Chapter 17
Ten years and two years after I buried the wrong man, I stood between two graves.
Owen Pike’s.
Correct now.
And the empty space where Lucien’s headstone used to be.
We never replaced it.
Why would we?
Lucien stood beside me.
Hands in his coat pockets.
Older than the brother I lost.
Different from the brother I imagined.
Real.
Claire Pike had left flowers for Owen earlier.
Simple.
No family crest.
Lucien looked at them.
“He hated flowers.”
“Claire knows.”
“Then why?”
“She likes them.”
He nodded.
Fair.
Grief belongs to the living too.
We walked back toward the cars.
No Sabine.
Not because she was forbidden.
Because this day belonged to Owen’s family and the two brothers his death had separated.
Lucien stopped.
“You know what I hated most?”
I waited.
“The grave.”
I frowned.
“You never saw it.”
“I saw photographs.”
Of course.
Sabine had sent them.
Proof that I accepted his death.
Another cruelty disguised as information.
“My name. Dates. Everyone standing there.”
He looked toward the empty ground.
“It made me feel replaceable.”
I understood.
I had felt abandoned.
He had felt erased.
Same silence.
Different wound.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked at me.
“For burying Owen as me?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t know.”
“For not asking enough questions.”
That one he accepted.
Then:
“I’m sorry too.”
“For?”
“Believing the worst version of you because it hurt less than hoping.”
There.
We stood with that.
No need to fix it.
Some lost years remain lost.
A car pulled up behind us.
Faye and June.
They were headed to the arts center nearby and had offered Lucien a ride.
June rolled down the window.
“Hurry!”
Lucien looked at me.
“Your niece is rude.”
“She isn’t my niece.”
“Emotionally.”
I laughed.
He walked toward the car.
Then June started humming.
Four notes rising.
Three falling.
Lucien stopped.
Looked back.
For ten years, that melody had belonged to a dead brother in my memory.
Then it became proof of betrayal.
Then a signal.
Then a warning.
Now it was coming from a child who knew none of the graves attached to it.
Good.
That was how it should end.
Not with Sabine punished forever.
Not with Lucien returning to claim a throne he never wanted.
Not with me pretending we could recover a decade.
With truth placed where lies had been.
Owen in his own grave.
Lucien alive under his own name.
Faye free to sing.
June fed regardless of who her mother angered.
Sabine learning that family could continue without needing her between every conversation.
And me finally understanding something our father never did.
You do not keep a family together by controlling what each person knows about the others.
You keep it together by giving them the truth—
and letting them decide what relationship survives it.
June hummed louder.
Lucien climbed into the car.
I watched them leave.
May you like
This time, when my brother disappeared from view,
I knew where he was going.
