Chapter 4
Callum has never hated a crowd the way he despises this one.
They line the stone path to the chapel, spilling across the castle grounds as if this is a pilgrimage instead of a funeral. Black coats and dark sunglasses. Camera lenses peeking from behind scarves. Fans clutching vinyl albums and handwritten signs, faces reverent, tear-streaked, ecstatic.
Some of them are singing.
Not recorded. Not polished.
Keir’s songs, off-key, heartfelt, uninvited, float through the cold air like a wake that refuses to end.
Callum stands near the chapel doors, hands shoved deep into his coat pockets, wearing his finest kilt, jaw locked so tightly, his temples ache. Every note feels like a theft.
This isn’t theirs.
Keir was theirs on stage. On tape. On the internet. On the radio.
But this, this is supposed to be private.
Instead, it’s a spectacle.
Celebrities drift past, each one carefully composed in grief. Actors Keir once dated. Musicians who once fought with him, loved him, nearly killed him with excess, and then laughed about it years later. Producers and industry men who owe entire careers to Keir’s musical instincts.
Media vans idle down the road, satellite dishes angled skyward like vultures waiting for the signal.
This is not a goodbye.
It’s a canonization.
Inside the chapel, the air is thick with incense, reverence, and expectation. Cameras are banned, but Callum knows better. Someone always finds a way. There will be leaked footage, whispered quotes, headlines already half-written.
He takes a seat near the front, close enough to see everything, far enough to avoid the worst of the stares.
The casket is closed.
Thank God.
Keir MacLaren, reduced to wood and silence, would break something in Callum that he isn’t sure would come back.
The service begins the way all services for famous men begin, with stories carefully orchestrated for public consumption.
Keir the genius.
Keir the visionary.
Keir the man who changed music forever.
One speaker after another steps forward, each polishing the legend until it gleams. A producer talks about Keir’s ear, his fearlessness, his generosity.
“He would give you the shirt off his back,” the man says, voice thick with emotion. “He loved deeply. He lived fully.”
Callum’s fingers curl into fists.
Would he?
Keir had given Callum a home. Structure. Discipline. A second chance when no one else bothered to see one.
But Keir had also vanished from entire parts of his own life.
Another speaker follows, this one sanctimonious, self-important, clearly enjoying the sound of his own voice.
“Keir’s devotion to family was unparalleled,” the man declares. “He believed in connection above all else.”
Callum’s jaw tightens.
That’s when he looks at Isla and his heart cracks.
She sits in the second row beside her mother, rigid as a drawn blade. Her black dress is sharp and tailored, with no softness to it. Her posture is perfect. Controlled. Her face is calm in the way only someone who has learned not to expect comfort can be calm.
She has not cried.
Alisa MacLaren dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief, grief neat and measured. Isla stares straight ahead, unmoving, like she’s enduring something rather than participating.
Something in Callum twists.
The speaker continues, droning on about Keir’s warmth, his capacity for love.
This is bullshit.
Callum shifts, anger coiling tight in his chest. He knows Keir’s flaws. He lived with them. He forgave them. He worked around them.
But turning the man into a saint?
That feels like a lie too far.
The speaker finally steps down. The officiant hesitates, scanning the room, preparing to continue.
That’s when Isla stands.
The movement is so sudden it sends a ripple through the pews. Heads turn. Whispers spark instantly.
Callum’s breath catches.
What the hell is she doing?
She steps into the aisle without looking at anyone, heels clicking softly against stone. For a split second, Callum thinks she’s going to speak, say something sharp, something reckless.
Instead, she turns toward the piano.
A low murmur rolls through the chapel.
Isla sits at the bench.
No introduction. No permission.
She places her hands on the keys.
Callum recognizes the posture immediately, the way her shoulders settle, the way her fingers hover like they’re deciding whether to strike or soothe.
This isn’t performance.
This is confession.
She starts to play.
It’s one of Keir’s songs.
Callum knows it instantly, a crowd favorite, usually loud and electric, all swagger and deflection.
Isla guts it.
She strips it down to melody and bone, slowing it until every note aches. The piano doesn’t try to fill the space, it exposes it. Where Keir’s version hid pain behind bravado, hers drags the pain into the light and forces it to stay there.
Then she sings.
Her voice isn’t big.
It’s clear. Bare. Unforgiving. The words are her own to her father’s melody.
They say you lit up every room
Had the world hanging on your sound
Funny how a man that loud
Never made it back to town
Your face was on every magazine
Mine was pressed against the glass
Everyone got memories
I just got the cash
I never knew you
Not the man they sing about
You were always just a shadow
On the edge of every crowd
They tell me I should feel the loss
Like I’m supposed to cry on cue
But I can’t miss what I never had
’Cause I never knew you
A sharp intake of breath ripples through the chapel. Callum’s chest tightens.
Other children had their daddies
Hands to catch them when they fell
I learned early not to wait
Not to ask. Turns out absence has a way
Of making you hate what you never had
Her voice doesn’t crack.
I never knew you
Not your hands, not your truth
I never knew your promises
Or which ones you’d refuse
They say blood is everything
Like it makes us somehow true
But all it ever gave me
Was a man I never knew
Isla’s hands strike the keys again, harder now.
They say you would’ve loved me
If you’d stayed a little while
Guess the encore mattered more than I
A woman in the front row begins to cry openly. Isla doesn’t look up.
So don’t tell me what you meant to be
Or who you were inside
I don’t miss what I never had
I just learned how to survive
I never knew you
And I stopped pretending I did
I mourned you years ago
When I was just a kid
I never knew you
So don’t ask me to forgive
You got the songs, the fame, the love
I got the life I had to live
So sing your praises, raise a glass
Say you never had a clue
But when I walk away from here
I’ll still say—I never knew you
Isla plays the final phrase and stops, abruptly, brutally, cutting the song off mid-breath.
The silence is violent.
She stands.
Turns to face the room.
Her voice is calm. Steady. Deadly honest.
“He loved music,” she says. “He just didn’t love being a father.”
Gasps explode through the chapel. She walks over to the casket and softly sings a cappella.
“And now I will never know you.”
Chaos ignites instantly.
Callum feels like he’s been punched in the chest.
This isn’t a tribute.
This is an indictment.
Whispers surge. Shock ricochets. Alisa hisses Isla’s name, horror etched across her face. Somewhere, someone drops a program. Callum can almost hear the headlines forming.
Rock Legend’s Daughter Shatters Funeral
Estranged Child Calls Out Father’s Failure
Keir MacLaren’s Myth Cracks in Public
Callum can’t move.
Anger floods him first, hot, immediate.
How dare she?
How dare she stand there and reduce Keir to his worst failure? How dare she dismiss everything Keir was, everything he gave, everything he saved?
And then—
Something else cuts through.
Because she isn’t lying.
Keir loved music more than sobriety. More than stability. More than showing up when it mattered most.
Callum knows that truth intimately.
Isla turns and walks back to her seat without looking at anyone. Not the officiant. Not her mother.
Not him.
He could feel the anger rolling off her, the rage, the hurt. He could see the tears brimming in her eyes. Pulling her shoulders back, she sank down and released a shaky breath.
The service limped forward, but it never recovered from her performance. People are shaken. The sanctimony is gone, stripped bare by one woman and a piano.
Callum remains seated long after it ends.
Long after people rise and whisper and rush outside, phones already out, grief already being monetized.
He stares at the piano.
At the space where Isla’s hands had been.
He wants to hate her.
Instead, he feels wrecked.
Because she didn’t just expose Keir.
She exposed the lie Callum has been living inside.
That love makes up for absence.
That forgiveness erases damage.
That some truths are better left unsaid.
Her song was devastating.
And beautiful.
And it proved something Callum was not ready to face yet.
Keir may not have loved being a father.
But his daughter?
She inherited the one thing Keir never lied about.
The music.
And Callum is standing far too close to the fire.
God, he wants to hear her play again. Because no matter the words, the notes spinning from her fingers were like magic. The artistry, the skill, even her voice, left him reeling from the music she created.
And yet, she’d just destroyed the man he loved. His second father.