Page 59 of The Truth of Us

The flight to New York was quiet. My father’s plane had always felt normal to me in the strange way things from childhood become normal before you understand they are not. Cream leather seats. Warm wood. The faint scent of citrus cleaner and expensive coffee. A flight attendant who had known me since I was a teenager and still asked if I wanted sparkling water with lime before I even sat down.

“Shall I get you your favourite?” she asked gently.

I looked up, and she held the bottle. For a moment, I had the absurd thought that Elliot hated sparkling water. Then my stomach twisted.

“Yes,” I said, forcing a smile. “Thank you, Marta.”

Her eyes softened, but she did not ask. No one on my father’s staff ever asked. They knew the rules. Privacy was not a luxury in my family; it was survival, and we had learned that the hard way.

I spent most of the flight staring out the window while clouds shifted beneath us like torn cotton. My phone lay face down on the table in front of me. I had turned it off because the temptation to check whether Elliot had called was humiliating. So I left the phone dark and tried not to think about the fact that part of me still wanted him to say the one thing that would make this hurt less.

I’m sorry.

Not excuses or technicalities. Just that.

When we landed, the private terminal in New York was nearly empty. Security was already waiting. Two black SUVs idled near the curb, engines sending pale exhaust into the cold air. One of my father’s men took my luggage before I could reach for it. Another opened the back door of the second vehicle.

“Miss Montgomery,” he said quietly.

The name hit differently after so long being called Harper Lane. I guess my father decided he was done hiding me.

“Hi, James.”

His expression softened. “Good to have you home, love.”

Home.

I looked past him toward the winter-grey sky and wondered why the word felt both like comfort and defeat.

17

HARPER

The drive out of the city was long enough for dusk to settle. Buildings gave way to trees. Traffic thinned. Snow dusted the fields and caught in the branches like powdered sugar. The farther we got from the city, the more the world seemed to quiet around me.

I had grown up between places. The apartment in the city for board meetings, galas, school functions, and the version of our family that belonged to the public. Then all the vacation properties. But the estate was for us. For Christmas mornings and summer nights, my mother’s garden, Will’s muddy boots in the foyer, and my father pretending not to see them. For the life that existed before reporters camped outside our gates and helicopters circled too low. I had not been back to the estate in almost a year. The last few times I came home we met at the apartment in the city. I hadn’t been back here since last Christmas, when I stayed only long enough to open gifts, drink too much wine, and avoid the west wing where my brother’s room was still exactly as it had been left.

The gates appeared through the trees, black iron against white snow. Montgomery House rose beyond them, all stone and glass and old-world arrogance softened by warm light pouring from every window. It looked like something from another century, perhaps another lifetime. A place built by men who believed legacy could be carved into limestone and passed down through bloodlines. A place my father had walked away from, had come back to and made his own.

The SUV rolled to a stop at the front steps. Before James could open my door, it opened from the outside. My father stood there in a dark sweater, hair silver at the temples, face unreadable to anyone who did not know him. But I did. I knew the way his eyes moved over me, checking for damage, and he saw all of it.

For a second, neither of us spoke. Then he opened his arms, and I was moving. I stepped into my father’s arms and buried my face against his chest like I was the little girl who had just found out her world had ended. He wrapped me up so tightly that the ache in my chest finally had somewhere to go.

“There’s my angel,” he murmured into my hair.

I broke into an ugly collapse that shook through my ribs while I clutched the front of his sweater and tried to breathe through the fact that I had made it home before falling apart.

My father held me close, one hand at the back of my head, the other wrapped around me. A fortress. A promise. A reminder that no matter how far I ran from this name, from this house, from this life, there was still one place in the world where I did not have to earn my right to be loved.

Later, after I showered and changed into leggings and one of my father’s old university sweatshirts, I found him in the sitting room off the library. It was my favorite.

The Christmas tree stood in the corner, tall, proud, and covered in ornaments collected over decades. Some priceless. Some handmade, and ugly enough that only grief could explain why we still kept them.

The fire was lit. A tray of food sat untouched on the low table; beside it were three bottles of wine.

I raised an eyebrow, and he looked over from where he sat near the fire, one ankle crossed over his knee, glass already in hand.

“I’m considering investing in a small vineyard.”