Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,15

letters SS. Blood red. Of course.

It was addressed to Rowan.

I stared at it for a long time. The room shrank away, like the walls were afraid I was going to do something violent.

Then I shoved it into my back pocket.

No. Absolutely fucking not. He doesn’t get to do this.

I could feel the tension headache starting already, a sharp pain above my eyebrow. I took a deep breath, a couple of them.

Just... don’t think about it. Burn the letter. Throw it away. Or throw it in with all the other letters he’s sent that have gone unopened and unread.

I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t just thrown all of them out. In the beginning, all the letters came addressed to me. And I threw them into a drawer in my bedroom, never bothering to open any of them. After Sinjin got the hint, the letters started coming addressed to Rowan—that had been for the last five years or so. He sent one every couple of months. I wondered when he would give up—if he would give up.

I made it back to the kitchen, my heart still in my throat. Even after all of these years, just seeing his name still did this to me—still caused my breath to catch and my heart to race.

“What’s burning?” I asked.

“Nothing. Here.” Rowan walked over and handed me a plate of what I could generously refer to as “tastefully charred” eggs. I looked at them and nodded, pursing my lips.

“Good job, honey.”

“Thanks.”

Hmm, the cooking problem might be genetic.

I walked over to the island to get coffee. Sometimes enough caffeine—and by “enough”, I mean “potentially lethal doses”—could make the headache go away.

“What’s this?” asked Rowan.

She picked something up off the floor. A perfectly square envelope.

Sinjin’s letter.

God fucking dammit.

Rowan turned it over in her hands. She read the front. “Oh.”

She looked at me. This was the first letter she’d ever seen from him. Usually I was better about hiding them. “Mum, what is this?”

“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” I said. I wanted to walk over and take the letter away, but I didn’t. Maybe because doing so would only make her want to read it more.

I started pouring coffee.

“It’s from dad,” she said.

I managed not to wince. “I know, honey.”

“Should I open it?”

“I… uh… I don’t think so.”

“...Why not?”

“I just… I just don’t think it’s a good idea, okay?” I snapped. I swallowed, tried again. “It’s not important. Probably just a postcard or something.”

“Mum,” Rowan started, her voice taking on a ‘be real with me’ tone.

“Yes, Rowan?”

She studied me with those ice blue eyes—eyes that were an exact copy of her father’s. “What happened with dad?”

I stopped pouring. Slowly, I set the coffee pot back on the counter. “What… what do you mean?”

She put the letter down on the table and stared at it. She shrugged. “I mean what happened between you and dad.”

“That was a long time ago,” I started.

She swallowed hard and stared at me. “Will you please tell me?”

I was quiet for a second.

I looked at her thoughtfully from the kitchen island. Jet-black hair, ice-blue eyes—you didn’t have to look at her for long to tell she was Sinjin’s daughter. That air of effortless, unstoppable confidence she carried with her at all times, her strangely refined sense of personal style, her near obsessive fondness for sports cars... Rowan had so much of her father in her. They’d spent more than a decade living completely separate lives, yet his influence was so clear. She couldn’t possibly belong to anyone else.

I felt a sharp stab of guilt, like I’d been speared through the stomach.

I’d kept them apart, and there were moments—brief—where I questioned my decision. Times when I stayed up for hours late at night as I wondered if what I had done and continued to do was right. But I always came to the same conclusion—I was merely protecting my daughter. Because there were some things that went beyond forgiving.

“Mum?”

Maybe it was time. Maybe Rowan was old enough. She was fifteen now, nearly sixteen.

I pulled out a chair and sat down with her. I wanted to hold her hands, but that felt like… that felt like it might be too much. I wanted this conversation to be casual, not weighty and deep. I wanted to explain things and make her understand why I’d chosen what I had and then I wanted to move on. I wanted us to move on and continue to have a wonderful life together, without Sinjin.

“I know you need to