25. Chords in the Rain #2
“I sold him the house,” Dad admitted, his voice hoarse. “He paid off debts I couldn’t dig out of, but the deal wasn’t clean. I live here at his mercy. This roof, this chair, even the firewood in the grate—it’s all his. And when Victor owns you, Elias… he doesn’t let go.”
I felt the air thin around me. “So you’ve been working for him.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Dad said quickly. “At first it was small things. Who came by, what people were saying. He told me it was nothing. But then…” His throat worked. “Then Rowan came back. And I crossed a line.”
My chest tightened. “What line?”
His voice cracked. “I slept with him. I told myself it was just one night, that it wouldn’t matter. But Victor found out—he always finds out. He held it over me. Said if I didn’t keep feeding him information, he’d destroy both of us. So I kept quiet. I kept giving him what he wanted.”
The room tilted. My father. My own father. And Rowan.
“You betrayed me,” I said, the words jagged.
Dad’s eyes glistened. “I betrayed both of you. Victor made sure of it. He bought this house, he bought my silence, he bought every piece of me I didn’t think I’d ever sell. And when that wasn’t enough, he used Rowan. He used you. ”
The fire cracked, sparks leaping like accusations.
“Why?” My voice broke. “Why would you let him do this?”
Dad’s face crumpled, shame carving him hollow.
“Because I was weak. Because I wanted to believe I still had something left to give. Because I was afraid. And Victor, he knew exactly how to use that fear. He dangled this house in front of me, reminded me every day that I don’t even own the walls I sit inside. And I let him.”
I stood, shaking, the betrayal burning through me like acid. “You let him ruin Rowan. You let him ruin me.”
Dad’s voice cracked, desperate. “I never meant to hurt you. Or him. But by the time I realized what I’d done, it was too late. Victor had me by the throat. And he isn’t finished, Elias. He won’t stop until he’s taken everything.”
Something inside me tore. I didn’t know if it was muscle or memory, but I heard it—the small, decisive sound of a thing giving way under pressure.
My hands were already on the mantle and then they weren’t, and for a second the room tilted and I saw us from the ceiling: a tired man and his son at opposite ends of a fire that couldn’t keep either of them warm.
“You let him,” I said, and my voice wasn’t a voice so much as a rasp pulled over gravel. “You let him take me. You let him take Rowan. You—you handed us over.”
“I didn’t—” Dad started, and stopped. His throat worked. “I didn’t know how to stop him.”
“By saying no.” The words blew out of me. “By telling him to go to hell. By choosing me for once. And yet you enabled him.”
“I chose you,” he said, and there was a wildness in him I almost didn’t recognize. “Every terrible choice I made, I told myself it was to keep you safe. Keep a roof over your head. Keep this place standing so you’d still have somewhere to come back to when the world chewed you up.”
“And instead,” I said, “you sold the house to the man who’s been trying to ruin me since we were boys.”
Dad flinched. His eyes glossed and cleared and glossed again like he couldn’t decide which version of pain to settle on. “ I thought I could manage him. I’ve been managing him my whole life.”
“No,” I said. “You’ve been afraid of him your whole life. You just called it management so you could sleep.”
The fire popped. A log shifted and slid, scattering embers. I crouched to shove it back with the iron poker and the movement brought me too close to the edge; when I straightened the room swam and I put a hand to the wall like I was on a boat, like I could steady the house by sheer force.
“I told Rowan to leave,” I said. The confession ripped out before I could stop it. Dad’s head snapped up. “Victor had the envelope, the footage, the lies. He said if I loved Rowan I’d make him go. So I did. I made him think it was his choice. And I watched him walk away.”
The devastation stamped across Dad’s face was swift and total. His mouth opened, closed. “I did that,” he said hoarsely. “I put you in that box and handed you the lid.”
I laughed, and it was a broken thing, too bright for the room. “We did this,” I said. “You. Me. Victor. Everyone who loved Elaine enough to destroy the part of her she left behind.”
At her name something fractured between us—something brittle and old. Dad pressed his palms over his eyes like he could block out the past if he made it dark enough. When he lowered his hands, tears had made clean tracks through the soot of his exhaustion.
“I am sorry,” he said, and it was not the easy sorry of men avoiding consequences.
It was raw, and it came from somewhere that had been shut for years.
“God, Elias, I am so sorry. I should have protected him. I should have protected you. Instead I—” His voice failed.
He shook his head, a small, helpless movement. “I failed both of you.”
“Why him?” I asked, the question landing between us like an accusation and a plea all at once. “Why Rowan? ”
Dad swallowed. He looked down at his hands, at the calluses that had never quite gone away.
“Because I was lonely,” he said, and the honesty in it stole my breath.
“Because he looked at me like I wasn’t finished yet.
Because I wanted to believe I could still be wanted without having to pay for it.
” He lifted his gaze. “Because I am a selfish man who forgot there are costs you cannot make someone else carry.”
Something in me softened and then hardened again, because forgiveness and fury kept trading places faster than I could flag them.
My eyes burned. I blinked, and the heat spilled over, hot on my cheeks.
I scrubbed at my face with the heel of my palm, angry at the wetness, angrier at the part of me that still wanted to set my head on his shoulder the way I had when nightmares wore simpler shapes.
Dad’s own tears went without argument. They went because there was nothing left to hold them back.
He didn’t try to hide them. “When Victor found out,” he said, voice shredded, “he didn’t raise his voice.
He never does. He told me he knew, and he told me what he would do if I didn’t help.
He said there were cameras—here, at the studio, at Rowan’s.
He said even if there weren’t, he could make it look like there were.
He said all it would take was one rumor with the right push. I believed him. I still do.”
“Because he’s right,” I said. “Because this town loves a story more than it loves the people inside it.”
“I am sorry, Elias…”
The room felt small. The walls breathed in with me and didn’t give enough back. “Is there anything you didn’t give him?” I asked, not sure I wanted the answer.
Dad blew out a shuddering breath. “He doesn’t have the only copies,” he said.
“He thinks he does, but he doesn’t. The night he made me sign the agreement about the house, I made my own copies of everything he slid across the table.
Contracts. Funding memos. The redevelopment plan with the parcel numbers circled.
The emails with dates. I kept them because—” He hesitated, and his mouth twisted.
“Because I knew someday I’d need a way to hurt him back. ”
“And you’re telling me now,” I said.
“I’m giving them to you now,” he said, and reached for the end table drawer with hands that shook. He drew out a small metal key on a frayed leather loop and pressed it into my palm like a benediction that came twenty years too late. “Storage unit on Miller. Back wall, red toolbox. Don’t go alone.”
The key burned cold against my skin. I closed my fingers around it, then opened them again, because there was too much history in the shape we made when we passed things between us. His hand was still there, warm and old and familiar. I could have taken it. I didn’t.
“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” I said, and the room went very quiet around the truth of it. “I don’t know if I want to. I don’t even know who I am in here anymore without the part that believed you would always pick me.”
He gave a small, broken nod. “You don’t have to forgive me,” he said. “You never have to. But let me help you take him down. Let me pay for what I did in a currency that spends.”
“I don’t want your blood,” I said.
“You already have it,” he said softly, and something like a smile—ruined, tired—ghosted over his mouth. “I gave it to you the day you were born. It’s the only thing I did right the first time.”
I sat back down because my legs gave up. He stayed where he was. We breathed. The fire settled into a low, steady burn. Outside, the rain beat a drum on the porch roof, patient as the past.
“I loved her,” he said at last, and I didn’t have to ask who he meant.
“Your mother. I loved her in all the wrong ways and all the right ones, and I lost her because I chose pride where I should have chosen joy. I have been trying to fix that mistake ever since by making new ones. Rowan is not a mistake. You loving him is not a mistake. The mistake is thinking you can bargain with a man like Victor for the right to be happy.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes until stars burst. “He’s on a train,” I said to the darkness behind my lids. “He’s gone because I told him he had to be. Because I let your fear wear my voice.”
Dad’s chair creaked. I heard him stand. The floorboards complained the way they always had in this room, the left one by the hearth a half-tone higher than the rest. He came to stand beside me but didn’t touch me.
“Then go get him,” he said quietly. “Or don’t.
But whatever you do next, let it be yours. Not mine. Not your brother’s.”
I let my hands fall. The room swam back in. His face looked carved out of the same wood as the mantle—worn, nicked, still standing.
“I can’t fix what I broke,” I said. “Not with a key. Not with proof. But I can decide what breaks next.”
“And what holds,” he said.
“And what holds,” I echoed.
We looked at each other for a long time, the way men look when they are taking inventory of what remains after a storm.
His eyes were red. So were mine. There was nothing elegant about any of it.
We were two people in a room with a fire and a handful of facts and a future that had stopped pretending to be polite.
“I loved you,” he said, and I heard the tense like an accusation and an offering. “I love you. Not well. Not enough. But I do.”
“I know,” I said, because it was the cruel thing and the kind thing at once. Tears kept going, stubborn as the rain. “And I hate you for it tonight.”
He nodded like that was fair—like he’d brought exactly this to the door and should have expected to carry some of it back out.
I stood. My knees trembled and held. I put the key in my pocket. The metal thunked against my thigh with the weight of a decision that hadn’t been made yet.
At the doorway I paused. The house breathed behind me. The fire kept its small, faithful chaos. Dad stayed in his chair, hands clasped like a man praying to something that doesn’t answer quickly.
“Lock the back door,” I said, because it was easier than saying anything that mattered, and because old habits still crawl to the surface when everything else is stripped.
“I will,” he said.
I opened the door. Cold air rushed in and kissed the sweat and salt on my face. The porch light made a wet halo of the rain. I stepped into it. I didn’t look back.