Chapter 40
Harry
Avoice I haven’t heard in weeks echoes through the foyer, one I wasn’t entirely sure I’d hear again in this house.
I pause at the top of the staircase, one hand resting on the railing as I listen, just briefly.
It’s muffled — he’s in the front hall, not in my line of sight, and it sounds like he’s trying not to sound bitter.
That alone is a sign he’s not here to start swinging.
But Elena’s voice follows, softer and cautious, and I hadn’t accounted for the possibility that she’d be the one to let him in.
It’s enough to get me down the stairs quickly.
I find them just on the other side of the living room.
George stands with his hands shoved in the pockets of a black coat, his hair mussed, expression tight.
Elena, barefoot in pajama bottoms and one of my sweaters, looks like she’s just seen a ghost. Her hand hovers awkwardly by the doorframe, the other around her stomach like she’s unsure whether she should be defensive or polite.
I didn’t expect him to come today.
“I’m not here to cause problems,” George says, pulling his hands from his pockets and raising them in surrender.
I come up behind Elena, my hand settling protectively at the small of her back.
He looks… older, somehow, from the last few weeks, like something fundamental in him cracked during the weeks he vanished.
“I called him,” I say softly to her. Her gaze flicks to me with visible confusion.
“I was going to tell you when you came back upstairs. Didn’t think he’d show up that fast.”
“He told me he’d finally explain what happened,” George mutters. “With my mom.”
“Oh,” Elena says, blinking quickly. She goes to take a step back, but I hold her in place. “I should give you guys some space to talk.”
“No. I’d — I’d rather you stay, if that’s okay. Talk about it as a family.” My fingers dig in a little on her back, not enough to be painful, but hopefully enough to say, I don’t want to talk about her alone. I glance at George. “If that’s okay with you.”
George grimaces slightly, but doesn’t argue. “Yeah. Sure.”
I tip my head toward the stairs, gesturing for them both to follow, and lead.
It’s been weeks since I stepped into Geraldine’s room — not since that night with Elena. But nothing’s changed. The glass I was drinking out of is still sitting on the table beside her portrait, the lights still low.
George hesitates at the doorway. “I, uh, I haven’t been in here since.”
I turn, halfway across the room, Elena clinging to my arm. “Does it bother you?”
“I don’t know,” he admits.
“We don’t have to talk about it in here,” I offer. “I just… this was her favorite spot. If I’m doing this, I’d rather do her the service of doing it here, if you’re capable.”
He takes a deep breath in through his nose, then steps inside. “It’s fine,” he says. “Still looks the same.”
I take a seat in Geraldine’s chair, extending my arm toward what used to be my chair, the same one Elena had sat in before. “I kept it as it was,” I explain. “Thought she’d haunt me like a poltergeist if I changed anything.”
George cautiously lowers himself into my chair.
I can’t imagine what images flash behind his eyes — it could be the same ones I have, but from his own perspective, a much smaller version of him running around in here with his toy airplanes or teddy bear, causing havoc while I try to wrangle him, or it could be absolutely nothing.
Just being in here with him feels like stepping both backward and forward in time.
I exhale heavily, feeling Elena’s hand come to rest on my shoulder over the back of the chair. “I should’ve told you a long time ago,” I say carefully.
He stares at me. “Yeah. You should’ve.”
I meet his eyes, willing myself to speak. “I need you to understand that I didn’t is because she didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want anyone to know, but most of all, you. She didn’t want to hurt you.”
His brows knit. “You listened to that over letting me know what happened to my own mother?”
“I listened and followed my dying wife’s wishes,” I say, the words sharper than I mean to. “Sorry. I didn’t — I didn’t mean to snap. This is just difficult for me. I regret that choice, nearly every day.”
The anger that simmers in him, buried deep but just barely visible, flickers. But he waits, watching me with that same hard stare that mirrors his mother’s when she was furious.
“She had cancer, George,” I say quietly. “Stage four. You can ask Dr. Frasier, he was handling most of her treatment. She hid it for a long time, from you until now, and from me… from me until a month before she died.”
George blinks, something I don’t quite recognize flashing across his face, but it’s gone before I can decipher it.
“She was always private, but this was different. She didn’t want anyone to know. She didn’t want sympathy or pity. And she desperately didn’t want you to see her like that.”
His jaw works, but he doesn’t speak. Elena’s hand tightens infinitesimally.
“I begged her to fight it when she told me,” I rasp. “She refused. She said she wanted control over how she went, that she’d watched her mother suffer through chemo for nothing and didn’t want to do the same.”
George blinks. “So you’re telling me that the official report of suicide is true?”
I nod, slowly. “Yes.”
“But you helped her.”
“No,” I say, wincing. “I know the image you saw of her in those last few weeks wasn’t exactly the most convincing when it comes to that.
I was terrified and already grieving, and she was…
god, she was holed up in here or in our bedroom almost constantly.
It looked like she was depressed because, honestly, she was.
She felt awful, could barely do anything she wanted to.
I’m surprised she hung on as long as she did. ”
George stares me down. “You knew, then.”
“I knew there was a high likelihood she’d go out on her own terms,” I breathe.
“And if I’m honest, I think a part of me knew the night it happened, before she’d even come to me.
I had this feeling in my gut like I wasn’t going to see her again.
But she came in while I was in my office, said goodbye so casually that it didn’t click right away that it wasn’t goodnight. ”
He tenses. “You didn’t stop her?”
“I froze,” I exhale. “I sat there.”
“Why?”
Elena’s grip tightens, harder this time.
“Because I was a coward. Because I wanted to respect what little autonomy she had left. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of dragging her screaming into months of agony she didn’t want. Take your pick.”
His eyes drop to the floor, and for a moment, the room is silent. Even Elena doesn’t move, her body tense behind mine.
“Do you think I don’t wish I’d done it differently?
” I say, the words coming out wrong again, fighting when I’m not trying to, defensive before I need to be.
“Do you think I haven’t replayed that night in my head more times than I can count, especially when you fire shots at me that paint me as a murderer? ”
His breath stutters. “Can you blame me for thinking that of you when you imagine what I was seeing?” he fires back.
“All I saw was Mom hiding from me, from the world, and my father getting angrier and angrier anytime I tried to bring it up, and then she was dead and you were acting like you’d expected it all along—”
“I apologize for that,” I say carefully. “I was… I was struggling with it all. I should never have taken that out on you.”
His knee bounces as he leads forward, his gaze somewhere off in the middle distance. “You know, the handful of times I let myself believe the suicide story, I assumed it was because of me. She didn’t want to see me.”
That lands with the weight of a fucking boulder on my chest. “No,” I say, my voice cracking.
“God, no, it was never because of you. She loved you. She adored you, more than you could ever fully understand. She was just terrified of you seeing her that sick. That was the only reason. You were just finishing up high school, your exams were coming up—”
“That’s not a good excuse.”
“I know that. I do. But it was what she wanted, and I didn’t want to take that from her at the end,” I explain. “I thought back then that maybe she was right, thought we were protecting you, and then she was gone, and you were grieving, and I didn’t want to make things worse.”
“That didn’t protect me,” he snaps.
“I know. I know that now. I know I failed,” I sigh. “I was just trying to do right by her and respect her wishes. I should’ve, at the very least, told you after she’d passed.”
He drags a hand down his face and leans back in the chair, processing, as silence falls around us. But then his gaze flicks to Elena. “He told you all this?”
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “A few weeks ago.”
“Fitting that she finds out before me.”
“George,” I hiss.
“Sorry,” he mutters. He looks back up at her, his eyes locking over my shoulder. “Surprised you stayed. Don’t know if I would’ve.”
I bristle, but she isn’t phased. “You weren’t there.”
He lets out a long, slow breath, then pushes to his feet. “Right,” he says, as if that’s that and everything’s done. “I’m not staying. I… I needed to hear it, and I’m glad that I did, but I don’t want to be here right now.”
I purse my lips, not making a move. It’s clear he doesn’t want me to. “I understand.”
Slowly, he meets my gaze, holding it for a second before flicking back to Elena.
“If it’s worth anything, I’m sorry for the things I said to you,” he says, shoving his hands back in his pockets.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me or forget.
But maybe, I don’t know, someday, things won’t be so fucked between us.
And I can come meet her.” He nods, once, towards Elena’s stomach.
I glance up at her, watching as her pursed lips soften into a half smile. “Okay.”
His gaze flicks back to me. “I’ll see you later.”
I don’t bother to stop him. He’s halfway down the hall when Elena’s arms wrap fully around my neck from behind, her head dipping down to mine, her lips pressing once against my cheek. I stare at the photograph on the table like it might shift, like Geraldine might wink at me or move or tell me I—
“You did the right thing,” Elena murmurs. “Talking to him, I mean.”
“No,” I sigh. “Doing the right thing would’ve been telling him a long time ago instead of letting it build into this.”
Her thumb rubs at my collarbone. “Maybe,” she says. “But you did what you did for her. And that’s what matters.”
I don’t answer, but I reach up and take her hand, lacing our fingers together. She’s warm, steady, real, and for now, that’s enough. It has to be enough.