He swallows them down.
A photo is not a father.A secret keepsake isn’t proof of love.It’s proof of something, yes, but Callum doesn’t know what, and he won’t feed her another half-truth.
Instead, he says, “If there’s anything you want to search for, papers, recordings, letters, I can at least tell you where he kept things.”
“You’re offering to show me where he kept his secrets?”Isla’s laugh is thin.“And I’m supposed to trust that you won’t hide the parts you don’t want me to see?”
Callum’s jaw tightens.“We’ll discover them together.”
Another silence.
Isla drops back onto the bench, not to play, but to sit in the aftermath.Her shoulders rise and fall.“What now?”she asks, voice steadier.
Callum answers honestly.“Now, I don’t know.”
Isla’s laugh is brittle.“Welcome to my life.”
Callum watches her fingers hover above the keys.He realizes he’s holding his breath again, waiting for the next thing she’ll reveal without meaning to.
Instead, she plays one chord, soft, unresolved.
It isn’t a performance.It’s punctuation.
Callum backs toward the door, slowly.The room feels too tight for both of them.
“I’ll give you space,” he says.
Isla doesn’t look at him.“Thank you,” she murmurs, and the words sound like they cost her.
Callum pauses with his hand on the door.
He wants to promise answers.He wants to promise justice.He wants to promise that the castle won’t swallow her whole.
Instead, he says, the only honest thing left.
“I don’t believe he didn’t want you,” Callum says quietly.
Isla’s head jerks up.
Callum meets her gaze, steady.“I don’t know why he stayed away.But I don’t believe it was because you weren’t worth coming back for.”
For one second, Isla looks like she might break.
Then she lifts her chin, the mask snapping back into place.
“Don’t,” she says, voice low.“Don’t give me hope you can’t back up.”
Callum nods once.
And he leaves the room.
He walks down the corridor with her music clinging to him like smoke, and one thought follows him, relentless and unsettling:
How does a man live with saving one child and walking away from another?
That’s not the Keir Callum he knew.
So either Callum never knew him at all?—
