18. Harper #2
My voice cracked slightly when I said, “Harper Lane can walk into rooms and manage everyone else’s story.
She can be polished and careful, and temporary.
She can leave before anyone asks too much.
Harper Montgomery comes with publicized grief, headlines, history, and expectations that feel like a hand around my throat. ”
My father didn’t argue; he just listened, so I kept going.
“I don’t know how to be her without becoming someone people want to use.”
His eyes darkened. But it wasn’t anger at me, it was at the world, his family, at every person who saw his family and thought we were leverage.
“Then we build something they cannot use,” he said.
I laughed softly. “How?”
“Together.”
My chest ached.
He leaned forward slightly. “The foundation needs you.
Not because of your name. Because of your mind, how you understand people, because you understand what a story can do when it is weaponized, and what it can do when it is used to protect.
And you are so much more than the small box you've put yourself in.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m good at PR.”
“You are excellent at it,” he agreed.
“This would be different.” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“More personal.”
“Yes.”
“Scarier.”
His smile was sad. “Yes.”
I sat back in my chair and looked toward the window.
Snow fell thick and steady, blurring the dark edges of the world.
I thought about Elliot accusing me of looking for a sugar daddy, the way he saw my clothes, the bags, the townhouse, and built a version of me that made it easier to hurt me.
I thought about how much of myself I had hidden because I was afraid of being reduced to my last name, and how he had still found a way to reduce me without ever knowing it.
Maybe my father was right. Maybe hiding had become heavier than being seen.
He continued adding, “You are not the little girl wracked with grief, and I am not the man desperate to hide you from the world because I couldn’t breathe when I thought of someone getting to you too.
You have become an incredible woman, Harper, and I need to help you shine instead of letting my fear keep you hidden. ”
I took a sip of my wine and then looked up at my dad.
“I don’t want to be announced like some society princess.”
My father’s mouth twitched. “Okay.”
“And I’m not doing galas where old men congratulate themselves for writing checks.”
“You may have to do some of those.” He chuckled.
I took another sip of wine. It was warm. He was right to invest. We were right to invest.
“Maybe we start with the charitable division,” I said carefully.
My father’s eyes sharpened. Not in surprise, but in interest. The chairman appearing beneath the father.
“Montgomery International Foundation has reach, but it lacks intimacy. It needs a stronger public identity. Less polished generosity. More human impact. More direct storytelling. Scholarships, enhanced literacy programs, trauma recovery support, privacy advocacy, maybe even media responsibility initiatives.”
His face changed subtly, but I saw it.
“You have been thinking about this?” he asked.
I shrugged in response.
“My angel.” There was pride in his voice.
“I need time.” I said.
“You have it.”
“And I want control over how I’m introduced.”
“Of course.” He hid his grin behind his glass, but I saw it.
“Then yes,” I said quietly.
His expression stilled. “Yes?”
“Yes. Maybe you are right, and it’s time I stand beside you.”
For a second, my father did not speak. Then he reached across the table and took my hand, and I noticed his eyes were glassy.
“Your mother would be very proud.”
I looked down quickly. “Don’t.”
“She would,” he insisted.
“Dad.” I whispered.
“She would also tell me not to cry into the pasta.”
I laughed even though my own eyes were burning. “She would.”
“And then push the bowl of cheese closer to you so you could add more to your plate without Will noticing.”
We sat there for a while longer. Hand in hand, lost in the past, but also ready for the future.
Later that night, I wandered through the house alone.
I knew where I was going before I admitted it.
The west wing was colder, or maybe I imagined that because grief made everything feel that way.
The hallway lights were dimmed, casting the portraits and old photographs in soft gold.
My footsteps were quiet against the runner.
I passed the room my mother used as a studio.
The reading nook where Will used to hide from tutors.
The linen closet where I once locked myself during a game of hide-and-seek and sobbed because nobody found me for twenty minutes.
Then I stopped at his door, my chest tightened immediately. I knew the staff kept it dusted, and that sometimes when things got hard my dad would wander in there and stay for a while.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
My hand lifted toward the handle, but stopped halfway.
I could picture his room perfectly. The navy walls, and the Blackridge pennant above his desk, the stack of books he pretended were for school but were mostly fantasy novels, the old soccer ball he refused to throw away because I had written our names on it in permanent marker when I was five.
The photo of us at the lake; me missing both front teeth, and Will holding me on his back like I weighed nothing.
My big brother, beautiful and untouchable; frozen in time while the rest of us kept aging.
My fingers trembled as I lowered my hand. Not tonight. Maybe that made me weak, or maybe grief was not a door you forced open just because you were tired of standing outside it.
I stood there for a long time. Close enough to touch his door, but far enough away to keep pretending that he was in that room.
Eventually, I felt my father behind me. He didn’t speak. Just stood beside me in the quiet hallway. His shoulder brushed mine as we both stared at the door.
After a while, he said softly, “He would like the woman you’ve become.”
My eyes burned. “You think?”
“I know.”
I let out a breath that shook more than I wanted it to. “I’m not ready.”
“I know.”
He held out his hand; I took it, and together we walked away.
By the time we settled back in the sitting room, the fire had burned lower. I curled into the corner of the couch beneath a blanket while my father pretended not to study me too closely.
Then he said, “Will you stay through New Year’s?”
I took a slow sip of wine.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t need to be in Chicago?” he asked.
“I don’t.” I responded, but kept my eyes on the fire.
“I thought we could spend New Year’s with the Hastings.”
I looked at him over my glass. “The Hastings?”
His mouth curved. “Like old times.”
Something shifted in my chest. The Hastings had been woven through my childhood so thoroughly that some memories felt like they belonged to both families.
Summers at the lake. Christmas parties. New Year’s countdowns where the adults drank champagne, and the kids drank sparkling cider out of crystal glasses because our mothers thought plastic cups were depressing.
I hadn’t seen them in years.
“Are they coming here?” I asked.
“Small group. Nothing flashy.” He replied.
“With our families, that usually means a hundred people and a string quartet.”
“More like twelve people. No quartet.”
I smiled despite myself. Then he added, far too casually, “Oliver will be there.”
I froze, and my father suddenly became very interested in the fire.
“Oliver Hastings?” I asked and ignored the squeak in my voice.
“How many Olivers do we know?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Dad.”
“What?”
Oliver was this larger-than-life memory for me, Will’s best friend and one of the few boys who never treated me like the annoying little sister.
“You said that in a tone.” I retorted.
He sipped his wine, eyes bright with amusement. “I merely mentioned an old family friend.”
“An old family friend who once put a frog in my riding boot.”
“You liked him.” Dad said with a grin.
“I did not.”
“You followed him everywhere.” Dad was full out laughing at me now.
“I was young.”
“You bit a girl at a garden party because she said she was going to marry him.”
I gasped. “I was defending myself.”
“You were defending your claim,” he said with a wink at me.
“Oh my God.”
My father laughed. The kind that filled the room and made something inside me loosen. For a few seconds, I did not feel broken.
“He is doing well,” Dad said after a moment, his voice softening.
I looked towards the fire. “I’ve seen some of the work his nonprofit is doing.”
“It’s impressive.”
“It is.”
“He asks about you.”
I rolled my eyes, but my chest warmed unexpectedly. “Keeping tabs?”
“He asked when you would be home.” And he added, “He still brings your mother flowers.”
I took another sip of wine. Maybe staying was not the same thing as hiding, and going back to Chicago could wait.
“I’ll stay,” I said softly.
My father’s smile was gentle. “Good.”
Outside, snow continued to fall over Montgomery House.
Inside, the fire burned low; my mother’s cookbook sat open on the kitchen counter, and somewhere down the hall my brother’s door remained closed.
But for the first time in years, it did not feel like being sucked into the past. It felt like maybe, finally, being here could help me discover who I might become.