Page 14 of Stolen Harmony
My throat closed. Of course she had. I remembered her at the kitchen table with her good stationery, drafting letters to him, rewriting until the words sounded just right. She'd seal each envelope like it carried all her hope in its folds, like paper and ink could bridge the years between them.
“She never stopped believing you'd come back to see it,” I said, my voice rougher than I'd intended. “She wrote to you about it. About her plans, her dreams for this place.”
Something dangerous flashed in his eyes. He surged to his feet like the couch had burned him. “You read the letters.”
It wasn't a question. His voice was sharp, but underneath it was something else—something wounded.
“Yes,” I admitted carefully. “She showed me sometimes. When she didn't know what to say back. When she wanted to make sure she wasn't making things worse.”
Rowan’s laugh was bitter, jagged. “So you got the director’s cut of my breakdowns. You got to see every ugly thing I wrotewhen I was too pissed off to think straight. Every time I said I hated her, every time I told her to leave me the hell alone. You saw all of it.”
“Not to judge you,” I said quickly. “Never that. She showed me because she was terrified of losing you. Because she wanted to know how to reach you.”
Rowan surged to his feet, pacing like the room wasn’t big enough to contain him. “You don’t get it. Those letters—they were mine. They were all I could give her when I couldn’t show up, when I couldn’t even pick up the phone. And you—you got to sit there with her and dissect them like they were homework. Like my pain was something you could workshop over tea.”
His voice broke, fury bleeding into something rawer. He dragged a hand over his face, and when it came away, his eyes were already wet. “She was mine, Elias. My mother. And you—” His breath shuddered out. “You got to see more of me than I ever meant to give. You got to keep the pieces of me that were supposed to belong only to her.”
I stood too, because sitting felt like conceding. “Rowan?—”
“No,” he snapped, pointing at me like the words themselves were a blade. “Don’t you dare tell me it was out of love. Don’t you dare say you were trying to help. Because at the end of the day, you had something I didn’t. You had her trust. You had her letters. You had her nights at the piano. You hadher.” His voice cracked, tears sliding hot and unchecked down his face now. “And I was the one she was still waiting for.”
The silence that followed was brutal. I could hear the uneven rhythm of his breathing, see the tremor in his shoulders as he tried and failed to hold himself together.
“I never tried to replace you,” I said quietly. “You were always the one she was waiting for. Always. I just… I was the one who waited with her.”
He made a sound—half laugh, half sob—and it gutted me. He pressed his palms to his eyes, as if blocking me out would stop the words from hitting. “Do you have any idea what it feels like? Knowing that while I was in New York pretending I was building a life, you were here… filling the silence with her. Watching her smile. Knowing her routines. Hearing her laugh in ways I’ll never hear again.”
“She wanted you,” I said, forcing the words past the lump in my throat. “Every day. She missed you every day. I saw it. Felt it. I was never enough to make that pain go away.”
“Stop,” he choked out, lowering his hands to glare at me through tears. “Don't you dare try to comfort me with that. I know what I lost. I know what I chose to walk away from. And I have to live with that every single day.” His voice shattered on the last word, breaking open into sobs he couldn't swallow down.
I took a step forward, instinct pulling me toward him, but he stumbled back, shaking his head violently. “Don’t. Don’t touch me. You don’t get to comfort me. You don’t get to act like you understand.”
I froze where I stood, my chest aching like something had split open.
“I should’ve been here,” Rowan whispered, his voice raw and broken. “I should’ve answered her calls. I should’ve come home sooner. And instead, you—” His throat worked, words catching. “You slid into the space I left empty. You became the one who sat across from her at dinner. The one who held her hand when she was scared. The one who knew her better than I did in the end. You became the son she deserved instead of the disappointment she got.”
“She chose me,” I said softly, though my own voice trembled. “Not because you weren’t enough. Not because she stopped wanting you. But because she wanted love in her life,and she found it in me. And every single day she still wanted you. Every day she checked the mailbox like it might bring her another piece of you. Every day she hoped the phone would ring.”
The sound that tore out of him was raw and helpless.
I stood there, useless, aching to close the distance and terrified that if I did, he’d shatter completely.
He stared at me, the fury in his face warring with something else—something that looked alarmingly like hope, as if he wanted to believe me and hated himself for it.
“She talked about you constantly,” I said. “She played your music, the recordings she’d saved from when you were in high school. She made your favorite dinner on your birthday even though you weren’t there to eat it.”
His throat worked. “Stop.”
“She loved you, Rowan. Completely, desperately, in the way only mothers can love their children. And it was killing her that you couldn’t forgive her.”
“I said stop.” His voice cracked this time, more plea than command.
But I couldn’t stop, not when I saw the way his mask was crumbling. “She died still waiting for you to come home. Still believing she’d failed because the person she loved most couldn’t bear to hear her voice.”
That’s when he shattered.
He staggered back a step, then sank onto the couch like his legs had given out. He buried his face in his hands and let out a sound that was part sob, part keening wail.
