Page 150 of Stolen Harmony
“Ask me tomorrow.”
The town looked smaller than I remembered, more worn around the edges. Some of the storefronts that had been boarded up when I'd left were open again, but others had closed in the intervening months. Change came slowly to places like this, but it came, whether people wanted it or not.
The house looked exactly as I'd left it but somehow different. The paint looked fresher, and someone had been working in the garden. The porch step that had been sagging when I'd left was straight and solid now, reinforced with new boards that hadn't quite weathered to match the old ones.
“You fixed the step,” I said as we pulled into the driveway.
“Among other things.” He turned off the engine and sat for amoment, hands still on the wheel. “I had a lot of time to think after you left. About the things that needed fixing.”
There was weight in those words, layers of meaning that went beyond home repairs. I wanted to ask what else he'd fixed, what else he'd changed, but the question felt too big for the fragile peace we'd managed to build during the drive.
Max greeted us at the door with his usual enthusiasm, tail wagging hard enough to knock over anything that wasn't nailed down. He sniffed at Roxie's carrier with interest but not aggression, like he remembered her from before and was curious about why she'd come back.
I let her out in the living room, and she immediately began her cautious exploration, sniffing at corners and furniture with the careful attention of an animal that had learned not to trust new places too quickly. But this wasn't entirely new, was it? She'd been here before, had claimed territory on the couch and by the window. Maybe she remembered too.
“I put your things in the master bedroom,” Elias said, setting my bag down by the stairs. “But if you'd rather...”
“Your room is fine,” I said quickly. Too quickly, probably, but the idea of sleeping in his bed, of waking up beside him when we were still figuring out what we meant to each other, felt like too much too soon.
He nodded, and if he was disappointed, he didn't show it. “I'll let you get settled. There's food in the fridge if you're hungry.”
I wandered through the house like a ghost returning to haunt familiar places. The kitchen where we'd shared that perfect breakfast what felt like a lifetime ago.
But there were changes too, subtle ones thatspoke of someone trying to move forward without erasing the past. New books on the coffee table, different flowers in the vase by the window, a photograph I'd never seen before on the mantle. Elias and my mother at some outdoor event, both of them laughing at something just outside the frame. They looked happy in a way that made my chest ache, not with jealousy but with the recognition of something I'd never seen before.
The master room was exactly as I remembered it, neutral and comfortable.
I unpacked slowly, hanging clothes in the closet and arranging my few possessions on the dresser like I was staking a claim to this space. Roxie had followed me upstairs and was now investigating the bed, testing the softness of the comforter with her paws before settling into a patch of afternoon sunlight.
“What do you think?” I asked her, scratching behind her ears. “Think we can make this work?”
She purred and butted her head against my hand, which I chose to interpret as cautious optimism.
Dinner was takeout from a Chinese place in town, eaten at the kitchen table while we talked carefully around the bigger questions that hung between us. Elias told me about the changes he'd made to the house, the garden he'd started, the music lessons he was still teaching at the elementary school. I told him about the songs I'd been working on, the melodies that had been coming more easily since I'd started dealing with my grief instead of drowning it.
It felt almost normal, like we were two people who'd chosen to share a meal and conversation without the weight of everything that had brought us to this moment. But underneath the normalcy was a current of awareness, of possibility, of the recognition that we were both trying very hard not to fuck this up.
After dinner, we moved to the back porch with mugs of tea,settling into chairs that faced the water. The sun was setting behind the house, painting the ocean in shades of gold and pink that would have been beautiful if they weren't so familiar, if they didn't carry the weight of every sunset I'd watched from this same vantage point as a child.
“She used to sit here in the evenings,” I said, nodding toward the chair between us. “After dinner, when the light was like this. She'd have a glass of wine and watch the boats come in.”
“I know,” Elias said quietly. “She told me about those evenings. Said they were some of her favorite memories of raising you.”
The words should have hurt, should have been another reminder of all the conversations we'd never had, all the time we'd wasted being angry at each other. Instead, they felt like a gift, a piece of her that I'd thought was lost forever.
“I know I fucked up,” Elias said, his voice barely audible over the sound of waves against rocks. “With you, with us, with everything that mattered. I let fear make my decisions, and I hurt you in ways that can't be undone.”
I turned to look at him, studying his profile in the fading light. He looked older than he had when I'd first met him, worn down by months of guilt and regret and the particular exhaustion that came from fighting battles you weren't sure you could win.
“Then why try?” I asked. “Why go through all this trouble to bring me back if you know you can't undo the damage?”
He was quiet for so long that I thought he might not answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough with emotion.
“Because I love you enough to learn from my mistakes. To be better than I was. To fight for what we could have instead of hiding fromwhat scares me.”
Love. He'd said it like it was a fact, like it was something that existed independent of my ability to return it or deserve it.
“Elias,” I started, but he held up a hand to stop me.
