Chapter 10
Nathan stayed.
Not permanently.
Two weeks.
Long enough to meet Oscar properly.
Long enough to meet Claudia without Duncan in the room.
Long enough for me to understand I had a brother and no idea what to do with that fact.
We did ordinary things badly.
Breakfast.
Walks.
One awkward family dinner.
He hated expensive wine.
I hated the coffee he liked.
Progress.
Then he asked to see West House.
It no longer existed.
Burned twenty-five years earlier after being abandoned.
Only stone foundations remained.
We went anyway.
Claudia came too.
Oscar stayed home.
At the ruins, Nathan stood where the main entrance had been.
“This is where Dad hid people?”
Claudia nodded.
“Me too.”
He looked at her.
Something softened.
Shared harm.
Different scale.
Not equivalence.
Understanding.
Then Nathan said:
“I don’t want my daughters called Sterling.”
I felt something strange.
Disappointment?
Maybe.
Then relief.
“Why?”
“Because they already have a name.”
Good answer.
He might use Sterling privately someday.
Maybe not.
That belonged to him.
I told him:
“You don’t owe Dad a restoration.”
He looked at me.
“You either.”
That landed.
I had spent my whole adult life preserving a family structure built by men who hid sons and houses because they feared conflict.
May you like
Maybe preservation was overrated.
Maybe truth required redesign.
