boredom.
“Not soon enough.”
He nodded, lips twisting into a sneer masquerading as a smile. “Good. And when you do, feel free to make it permanent. I’m sure no one will mind.” A pause, just long enough for the venom to seep in. “And when I finally have my way, every door here will be shut in your face. So, go on—shoo.”
“Counting your inheritance a bit prematurely, aren’t we?”
“I wouldn’t say that. But I doubt you’ve noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
“Typical,” he scoffed. “You’ve been too busy fucking students to see a thing.”
“Noticed what?” I asked again, stepping in.
James studied me, head cocked, and gave a short, humorless laugh. “Father is upstairs in his room. You should go see him.” He paused. “If you can tear yourself away.”
He didn’t wait for a response. Just turned and walked out, leaving the door ajar.
I stayed rooted for a breath, pulse still pounding, then pushed off the sideboard.
Upstairs, the corridor was hushed, the air different—warmer, stuffy. I knocked once on Father’s door, then let myself in.
The room was dim, curtains half-drawn against the midday light, the air heavy with the faint metallic drift of oxygen and disinfectant.
My father lay propped against a bank of pillows in the great four-poster bed, its carved mahogany posts dwarfing his frame.
His pajamas were crisp, the dressing gown belted neatly, but the fabric hung loose, no longer fitted to the man who’d once filled them out with authority.
A thin cannula looped over his ears and into his nostrils, the clear tubing snaking down to a portable oxygen concentrator.
A youngish nurse in a blue uniform—unfamiliar, likely agency—hovered near the bedside, checking the IV flow and making quiet notations on a digital tablet.
I stood there for a moment, unable to summon the right greeting.
I hadn’t seen him in bed since he’d shattered his ankle on a fox hunt two decades ago.
Even then, he’d looked ferocious. Now he looked…
small. Gray. His eyes were still sharp, but the skin around them had folded and thinned, like parchment baked too long in the sun.
I hovered in the doorway, caught between embarrassment and something colder. No one had warned me.
“What’s all this?” I managed, the words brittle as chalk.
“You’re the academic, Callum,” Father rasped. “Surely you don’t need it explained to you.”
I pulled a chair to the bedside. “A little wouldn’t hurt.”
Father took a deep breath, followed by a series of hacking coughs.
“Lung cancer.” He said it without drama, like he was reporting the price of copper or an overnight devaluation of the pound.
The nurse glanced up, then returned to her work, the tablet’s blue glow casting her face in spectral relief against the half-light.
“Stage?” I heard myself ask, clinical and dry. I hated everything about my voice just then.
“Four.” He held up four skeletal fingers, as if the number itself were distasteful. “It’s been a busy quarter.”
I pressed my palms to my knees. “When were you planning to tell me?”
He tilted his head, almost surprised. “When there was a point to it. What would you have done with the information, Callum? Booked an earlier flight?”
The words should have stung—once, they would have opened a vein—but now they just hung there, as inert as the oxygen hissing at his nose.
“How long?”
He shrugged. “Six months, if the next round of treatment works. Less if it doesn’t.” He shrugged again, softer this time, the bones of his shoulders shifting under the fabric like driftwood.
“Mother knows?”
“Of course I know. Everyone knows.” Mother’s voice pierced from behind me.
I hadn’t heard her enter. I stood, but she moved past me to the side of the bed, elegant even in her quiet.
She rested her hand, featherlight, on the blanket at Father’s knee.
She didn’t look at me. Her gaze flicked to his face and lingered there, searching for a sign that he needed her, or perhaps permission, some unspoken signal.
They operated like an old ballet, every gesture second nature after decades of choreography—gracefully intertwined, even, or especially, at the end.
“Callum, you mustn’t exhaust him,” she said, her voice measured and velvet.
Father gave a sardonic grunt. “Let the boy talk, Eleanor. It’s not as if conversation will kill me. We’re well past that stage.”