17. Harper
HARPER
The drive out of the city was long enough for dusk to settle. Buildings gave way to trees. Traffic thinned. Snow dusted the fields and caught in the branches like powdered sugar. The farther we got from the city, the more the world seemed to quiet around me.
I had grown up between places. The apartment in the city for board meetings, galas, school functions, and the version of our family that belonged to the public.
Then all the vacation properties. But the estate was for us.
For Christmas mornings and summer nights, my mother’s garden, Will’s muddy boots in the foyer, and my father pretending not to see them.
For the life that existed before reporters camped outside our gates and helicopters circled too low.
I had not been back to the estate in almost a year.
The last few times I came home we met at the apartment in the city.
I hadn’t been back here since last Christmas, when I stayed only long enough to open gifts, drink too much wine, and avoid the west wing where my brother’s room was still exactly as it had been left.
The gates appeared through the trees, black iron against white snow.
Montgomery House rose beyond them, all stone and glass and old-world arrogance softened by warm light pouring from every window.
It looked like something from another century, perhaps another lifetime.
A place built by men who believed legacy could be carved into limestone and passed down through bloodlines.
A place my father had walked away from, had come back to and made his own.
The SUV rolled to a stop at the front steps.
Before James could open my door, it opened from the outside.
My father stood there in a dark sweater, hair silver at the temples, face unreadable to anyone who did not know him.
But I did. I knew the way his eyes moved over me, checking for damage, and he saw all of it.
For a second, neither of us spoke. Then he opened his arms, and I was moving.
I stepped into my father’s arms and buried my face against his chest like I was the little girl who had just found out her world had ended.
He wrapped me up so tightly that the ache in my chest finally had somewhere to go.
“There’s my angel,” he murmured into my hair.
I broke into an ugly collapse that shook through my ribs while I clutched the front of his sweater and tried to breathe through the fact that I had made it home before falling apart.
My father held me close, one hand at the back of my head, the other wrapped around me. A fortress. A promise. A reminder that no matter how far I ran from this name, from this house, from this life, there was still one place in the world where I did not have to earn my right to be loved.
Later, after I showered and changed into leggings and one of my father’s old university sweatshirts, I found him in the sitting room off the library. It was my favorite.
The Christmas tree stood in the corner, tall, proud, and covered in ornaments collected over decades. Some priceless. Some handmade, and ugly enough that only grief could explain why we still kept them.
The fire was lit. A tray of food sat untouched on the low table; beside it were three bottles of wine.
I raised an eyebrow, and he looked over from where he sat near the fire, one ankle crossed over his knee, glass already in hand.
“I’m considering investing in a small vineyard.”
I huffed a laugh.
“That is your opening?”
“It seemed safer than asking why my daughter looks like someone cut her heart out and expected her to thank them for the experience.”
My breath caught, and I had to swallow down the pain. He took a sip of wine as if he had not just disarmed me completely, as I moved to the sofa beside him and tucked my feet under me.
“I’m fine.”
“My angel.” Two words that held so much weight. A reminder that lies were unnecessary here.
I looked at the fire instead of him. The flames moved over the logs, bright and restless. For a while, the room was quiet except for the crackle of wood and the soft ticking of the antique clock on the mantel.
Finally, he asked, “Was it real?”
I closed my eyes. That question hurt more than any accusation could have. Because if he had asked if Elliot hurt me, I could answer. If he had asked if I was angry, I could answer. But real?
I didn’t know how to answer that anymore. I thought about Elliot’s hands warm against my stomach. His voice when he said what if it was something different. The way he looked at me when I had brought him cake on his birthday..
Then I heard his voice calling me a whore for hire.
My laugh sounded hollow even to me. “Not enough to stop him from hurting me.”
My father’s jaw tightened. One slight movement, barely there, but I knew him. Alexander Montgomery could destroy companies with less visible reaction.
“What did he do?”
I shook my head. “Not tonight.”
He studied me for a moment, then nodded once. Because my father understood grief, and that some wounds needed time before words. He opened one arm, and I moved immediately, curling into his side the way I had when I was little and nightmares felt too big for my bed.
He smelled like pine, winter air, and the same cologne he had worn my entire life.
My mother used to say it made him smell like a handsome forest, and he had pretended to hate that. But he had worn it every day after she died.
I rested my head against his shoulder, his hand moved over my hair slowly.
The fire crackled, the wine breathed, and outside, snow started falling again. For the first time in days, I let myself feel tired.
After a while, I whispered, “Tell me the story.”
His chest moved beneath my cheek with a quiet chuckle.
“Oh?”
I smiled even though my throat still hurt. “The story.”
“The one you have heard a thousand times?” He asked, but I could hear the emotion he was trying to hide.
“The greatest love story of all time,” I said, because that was how he used to say it when I was little.
He laughed softly, and the sound cracked something open in me. In the way old houses settle around winter storms, or memories make room for you.
“My version or your mother’s?” he asked.
“Yours makes you sound heroic.”
“I am heroic.” he scoffed.
“Mom’s made you sound insufferable.”
“She was also correct.”
I laughed. Small, but real. His hand paused briefly on my hair, like he noticed. Like he was grateful. Then his gaze drifted to the fire, and the smile on his face softened into something I had seen my entire life. A man looking at a ghost and finding love there instead of fear.
“I was twenty-four,” he began, voice low, “And completely unbearable.”
“Still are sometimes.” I added, snuggling in closer.
“Cruel, but deserved.”
I smiled into his shoulder.
“I had just finished law school,” he continued. “Your grandfather had already decided my future for me. A congressional seat first, then the Senate. Governor if I behaved, President if I married correctly and didn’t embarrass the family before forty.”
I had heard this part a hundred times. It still made something cold move through me. The Montgomerys did not raise children; they built heirs. My father had been the favorite because he was beautiful, brilliant, controlled, and obedient enough to be useful.
Until he wasn’t.
“There was a fundraiser in Boston,” he said. “Boring. Expensive. Full of people congratulating themselves for caring about education while ignoring every actual educator in the room.”
“That sounds familiar.”
His mouth curved. “Your mother was there with a nonprofit literacy group. She had been invited to speak for three minutes between donors who would never remember her name.”
“But you did.”
His eyes softened. “I did.”
The fire popped quietly.
“She wore a yellow dress,” he said, as if the memory were painted somewhere behind his eyes. “Not fashionable or expensive. She had ink on her fingers and a run in her stocking, and she looked at me like I was the least impressive man she had ever met.”
I smiled. “She hated you.”
“She absolutely hated me,” he agreed.
“Why?” I asked, even though I knew exactly how he would answer.
“Because I deserved it.”
I laughed again.
“She asked me what I actually planned to do about literacy funding after I gave a very polished speech someone else had written for me.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.” His smile grew. “In front of donors. Board members. Your grandfather.”
I lifted my head slightly. “Grandfather must have loved that.”
“He nearly swallowed his tongue.”
“And you?”
My father’s eyes stayed on the fire.
“I was outraged.” he said in the same voice he used when I was little and asked him for this story all the time.
“Of course.”
“And fascinated.” He said in a voice he only used for her.
This part always made my chest ache. Not because of the romance, because my father still sounded surprised by it. As if, after all these years, Sophie Lane walking into his life still felt like an impossible gift.
“She didn’t care about my name,” he said. “Or my family. Or what I was supposed to become. She cared about whether I meant what I said.” He paused. Then softly, “She was the first person who ever made me feel like Alexander instead of a Montgomery.”
My throat tightened. Because I knew what that meant now, maybe I always had. But after Elliot, after living as Harper Lane for years and realizing how much easier it was to be wanted when people did not know the rest of you, I understood it differently.
“What happened after?” I asked, even though I knew.
“She refused to speak to me.”
I smiled.
“For how long?”
“Three months,” he scoffed.
“Mom said two.”
“Your mother enjoyed revising history to make herself appear more reasonable,” he laughed.
“She was more reasonable.” I said, my eyes drifting to a picture over the mantle.
“She was not,” he rebutted.
“She was definitely more reasonable than you.”
He sighed dramatically. “Betrayed in my home, by my daughter.”
I reached out and grabbed the glass of wine he had poured for me and then tucked myself back in beside him.