It depicted the blue house, the ocean, two girls, and a tall man standing a careful distance away.
“Is that me?” Alexander asked.
Eleanor nodded.
“Why are you so far from everyone?”
She considered the question, then picked up her pencil and drew a line from his hand to hers.
“You’re not,” she said.
Sophia ran onto the porch carrying the repaired music box.
“Dad, it stopped again.”
Alexander froze.
Sophia froze too, as if the word had slipped out without permission.
Neither of them mentioned it.
He took the music box from her and examined the hinge.
“I think I can fix it.”
Sophia rolled her eyes.
“You said that about the pancakes.”
Eleanor laughed.
The sound moved through the house and out toward the water.
Alexander had once believed power meant preventing loss, controlling outcomes, and making himself impossible to hurt.
Isabelle’s letter had shown him the emptiness of that life.
His mother’s betrayal had shown him what control became when love was removed from it.
He could not recover the eight years stolen from them.
He could only refuse to waste the years ahead.
That evening, the three of them sat on the porch while the repaired music box played Isabelle’s melody.
Eleanor leaned against one shoulder.
Sophia leaned against the other.
Alexander looked at the darkening sea and understood that Isabelle’s final request had not merely been to find their daughters.
It had been to become someone they no longer needed to fear.
At last, he was beginning to earn it.
