Page 40 of A Castle in the Sky: Fern & Connor
In the end, he'd done something slightly different. The inheritance had cleared his first mortgage deposit and had given him enough of a cushion to invest in the garage partnership with his mates. But Connor had bought the sensible car. The workshop was where the truly stupid, loud stuff lived.
He opened the back door of Harlan's car and stood back while Harlan lifted Coral into the car seat he'd never removed, even when his daughter moved away.
"Right, Coraline," Harlan said, buckling her in with practised ease. "Seatbelt on, Lego on the seat beside you, and no bribing the policeman mini-figure to let you drive too fast, okay?"
She giggled. "Kay."
Fern watched him check the straps, his fingers tugging the belt twice. When they were done, Harlan straightened and shut the door gently. He turned to Fern, his very presence pulling her back from the dark pit of worst-case scenarios.
"Text me if you're going to be late," he said.
"Thanks, Papa."
Harlan's eyes flicked to Connor, then back. "See ya, baby."
He touched Fern's shoulder briefly, a quick squeeze she hadn't realised she needed. Then he slid into the driver's seat of his sensible car, waved, and pulled away, Coral's small face pressed to the window, watching them.
"So," Connor said, shifting his weight. "Will you come?"
She could say no. She could tell him this was his mess, his answer to hear alone.
But whatever those results said would change more than just his life. It would change what she told Coral one day, how they navigated Jacob's place in their family, how she understood the last two years of her life.
Chapter 21
Fern folded her arms, more from the cold under her thin cardigan than anything else, and stared at the patch of tarmac where Harlan's car had been.
Only when she couldn't bear the silence stretching any longer did she turn to Connor. "You were late," she said quietly, once she had reined in her temper. "Again."
He flinched, just a fraction. Up close, he looked even worse than he had that morning—the lines carved around his mouth looked deeper, eyes shadowed, stubble catching the harsh light. His left eye was slightly swollen.
"I know," he mumbled. "I'm sorry. My phone—" He pulled it from his pocket and held it up. The screen was a spiderweb of cracks, one corner caved in. "I dropped it. It hit just right and completely shattered. I thought I could still make it in time and sort it later, but then—" He scrubbed a hand over his face, fingers dragging through his hair.
"DC Anand found me," he went on. "She came to say there were formal allegations from Matilda, but she wouldn't tell me what the allegations were. She wanted a copy of the recording from the other day. Thank god I talked to her the other day."
Fern's mouth went dry as she focussed on one word. "Allegations."
He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Yeah. God knows what they are. Anand said she needed the raw file, something that couldn't beaccused of being edited on my 'fancy lad computer'. I think she has me confused with someone else. I can barely open my email."
"And?" Fern asked.
"And it turned into a mad dash." He let his arm fall to his side, phone hanging uselessly from his fingers. "The screen was gone, the backup app wasn't opening, and I went into a complete panic when I thought I'd lost the file. But I'd emailed it to myself that night, just in case." He huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh if it hadn't sounded so exhausted. "For once in my life, I wasn't completely thick."
"How long were you with her?" Fern asked. "DC Anand."
"Longer than I meant to be," he said. "She had to watch me pull the file, make sure it was the right timestamp, get it onto a secure drive. Then she just said she'd be in touch." He swallowed. "Nothing else. No hint. I don't know what to think."
He fell quiet, the sounds of the hospital car park swelling, waxing and waning them—engines starting, a distant siren, the squeaky scrape of a trolley's bad wheel.
"And then?" Fern said, because he clearly wasn't done.
He looked away, jaw tightening. "Sawyer turned up just after she left. He'd had three missed calls from DC Anand and one from Mum. He'd been out of town since the day… well, you know. He knew something was off. Matilda had not called him, and I've not talked to him—I've been avoiding him, trying to... I don't know. Anyway, he punched me first and asked questions after."
Her stomach knotted. "Connor... "
"I had to tell him everything," he said, voice rough. "About what happened to Coral. About the test. About Jacob. About Matilda. Allof it. He just sat there for a minute, didn't have a thing to say. Then he said that he was going to try for custody."
Fern stared at him. A weird mix of relief and dread washed through her—relief that someone besides her believed this was wrong for Jacob while she dreaded the war she knew was coming.
