Collateral Damage

Her Father’s Vision

She called her father the next morning, and regretted it before he’d finished saying hello.

“I know,” she said, cutting through his greeting. “About Sophie. About the accident. About what

you did to bury it.”

The silence on the line stretched long enough that she thought he’d hung up.

“Elena ”

“Don’t. Don’t explain it away. A woman died, Dad. Because of you. And you let me marry into

her family without a word of warning.”

“I didn’t know he’d go this far.” Her father’s voice had aged ten years since Tuesday. “I thought

it was business. I didn’t know the marriage was about her until it was already done.”

“Would it have mattered? If you’d known sooner?”

Another silence, worse than the first, because this one was honest. “I don’t know. I’ve spent four

years trying not to think about that night. I’m ashamed to say it worked. Until now.”

He told her the rest, haltingly…the drink he shouldn’t have had, the road he’d taken because it

was faster, the lawyers he’d called before the ambulance. That last detail turned her stomach in a

way nothing else had.

“I’ve hated myself every day since,” he said, voice breaking, “and I’ve never once had to answer

for it. Until Damian found a way to make me.”

“That’s not justice. That’s cruelty dressed up as consequences. And I’m the one paying for it

now.”

She hung up without saying goodbye.

Damian found her on the porch an hour later.

“I talked to my father. He told me everything.”

“How are you.”

“Angry. At him, mostly. Some of it at you too, if I’m honest.” She wrapped her arms around

herself. “Furious that I can’t seem to hate you the way I think I’m supposed to.”

He sat beside her, close enough that reaching for his hand would take almost nothing at all.

“Whatever anger you have left over, you’re allowed to point some of it at me.”

“I already have.”

“I know. I deserve it.” He looked out at the water, jaw tight. “I’m not going to pretend the last

four years untangle themselves because I’ve started feeling something for you I didn’t expect to

feel. But it’s real, Elena. Whatever this is now, it stopped being about your father a long time

ago.”

The word feel sat between them, unclaimed, too large for either of them to pick up yet.

“I need time,” she said finally. “Not to leave. Just to figure out what’s actually mine to feel,

versus what’s just the wreckage of everyone else’s choices landing on me at once.”

“Take whatever time you need.” He stood, and for a moment looked almost young, almost

unguarded. “I’ll be here when you’re ready. However long that takes.”

He left her on the porch, and Elena watched him go, understanding with a clarity that scared her

more than any of Camille’s warnings….that the danger in this house was no longer a secret he

was keeping.

It was the terrifying, undeniable fact that she was starting to want him anyway, and some nights

lying awake in the east wing, she wondered whether wanting him back might turn out to be its

own kind of collateral damage….a wound she’d chosen for herself, with her eyes wide open.