Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
OPHELIA
The green console light winks at me, a silent pulse in the dim room. My fingers dance across the sliders, adjusting controls until the raw ache of Leo’s vocals match his written lyrics, finding harmony.
On the other side of the glass, Leo closes his eyes, gripping his headphones like he’s pushing the backing music into his ears by sheer force. A slight boy, he gives me everything he has, showcasing a voice far bigger than his bony frame.
I nudge a frequency band, soothing the harsh edge on his consonants.
Perfection.
I wait until the sound fades and his eyes flick open, then press the comms button. “Amazing effort, Leo. I think that’s the one.”
There’s a microsecond of relief, then he frowns. “Can I try again? I want the middle bridge harder. Angsty but like he’s carrying a grievance.”
And I thought I was a perfectionist. “Sure, we’ve got time for a few more.”
I reset everything, cueing it for another take before positioning my hands back at the controls.
The studio door bursts open.
A small comet in a yellow raincoat hurtles into the room, her matching gumboots squeaking on the polished concrete floor. “Mum!”
Mira.
My careful focus melts like a blown fuse. She crashes into my legs, wrapping her arms around my waist, and burying her face deep into my jersey. Her entire body vibrates with some fierce emotion.
I pull my headphones down around my neck. “Hey, sweetheart. What’s all this?”
I stroke her curls, a wild, dark cloud—Damien’s hair—but when she tilts her head back, the deep frown marks between her brows are all mine.
Damien follows her inside at a sedate pace, closing the door with a soft click.
He doesn’t rush. He never rushes. He moves through the world like he owns the air itself, a contained and silent force.
His hair’s still damp from the rain outside, and he shrugs off his coat, leaving it on the row of hooks.
Our eyes meet over our daughter’s head, and a quiet acknowledgement passes between us.
It’s an unspoken language we’ve built over our years together, and we’re the only two people who understand it.
He stops beside my chair, hand resting on my shoulder. Not a possessive grip, not any longer. It’s supportive. A quiet ‘here I am.’
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I ask Mira again, unbuttoning her wet coat. “Did something happen at kindy?”
She pulls back, her small face a thundercloud of indignation. “James is a big meanie,” she announces with the grave finality of a four-year-old supreme court judge.
“I’m sure he is,” I say. “What did the big meanie do?”
“He stole my dinosaur. The triceratops with the blue spots. He said finders keepers.” Her lower lip trembles with outrage. “But I’m the one who found it in the sandpit. It was mine.”
“Oh, honey. Did you tell Miss Evans?”
Mira’s expression shifts from outrage to something closer to triumph. A weird, cold little smile plays on her lips. “I didn’t have to. Daddy fixed it.”
My eyes snap up to Damien’s. Please tell me you didn’t.
He meets my gaze, unconcerned, unreadable, then shakes his head. I’ll tell you later.
A familiar feeling uncoils in my stomach. Part dread, part a dark, shameful thrill that never lessens. He fixed it. Of course he did. When it comes to Mira, he doesn’t believe in teachers or negotiations.
He believes in solutions and applying them the first moment he can.
“And how did Daddy fix it, Mira?”
She shrugs, the drama already fading into memory. “Jamie won’t be in our class next week. His mum said so. He got ‘exactly what he deserves.’”
Mira parrots the phrase perfectly, a small, chilling echo in her sing-song voice.
Exactly what he deserves. The words hang in the air longer than any song lyric. I glance at Damien again, and his face is a calm mask, but I see the danger sparkling in his blue eyes.
All these years and he’s still the boy who earned my trust with a murder confession. He doesn’t look away, and I let it go.
For now.
The studio is my territory and my sanctuary. The darkness of the outside world isn’t allowed to seep inside these walls.
“Well,” I say, my voice artificially bright. “A big meanie doesn’t deserve your triceratops, that’s for sure.”
Leo catches my eye from the live room, raising his headphones, and I nod, hoisting Mira onto my lap. She’s getting so big, her limbs growing longer every day, but she still fits neatly against me.
I press the comms button again, giving Leo fair warning of what’s about to happen.
“Do you want to help me for a second? You can be my assistant.”
Her eyes go wide with seriousness. She loves the studio. Loves the lights, the buttons. The control.
She is, after all, her parents’ daughter.
I play a few bars from the last version, then point to the vast console in front of us.
“See all these knobs and faders? They all change how the music sounds. You can make Leo’s voice sound like he’s in a big cave, or a tiny room, or like he’s singing from a pineapple at the bottom of the ocean. Which one should we alter?”
She studies the board with a ferocity that is entirely Damien’s. Her small brow furrows before she points a determined finger at a large lever near the centre of the board.
It’s the master gain for the studio monitors.
“That one.”
“Okay,” I say, a thread of amusement weaving through my unease. “You can move it, but just a little bit. And then we’ll put it right back.”
She nods, her expression one of grave responsibility.
I play the recording, and her small hand covers the lever, gripping tight. With a deep breath, as if summoning all her strength, she shoves it all the way to the top.
A shrieking wall of sound erupts from the speakers. Leo’s vocal track distorted into a screaming, metallic banshee wail. The backing track a roaring avalanche of noise.
It’s physically painful, an assault on the ears.
Leo yanks off his headphones and stares at us in alarm while Damien leans forward, a flicker of approval crossing his face.
Mira’s eyes widen in shock and delight. She doesn’t cover her ears, not for a second. She just experiences the glorious, terrifying cacophony she’s unleashed.
Then, with the same fierce concentration, she slowly, carefully, moves the lever back down. The noise recedes like a tide, fading back to the quiet hum of the equipment. She positions it with pinpoint accuracy, returning it to the exact millimetre mark it occupied before she touched it.
Silence descends, and she looks up at me, a satisfied smile on her face. “I put it back.”
“You did,” I say, my heart drumming a frantic tempo. “You put it right back.”
Damien watches, a proud smile on his face. He sees it too. The capacity for chaos, instantly accessed and then just as instantly contained.
I look from my daughter’s triumphant face to my husband’s proud, inscrutable one, and the two images overlap. The past and the future, circling each other in this quiet, soundproofed room.
We built this life out of blood and secrets and a connection that refused any efforts at containment. That just keeps growing until it could burn the entire world down.
A home. A family.
A little girl who knows how to break things and then put them back exactly as they were.
It’s not a normal peace, but it’s ours.
And as Damien’s hand finds mine, his fingers lacing through my own, I know we will do anything, everything, to keep it.