Chapter 29
Logan
Another week down in Tampa and I was eager to get back to what waited for me at home.
Yet the second I walked through the door, I knew something was wrong.
The house was too bright.
Every curtain had been pulled back, allowing sunlight to flood the space in wide, unapologetic bands, catching on the hardwood floors, the picture frames, the edges of furniture that usually lived in shadow.
The air felt lighter. Open. But the light, so relentless and so bright, felt almost intrusive.
For years, I’d kept the curtains drawn, never opening them back up after the night I’d found Elena on the bathroom floor.
Now the light seemed to expose everything I’d tried to keep hidden.
It illuminated the dust in the air, disturbed the secrecy of my grief.
The mustiness clung to the new openness.
And suddenly, I felt seen, in a way I wasn’t ready for.
I stood in the middle of the living room with my bag still slung over my shoulder, my chest tightening as unease crept in.
This wasn’t how the house was supposed to look.
“Dani?” I called out.
“In here,” she answered, from down the now brightly lit hall.
She stood near the windows in Harper’s room, one hand still on the curtain tie, and a smile on her face as she saw me.
Sunlight framed her silhouette, highlighting the wispy flyaways that escaped the clip holding her hair in place.
For a fleeting second, I was struck by how beautiful she way and the way the light softened her.
It made me notice the beauty in her posture, the gentleness in the slope of her shoulders, the way her gaze flickered with something unspoken.
“Daddy!” Harper bounced up. “Look! Dani helped me make space for my art corner!”
I tightened my grip on the strap of my bag, fingers digging into the fabric until my knuckles ached.
“Hey, bug,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Looks… different.”
Dani stood near the doorway now, hands tucked into the pockets of her jeans like she wasn’t sure where to put them.
My eyes kept scanning. Taking inventory.
“I hope it’s okay,” Dani said carefully. “I didn’t throw anything away. I just… I, um, I opened things up a little.”
My jaw set, frustration prickling beneath my confusion.
“Why are the curtains open?”
She hesitated. “It felt… dark in here.”
Harper beamed. “We didn’t throw anything away! Just moved it.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
But my body didn’t agree; tension battled with the effort to stay composed.
I kissed Harper’s head, told her to finish her drawing, then stepped back into the hallway with Dani trailing behind me.
That was when I saw it.
The hallway table—empty.
The small blue ceramic bowl Elena used to keep her keys in was gone.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Dani blinked. “Huh? The bowl?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I put it in the cabinet. Harper kept knocking the table and I was worried she would knock it over.”
A jagged shard of ice twisted deep within my chest, anger crashing into fresh hurt.
“That bowl stays there.”
Her smile faltered. “Logan, it was just—”
“That bowl stays there,” I repeated, harder.
Silence fell thick between us.
I walked into the living room. The blanket Elena crocheted—crooked, uneven, unfinished—had been folded, placed over the arm of the chair. It belonged draped across the back, how she left it. The coffee table was clear except for a coaster and the neat stack of mail that sat beside it.
Everything looked… cared for.
And I hated it, resentment surging beneath my skin, even as I knew the care behind it.
“What else did you move?” I asked.
Dani straightened. “Logan—”
“What else,” I said again, my voice rising despite myself, “did you decide needed fixin’?”
Her eyes widened. “I didn’t decide anything. Harper asked—”
“You don’t get to decide what changes in this house,” I snapped.
The words landed heavily.
Her mouth opened, then closed. When she spoke again, her voice was tight with hurt.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to overstep.”
“Well, you did.”
“That’s not fair,” she said softly.
“Neither is coming home to a house that doesn’t feel like mine anymore.”
She took a step back like I’d struck her, pain flickering across her face, and distance growing instantly.
“I was helping,” she said. “You were gone.”
“That’s not your call.”
She braced herself, eyes showing the hurt that was building beneath the surface. “You asked me to stay. To help. You can’t invite someone in and then punish them for existing.”
“I didn’t ask you to change things.”
“And I didn’t think pulling back a curtain counted as taking over.”
My chest burned. “You don’t get to decide what hurts.”
“And you don’t get to just shut everyone out.”
I turned away, dragging a hand through my hair. “This house is all I have left of her.”
Dani’s voice softened. “I know.”
“You don’t,” I said again, quieter this time. “You haven’t lost someone like that.”
“No,” she admitted. “I haven’t. But I can see what this is doing to you.”
I let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Oh, really! Well, go ahead. Enlighten me.”
“You’re freezing everything in place because you’re terrified that if one thing changes, she’ll disappear completely.”
I stiffened.
“That’s not—”
“And you’re angry at me,” she continued, her voice trembling now, “because I make it harder to pretend this house is a museum instead of a home.”
The word museum hit like a slap—a painful truth I refused to accept.
My jaw flexed. “Don’t tell me how I feel.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “Then don’t pretend this is just about a bowl.”
Her words hit too close. It was a physical thing—a tremor ran through my limbs, tightening the muscles between my shoulders.
My stomach twisted, hollowed out, and hot.
Clutching the chair, I tried grounding myself, but awareness crashed in, forcing me to see how Dani’s understanding left me exposed.
“I know I don’t understand grief the way you do,” she said softly, “I haven’t lost someone like that. But Harper is alive. She’s here. She’s growing. And she deserves a home that grows with her.”
I turned on her. “Don’t tell me what my daughter deserves.”
“She deserves more than a shrine,” Dani continued, her voice breaking. “She deserves joy without feeling like she’s betraying her mom.”
“I’ve never made her feel like that.”
“She asked me if it was okay to move the blanket,” Dani pressed on. “She whispered it. Like she was doing something wrong.”
It was like taking a shot to the gut.
“You think she doesn’t feel it, Logan?” she asked. “You think keeping everything exactly how Elena left it is protecting her?”
I swallowed hard. “You don’t get to say Elena’s name like that.”
She inhaled sharply, pain flickering in her expression.
“You don’t know what it’s like to come home to a house that’s all you have left of someone,” I said, voice shaking now. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel like if one thing changes, it all disappears.”
Her eyes filled with teats. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I was just trying to help.”
“Well, you didn’t.”
“This is Elena’s house,” I said again, more to myself than her.
Dani swallowed. “And she mattered. She always will, nothing could change that.”
I met her gaze, defensive reflexes firing. “Watch it.”
“But she’s gone.” The second the words left her mouth, she froze.
“I didn’t mean—” Her voice cracked. “I wasn’t saying it like that.”
But it was too late. The truth had landed between us, heavy and irreversible.
All I could do was stare at her as anger and grief knotted so tight I couldn’t pull them apart.
“You don’t get to say that,” I whispered.
Tears filled her eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“You crossed a line.”
She flinched. “I crossed a line by opening curtains? By wanting this place to breathe again?” Dani demanded.
“You crossed a line by forgetting whose life this is.”
Her breath hitched. “And you crossed one by making me feel like I’m disposable,” she said, voice shaking.
That stopped me, causing pings of regret to lodge themselves in my chest. I never meant to leave her feeling that way.
“I don’t know where I stand with you,” she went on, her voice breaking. “One minute you want me here, want me. The next, I’m an intruder. I don’t know what you want from me, and I can’t keep guessing which version of you I’m going to get.”
Her words hung in the space between us. For a split second, something desperate and wordless pushed against my anger. The ache beneath my ribs flared,but the hurt was louder, tangled up with things I couldn’t say.
“I was trying to be here,” she said softly. “Not to replace her. Not to fix you. Just… to exist alongside you.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
“I should go,” Dani whispered.
Dani looked at me one last time, eyes searching, waiting for me to say something.
I didn’t respond. Regret flashing through me, raw and unexpected.
For a second, I almost reached for her—to take it back, to tell her I meant what I said, that I wanted her, I just didn’t know how to want her without feeling like I was betraying what I had promised Elena.
But the words never made it out. Pride held me still, and she turned away before I could force them past it.
The door shut behind her with a final click.
And for the first time since Elena died, I realized the darkness I’d been protecting wasn’t preserving her at all. Sunlight poured over my hands where they rested on the back of the chair, warm and insistent.
It was the same sunlight Dani had let in, the same gentle light that softened her edges and made the rooms feel alive again.
For once, I let it touch me. In the hush after Dani’s leaving, I let it in, wishing she were still here, wishing I had reached for that warmth before it slipped away.
It was just keeping me alone.
???
I stood in the doorway long after she left.
The house was still too bright.