I fold my hands; he covers them with his, warm and papery. “You’re strong,” he says simply. “You’ve outlasted storms that would have sent other girls to bed for a year. And the boy… the man you chose—he has iron in him.”
“Chose,” I echo, and the word wobbles the table. “I think you know it’s the other way, Grandpa.”
He smiles, shrewd enough to be kind. “Doesn’t matter what route you took. It’s the final destination that matters. Either way, you love him.”
It hits like a bell in my ribs. “Grandpa, I?—”
“You do,” he says, amused by my outrage. “I’m old. I can call it. And you’ll both come through this because of it.”
“That,” I say, aiming for tart and landing on soft, “is a very optimistic diagnosis.”
“It’s a prescription,” he corrects. Then, more quietly: “Less secrets. More confession. We Kanes spent too long sweeping our own mess under more expensive rugs. Look where it got us.”
I swallow. Hard. “I hear you.”
“Good. Say it to him. Before the meeting. Tell him everything.” He squeezes my fingers. “Let him carry the weight with you. That’s what the ring is for, isn’t it? Not just to look pretty in a photo.”
I nod because if I speak right now I might confess all of it in a rush—how I mailed a necklace like penance, how I chose the wrong reflex and learned the right lesson too late to spare us pain, how the fear of wanting this forever has shadowed every perfect moment. I take out my new phone, that sleek black promise of sanity, and move Vasso’s name to the top of my favorites again, like faith.
I’m composing the message—Tonight, before we fly. Everything. Hold me to it—when the air in the restaurant tilts, just a degree, the way it does before a summer storm. My fingers freeze with dread.
“Hello, princess,” a voice purrs, amused as sin. “Fancy seeing my two favorite traitors enjoying soup while they salt my earth.”
Harrison doesn’t arrive so much as insert himself, all cologne and varnish and the coat his tailor misread as character. He drags out the empty chair at our table and sits before anyone can tell him he’s unwelcome. He doesn’t look older; he looks… preserved, like something pickled to keep its smile.
“You’re not welcome here, Harrison. Get up,” I say, calm as death. “Leave.”
He ignores me, because that’s our original sin. He grins at Theodore like the cat who found the old bird still has wings. “Father. You’re looking sturdy for a stubborn man who needed three heart attacks to hand over his son’s birthright.”
Grandpa doesn’t blink. “I handed it to you,” he says, colder than I’ve heard him in a long time. “And what did you do with it? Pawned it for whiskey and whoring and empty applause.”
Harrison’s eyes glitter. “Says the man now eating on the upstart’s tab.”
“Stop,” I say, because people are watching and I am tired of being made into theater. “What do you want?”
He turns that polished smile on me. “To remind you that family should always have a seat at the table.” He leans in, drops his voice, lets the rot out. “And to tell you the island looks better with our name on it. If your husband insists on keeping it, perhaps he should keep his wife, too.”
My hand tightens on the phone. “We’re done.”
“We’re never done,” he croons. “Not until you remember who made you.”
Grandpa’s spoon lands in the saucer with a controlled click. ““She made herself while you were busy making a mess,” he says.
Harrison laughs, delighted, cruel. “And now she’ll unmake herself to save the man she’s pretending to love. Watch me.”
My stomach goes cold; the anger goes hot. “You don’t get to say that word like it’s yours.”
He tilts his head, feline. “Which word?Love? Pretending?Orwife?”
The room narrows to brass and breath. I glance toward the door because some part of me, the part that is girl and not woman, always checks for rescue when the monster shows himself in daylight.
It’s just us. And the soup. And the lightning storm lining up its shot.
I sit higher. “Leave,” I repeat, and my voice has the calm I inherited from the man at my side and the fire I learned from the man across from me. “Or I call security and the police, and I hand them enough evidence to keep you answering questions until you forget your own birthday.”
Harrison’s smile tips. “Temper, temper.”
He reaches for a breadstick as if the table is his. Snaps it in half. “Do you know what I like best about you two?” he says lightly, a knife slipping out of a linen napkin. “You still believe in the truth. It makes you very easy to play.”
