“Your body remembers,” she said. “We remind it together. Not so it becomes what it was. So it stays yours.”
Jonathan felt tears blur the screen.
Not the polite kind of tears you wipe away quickly.
The kind that come from realizing you’ve been guarding the wrong thing.
All his money, all his vigilance, all his hidden cameras had protected Lucas from harm, but none of it had given him hope.
Elena did that without realizing anyone was watching.
Jonathan sat back in his chair and stared at his hands.
For the first time in three years, he understood a painful truth.
He hadn’t been trying to protect Lucas from strangers.
He’d been trying to protect himself from helplessness.
Cameras were control.
Control was comfort.
Comfort was a lie.
The next morning, Jonathan didn’t go to the office.
That decision alone felt like ripping Velcro off a wound.
He sat at the kitchen table as Elena made oatmeal. Lucas was at the counter, humming along to Elena’s melody without realizing he was doing it. The sound was so faint it might have been imagined.
Jonathan cleared his throat.
Elena glanced up, cautious. She had learned, like most staff did, that Jonathan Hail’s presence in the kitchen meant something was wrong. He lived in meetings. He floated through his own home like a ghost in expensive shoes.
“Good morning,” she said.
Lucas looked between them. “Why are you here?”
Jonathan tried to smile. It felt unfamiliar on his face. “I live here,” he said weakly.
Lucas snorted. “No you don’t. You visit.”
Elena’s mouth twitched, but she didn’t rescue Jonathan from the truth.
Jonathan deserved the sting.
“Lucas,” Jonathan said, “could you go… pick a book for later? One of those adventure ones.”
Lucas eyed him suspiciously. “You’re going to read?”
“I might,” Jonathan said, and watched Lucas’s eyebrows rise like he’d announced he planned to juggle flaming swords.
Lucas rolled away, still watching, as if convinced it was a trick.
Elena poured oatmeal into bowls and set one in front of Jonathan. She waited, hands folded, not in subservience, but in readiness.
Jonathan forced himself to speak while he still had the nerve.
“Elena,” he said, voice rough, “there are cameras in this house.”
Elena’s eyes didn’t widen. She didn’t gasp. She didn’t look toward the ceiling corners.
She simply nodded once, like a person who’d lived in a world where people did strange things to feel safe.
Jonathan swallowed. “They’re hidden. I installed them… after the accident. For Lucas.”
Elena’s face remained calm, but something shifted in her posture, a slight tightening.
“I haven’t watched them in a long time,” Jonathan continued, “but I did. Recently.”
Elena set her hands on the counter, fingers splayed.
Jonathan’s shame rose like heat under his skin. “I saw you with him. The spoons. The breathing. Last night.”
Elena held still.
“I shouldn’t have been watching,” Jonathan said quickly, the words tumbling. “It was wrong. I told myself it was safety, but it was also… me. My fear.”
Elena looked at him for a long moment.
Then she said, quietly, “I’m glad you saw the real him.”
Jonathan blinked. “The real him?”
Elena nodded. “Not the version that is performing ‘fine’ for adults.”
Jonathan’s throat tightened.
“I want to apologize,” he said, the words sharp with sincerity. “And I want to make it right. I can remove them. I can…”
Elena lifted a hand. “Wait,” she said.
Jonathan stopped mid-sentence like a scolded child.
Elena’s gaze slid toward the hallway where Lucas had disappeared. “If you remove them,” she said gently, “do it because you trust him and the people around him, not because you feel guilty.”
Jonathan exhaled shakily. “I do feel guilty.”
“You should,” Elena said, not cruelly, but honestly. “But guilt is not a plan.”
Jonathan stared at her, stunned by the steadiness.
Then he asked the question that had been haunting him since he’d watched Lucas laugh.
“Why?” he said. “Why do you do those things with him? The rhythm. The… the walking-in-place. That’s not in any job description I’ve ever seen.”
Elena looked down at the oatmeal bowls like they held the answer.
“My brother,” she said softly, “was in a chair.”
Jonathan’s breath caught.
Elena continued, voice calm but threaded with something deep. “Car accident. He was seventeen. Angry at the whole universe. We didn’t have a mansion. We had a small apartment and a mother who worked two jobs. He hated everyone who told him to be brave. He said bravery was just a word people used so they didn’t have to sit with him in the ugly parts.”
Jonathan’s fingers clenched around the spoon.
“I learned,” Elena said, “that the ugly parts get less ugly when someone sits with you without trying to paint over them.”
Jonathan’s eyes burned.
“What happened to him?” Jonathan asked carefully.
Elena’s jaw tightened. “He got sick. Infection. It took him. But before it did, he taught me something.” She looked up, eyes steady. “A body can lose motion and still have rhythm. A life can change shape and still be full.”
Jonathan’s voice cracked. “I’m sorry.”
Elena nodded once, accepting the apology like a stone placed gently on a grave. “Thank you.”
Jonathan took a breath. “I want to pay you more,” he said quickly, as if money could apologize better than he could. “A raise. A contract. Anything you want. I want you to stay.”
Elena’s expression softened. “I will stay,” she said. “But not because you offered money.”
Jonathan swallowed.
“Let me keep helping him,” Elena said. “Not as a job. As a promise.”
For the first time in years, Jonathan felt something in his chest unclench.
Not relief.
Something more dangerous.
Trust.
Trust did not arrive cleanly.
It arrived with friction.
That afternoon, Jonathan canceled meetings and spent time with Lucas. It was clumsy. Jonathan didn’t know how to be present anymore. His presence was usually an event, not a habit.
Lucas tested him the way kids test bridges.
“So,” Lucas said, rolling into Jonathan’s office doorway, “are you getting fired?”
Jonathan blinked. “From what?”
“From your job,” Lucas said like it was obvious. “Because you’re here.”
Jonathan almost laughed. “No. I’m not fired.”
Lucas narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Jonathan said. “I just… want to be around.”
Lucas looked unconvinced. “Okay,” he said, and rolled away.
Jonathan sat there, struck by the fact that his son didn’t believe he would stay.
He had earned that disbelief.
Over the next days, Jonathan tried. He joined Lucas during therapy sessions. He read a chapter of an adventure book, stumbling over voices. He burned grilled cheese and set off the smoke alarm, and Lucas laughed so hard Elena had to hand him water.
The mansion felt different. The air seemed less stiff.
But the cameras still existed, humming quietly behind walls.
Jonathan thought about them like you think about a secret you can’t unsay.
Elena did not mention them again.
Until the day Lucas did.
It was a Tuesday, bright and cold, the kind of day where the sun looks sharp enough to cut you. Jonathan came home early again, carrying a paper bag from a bakery, determined to bribe his way into an afternoon with his son.
He heard voices in the living room.
Lucas’s, tense.
Elena’s, low and steady.
Jonathan paused near the archway, unseen.
“I don’t like it,” Lucas said.
Elena didn’t ask what like she didn’t already know. “You don’t have to like it,” she said. “You just have to say what you feel.”
Lucas’s voice shook. “I feel… watched.”
Jonathan’s stomach dropped.
Elena stayed quiet long enough that Lucas didn’t have to fight for space in the conversation.
Then she said, gently, “Do you think your dad watches you?”
Lucas laughed bitterly. “Of course he does. He watches everything.”
Jonathan’s throat tightened.
“I’ve seen him,” Lucas continued, voice cracking. “When he thinks I’m asleep. He looks at me like I’m… like I’m broken glass. Like if he touches me, I’ll cut him.”
Jonathan’s hands went numb around the bakery bag.
Elena’s voice softened. “Do you want to talk to him about it?”
Lucas snapped, “He’ll just say it’s for my safety.”
Elena said, “Maybe it is. And maybe it’s also his fear.”
Lucas’s breath hitched. “I hate his fear,” he whispered. “It’s like… it fills the room.”
Jonathan felt as if he’d been punched.
Elena said, quietly, “Then you tell him. You say, ‘Dad, I need you here, not hovering like a drone.’”
Lucas snorted through tears. “I’m not saying ‘drone.’”
Elena smiled. “Fine. Say ‘ghost.’ Say whatever word fits.”
Jonathan stepped back into the hallway, heart pounding.
He realized something that made his mouth go dry.
The cameras hadn’t just been watching Lucas.
They had been shaping Lucas.
Even if Lucas didn’t know where they were, he had felt the weight of being guarded. Being managed. Being treated like a fragile object.
Jonathan walked into the living room, forcing his legs to move.
Lucas flinched when he saw him, as if expecting a lecture.
Elena stood calmly.
Jonathan set the bakery bag on the table like it might anchor him.
“I heard,” he said, voice raw.
Lucas’s jaw tightened. “Good,” he said, trying to sound tough. “Now you know.”
Jonathan swallowed hard. “Lucas… I installed the cameras because I was terrified. Terrified something would happen to you again. Terrified I’d fail.”
Lucas’s eyes flashed. “You already failed.”
The words hit like ice water, but Jonathan didn’t argue.
“I did,” Jonathan said. “I failed to be here. I tried to protect you with systems and money and… surveillance. And I didn’t realize it was making you feel trapped in more ways than one.”
Lucas’s breathing was sharp, angry.
Jonathan looked at Elena, then back at Lucas.
“I want to remove them,” Jonathan said. “All the hidden ones. We can keep a normal security system, like any house. But no more… watching you without your consent.”
Lucas blinked, caught off-guard.
Jonathan continued quickly. “And if you want cameras in certain places for safety, like the front door, the driveway, you get a say. You get to know. It’s your home too.”
Lucas’s lower lip trembled.
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