“You’re temporary.”
“So are you.”
That should reassure her.
It doesn’t.
Isla turns back to the desk with more force than necessary.
“This doesn’t change why I’m here,” she says, more to herself than to Callum.“I still need answers.”
Callum doesn’t argue.That, more than anything, unsettles her.
“Then keep looking,” he says instead.
She opens the next drawer, the one above the photograph.Inside are folders, thicker, messier, less assembled.Receipts.Airline itineraries.Handwritten notes shoved between documents without order or apology.
“This is chaos,” Isla mutters.
“He kept business clean,” Callum says.“Personal things… not so much.”
She flips through the papers quickly at first, scanning dates, locations.New York.London.Berlin.Paris.Always moving.Always somewhere else.
Her chest tightens.
“There are gaps,” she says.
Callum leans over the desk, pointing, not touching.“Here.And here.He disappears for weeks at a time.”
“Recording?”
“Sometimes.”
“And the rest?”
Callum exhales slowly.“That’s where the story never quite added up.”
Isla stops flipping pages.
“What story?”
“The one he told everyone,” Callum says.“That he was incapable of staying in one place.That he’d ruin anything he touched if he stayed too long.”
Her hands still.
“That’s convenient,” she says bitterly.“Self-awareness as an excuse.”
“That’s what I used to think,” Callum admits.“Now I’m not sure.”
Isla looks up sharply.“What changed?”
Callum hesitates, then gestures vaguely between them.“This.”
She scoffs.“You heard me play a sad song, and suddenly my father becomes complicated?”
“No,” he says quietly.“You’re complicated.He always was.I just never had reason to connect the two.”
Isla doesn’t know what to do with that.Could she be like her father in some ways?
