Page 153 of Stolen Harmony
“Harbor's End.” His smile was soft, almost shy. “Turns out falling in love with a town makes for good songwriting material.”
“Just the town?”
“Well,” he said, moving closer, close enough that I could smell his cologne and see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, “falling in love with the town and the man who showed it to me. But that's probably too much information for a concept album.”
I reached for his hand, lacing our fingers together in broad daylight in the municipal building parking lot where anyone could see.
“Come on,” I said, tugging him toward the truck. “Let's go visit your mother.”
The drive to the cemetery took us through downtown Harbor's End, past the bookstore where Rowan used to live above the narrow staircase, past Anna's coffee shop where he'd spent too many nights drinking away his pain, past the pier where we'd shared our first perfect day before I'd fucked it all up with my cowardice.
The town looked different now, or maybe I just saw it differently. Less like a trap and more like a home, less like a place where secrets had to be hidden and more like a community where love could be lived openly, honestly,without shame.
“Did I tell you Drake wants to move here?” Rowan asked as we turned onto the road that led to Windhill Cemetery.
“The new guy Drake from the band?”
“Yeah. He's been dating that girl from Portland, the photographer, and she's looking for somewhere quieter to set up a studio. I told him about the old Morrison place, the one with the barn that could be converted.”
“That's a lot of New Yorkers moving to Harbor's End.”
“That's a lot of New Yorkers falling in love with Harbor's End,” he corrected. “There's a difference.”
The cemetery was quiet in the afternoon light, all weathered headstones and ancient oak trees that had been watching over the dead longer than anyone could remember. We walked hand in hand down the gravel path to where Elaine's grave sat on a small rise overlooking the harbor, the white marble headstone catching the light like captured sunlight.
I'd been coming here regularly, but bringing Rowan had changed the experience completely. What used to feel like an obligation, a duty to the memory of a woman I'd failed to love long enough, now felt like a conversation, a chance to share the life we were building with someone who would have wanted to be part of it.
Rowan knelt beside the headstone and began arranging the white lilies we'd brought, his movements careful and reverent. He'd grown into this ritual over the past year, had found his own way of honoring a woman who'd died before they could repair their relationship.
“I finished the song,” he said quietly, speaking to the marble as if she could hear him. “The one I started writing about you when I first came back. It's going on the album.”
I knelt beside him, my hand finding his shoulder. “What did you call it?”
“'Letters Never Sent.' It's about all the things we never gotto say to each other, all the conversations we were too proud or too scared to have.” His voice was steady, but I could hear the emotion underneath. “But also about forgiveness, about the love that survives even when the words don't.”
The song was beautiful, one of the best things he'd ever written. Raw and honest and heartbreaking in the way that only true stories could be. It was going to make people cry, going to force them to think about their own unsent letters, their own unfinished conversations.
“She would have loved it,” I said.
“She would have loved a lot of things about our life now,” he replied, leaning against my shoulder. “The music, the house, the way we take care of each other. The way you've learned to cook without burning everything.”
“Hey, I only burned dinner twice this month.”
“Twice that I know of. I'm not counting the times you ordered pizza and pretended you'd been cooking when I got home.”
We sat there in comfortable silence, watching the sun sink lower over the harbor. The grief was still there, would always be there, but it no longer felt like drowning. Time and love and the simple act of building a life together had transformed it into something more manageable, more like a scar than an open wound.
“I miss her,” Rowan said quietly.
“Me too.”
“But I'm glad she brought us together, even if she didn't mean to.”
“She meant to,” I said with certainty I couldn't quite explain. “Maybe not the way it happened, maybe not the timing, but she meant for us to take care of each other. I'm sure of it.”
It hadn't been easy getting to this place. There were dayswhen the weight of everything that had happened threatened to crush us both, when the healing felt impossible and the future seemed too damaged to salvage.
Some days were better than others. Some days we could laugh together without feeling guilty, could touch without remembering other hands that had hurt, could plan for a future that felt real instead of borrowed.
