“Driven,” I reply. “Focused. He believed in building legacies that outlasted lifetimes.”
“Did you agree with him?”
“Yes,” I answer. “Even when it demanded more than it should have.”
She studies me for a moment, then asks, “Is he still involved?”
“No. He was killed the same night I was attacked,” I continue, my tone even. “The people who tried to kill me succeeded with him.”
Her fingers still around the stem of her glass. “I’m sorry.”
Rowan’s attention narrows, not with fear, but with understanding.
I lift my glass, giving the moment a boundary before it turns into something I won’t offer.
She doesn’t ask for more. That restraint tells me everything I need to know about her.
The server arrives with our meals, and we eat in comfortable silence for several minutes. The food is excellent, as I knew it would be, and I watch Rowan relax incrementally as the evening progresses. By the time our plates are cleared, she's finished her second glass of wine, and the wariness in her expression has softened into curiosity.
“Tell me about your family,” I request quietly.
Her fingers tighten around her wine glass, and for a moment, I think she'll deflect. But then she exhales slowly, her shoulders dropping as she decides to trust me with pieces of herself she guards carefully.
“My mom is a bookkeeper,” she begins. “She works for a construction company and manages their accounts. She’s been there for almost twenty years.”
She pauses, then adds, “And Ethan…”
Her brother.
“He’s an EMT,” she continues. “Twenty-five. Stubborn as hell and convinced he’s invincible.”
As expected.
“Sounds familiar,” I remark.
She smiles faintly. “He looks up to me, even though he'd never admit it. When our dad died, he was only seven. He doesn't remember as much as I do, but he remembers me trying to hold everything together.”
“That's a heavy burden for a child.”
“It didn't feel like a choice,” she replies quietly. “Mom was working two jobs just to keep us afloat. Someone had to make sure Ethan felt safe.”
“And who made sure you felt safe?”
The question stops her, and she stares down at her glass asthough the answer might be hidden in the remaining wine. “No one,” she finally admits. “I learned to manage on my own.”
I lean forward slightly, closing the distance between us without encroaching on her space. “You shouldn't have had to.”
“Maybe not. But that's how it was.”
The resignation in her voice bothers me more than it should, a reminder of the differences between her world and mine. She learned self-reliance from necessity and loss, which reshaped her childhood into a state of survival. I learned it from calculation, and a father who believed vulnerability was weakness and sentiment was a liability.
We both learned to protect ourselves. The methods were just different.
“Your father's death shaped you,” I observe quietly.
“Everything about that day shaped me,” she corrects. “I was in the car with him when it happened. A deer ran across the road, and he swerved. We hit a tree.”
She keeps her voice level, but the tremor beneath it is unmistakable. This is a wound that hasn't healed despite the years, a scar she carries as carefully as I carry mine.
