Chapter 11
The urn remained in storage for months.
I could not decide what to do with it.
Father solved it.
“Throw it away.”
I stared.
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
“The urn too?”
He looked offended.
“It’s ugly.”
Fair.
Calista had chosen something dark bronze and severe.
Father preferred ridiculous porcelain.
Apparently death had aesthetic standards.
“What about the ashes?”
“Coat.”
“Cane.”
“Books.”
He shrugged.
“None of them complained.”
That was Father returning.
Dry.
I had missed it.
We disposed of the ash normally.
No ceremony.
No scattering at sunset.
No shrine.
Nothing inside had ever been a body.
Pretending otherwise would continue Calista’s fiction.
The memorial portrait went into storage too.
Not destroyed.
Father liked the photograph.
“Good suit.”
Of course.
We eventually hung it in his sitting room while he was very much alive.
That confused guests.
Excellent.
One afternoon Father stared at it.
“I look healthier there.”
“You were.”
“Rude.”
He smiled.
Then became serious.
“Did you ever speak to Calista?”
“No.”
“Want to?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded.
Then:
“She was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“So was I.”
“Yes.”
“She became like me.”
I looked at him.
“How?”
“She decided protecting someone she loved justified sacrificing someone else.”
There.
Father protected Tobias.
Calista protected Evelyn’s memory—then later protected her own future with me.
Different motives.
Same permission.
Someone else can absorb the cost.
That pattern mattered more than whether either person considered themselves cruel.
Father whispered:
“Make sure you don’t inherit that.”
I almost said I hadn’t.
Then remembered every time I chose family convenience over staff voice.
Every time I assumed old men knew better.
Every time I used loyalty as argument.
I said:
May you like
“I’m trying.”
Better answer.
