“Ninety days,” Isla said, not willing to promise her mother that she’d return.
The door closes with a loud, angry boom.The kind of sound of someone leaving, angry, frustrated, and filled with rage.
For the first time in her adult life, Isla has not agreed with her mother, and it feels strangely freeing.
The castle does not react.
No thunder.No collapse.No sudden rush of people.
Just silence.
Isla stands there, heart racing, the weight of what she’s learned pressing down on her.
She sinks back onto the sofa as if her legs have finally given up pretending.The tea tray sits untouched, steam thinning, cups still perfectly aligned.A small, irrational part of her wants to sweep it onto the floor and listen to porcelain shatter against stone, proof she can break something in this place that broke her first.
Instead, she presses her fingers to her sternum and breathes.
Alone.
The word lands harder now that it’s real.
She closes her eyes and sees the funeral again, not the casket, not the faces, but the piano.The weight of the bench beneath her.The way her hands didn’t tremble.The way her voice stayed steady as she sang.
He loved music.He just didn’t love being a father.
The chapel had gasped.Isla hadn’t looked up.She hadn’t needed to.
Honesty had carried her through.
Here, honesty feels heavier.Like a weight bearing down.
She stands, because sitting still will swallow her whole, and steps into the corridor.Her footsteps echo, following her like a reminder that she exists here now, whether she wants to or not.
The castle unfolds around her, stone and shadow, history layered thick as dust.Portraits line the walls: stern men, sharp-eyed women, ancestors who look like they would never apologize for wanting more.She wonders which of them Keir resembled.She wonders if anyone in this bloodline ever learned how to stay.
A study door stands ajar.She pauses, peering inside.A desk cluttered with papers.Sheet music stacked carelessly.Coffee rings on polished wood.Evidence of a life lived without clean edges.
She doesn’t touch anything.
Not yet.She isn’t ready to dig into her father’s secrets, but knows sometime during these ninety days, she will search to find out what kind of man he really was.If he was the vile creature her mother painted him or if he was just a man.
Farther on, a room filled with records and books about composition, guitar technique, theory.Framed photos, Keir on stage, Keir laughing with bandmates, Keir alive in a way Isla recognizes with a painful jolt.
She turns away before the jealousy can root itself.They knew him, she didn’t.
The staircase beneath her hand is worn smooth, the stone cool and solid.Hell has excellent stonework, she thinks, and the humorless thought keeps her moving.
At the end of a quieter corridor, she stops.
The music room.
She opens the door.
The piano sits at the center like an altar, glossy black, patient, waiting.
Isla approaches slowly.Rests her hand on the lid.The surface is cool beneath her palm.
She sits.
