Riley clears her throat softly and sets the cup down on its saucer with care. “Can I ask you something?” she says, and her tone is even but not casual.
“You can,” I reply, watching her over the rim of my tea.
She hesitates for half a second, then meets my eyes. “Did Eva like this house?”
The question lands without warning, and for a moment I don’t answer. I look around the study as if I’m seeing it through someone else’s eyes. The dark shelves. The worn leather. The framed photographs of dockworkers and weddings and boats hauled in by hand.
“She came here,” I say. “A few times.”
“And?” Riley presses gently, not pushing, just waiting.
I shake my head once. “It wasn’t her world.”
Riley tilts her head slightly. “What was?”
“Noise,” I answer. “Crowds. Flash. Rooms where people knew her name before she spoke.”
I move toward the desk and rest my hand on the edge of it, my fingers tracing a faint scratch in the wood. “Eva liked to be seen. She liked parties and launches and charity galas where photographers stood near the door and someone always handed her a glass before she asked.”
“And you?” Riley asks.
“I thought I liked it too,” I admit.
She watches me closely, and there’s no judgment in her expression, only interest. “I was young,” I continue. “My father had just died. The business was unstable. The city was shifting. Eva made it feel like I’d already won something.”
“She made you look legitimate,” Riley says quietly.
“Yes.”
“And that mattered.”
“It did.”
I walk toward the bookshelf and pull one of the older volumes free, then slide it back into place without opening it. “She didn’t understand the docks,” I say. “She didn’t want to. She thought I could pivot fully into something cleaner if I tried hard enough.”
“Could you?” Riley asks.
“Not without surrendering ground,” I reply.
She nods once. “So this house didn’t fit her.”
“No,” I say. “She’d walk in and comment on the lighting, or the paint, or the way the sofa didn’t match the rug. She wanted something bigger. Brighter.”
Riley studies the framed photograph on the far wall, my father standing beside my uncle near the harbor, both of them younger and less guarded. “Did she resent it?” she asks.
“She resented that I wouldn’t leave it,” I say.
“And did you ever consider it?”
I let out a slow breath and turn back toward the window. “For a while, I did.”
She waits.
“I thought if I could restructure enough, if I could clean enough lanes and stabilize enough contracts, maybe I could shift entirely. Move into legitimate shipping. Close the rest down.”
“And?”
“And the war didn’t allow that.”