CHAPTER FOUR — Promises Made Too Early
Elara
My father believed in promises.
Not the dramatic kind—no sweeping declarations or vows spoken for effect—but the quiet ones made in passing, the kind that settled into daily life and held it together. Promises to be home for dinner. Promises to fix the leaky tap on Saturday. Promises that things would work out, somehow, because they always had before.
He made them easily. He kept them faithfully.
I think that's why his absence felt like betrayal, even though I knew it wasn't.
Before the world collapsed into paperwork and grief, before relatives learned how to weaponize politeness, my father talked about the future the way other people talked about weather—certain it would come, confident he could read its patterns.
"You'll see," he told me once, sitting at the edge of my bed while I pretended to study. "Life opens up once you stop being afraid of it."
I was seventeen then, caught between wanting independence and wanting everything to stay exactly the same.
"I'm not afraid," I said.
He smiled, knowing better. "You're careful. There's a difference."
Careful. That word followed me longer than he ever did.
On Sundays, he took us all out for drives. No destination. Just movement. He said it helped him think. We'd pile into the car, my mother beside him, my brothers arguing in the backseat, and I'd sit quietly, watching the city change as we passed through different neighborhoods.
"This," he said once, gesturing out the window, "is what choice looks like. Not everyone gets it. That's why you don't waste it."
I didn't ask what he meant. I assumed I had time.
He talked about expanding the business. About taking fewer risks once things stabilized. About traveling with my mother when the boys were older. About me—university, opportunities, a life that wouldn't require compromise.
"You'll never have to struggle the way I did," he promised.
He promised smaller things too, the kind that felt too ordinary to write down. That he would teach Aaron to drive. That he would help Lucas apply for his first real job, not just the kind you took for pocket money. That he would finally repaint the hallway once work slowed down. That we would replace the old dining chairs instead of fixing them again and again.
He promised my mother time. Less work. More evenings together. He said it casually, like it was already scheduled. "After this year," he told her. "Things will be easier then." She believed him. We all did.
Sometimes he made promises without words. The way he squeezed my shoulder when he passed behind me. The way he met my eyes across the room when conversations grew heavy. The way he listened, really listened, as if whatever I said mattered enough to change the shape of his day.
He spoke about my future with certainty that made doubt feel unnecessary. He talked about education not as escape, but as choice. About love as something that should never make you smaller. About work as something you should respect, but never fear.
"Don't let anyone rush you into a life you didn't choose," he told me once. "If it costs your peace, it costs too much."
I didn't realize then that he was giving me the tools he wouldn't be there to use with me.
Some nights, he stood in the doorway of my room long after he thought I was asleep, checking in without interrupting, making sure the light from the hall reached my bed. He promised nothing in those moments. He didn't need to. His presence was the promise.
He talked about growing old like it was inevitable. About watching his grandchildren run through the same rooms, about sitting back while the house filled with noise again. He said my name often when he spoke of the future, as if anchoring it there would keep it safe.
"I'll be here," he said once, simply.
That was the promise I held onto the longest.
And the one that broke me the most.
The promises my father made—to us, to himself—began to unravel one by one. Not because they were false, but because the world didn't care about intention. Only leverage.
At night, when the house was finally quiet, I sat on my bed and stared at the ceiling, replaying conversations, moments, decisions. Wondering if there was a version of events where I had seen the cracks earlier. Where I had asked more questions. Where I had understood that safety is often temporary, no matter how solid it feels.
I thought about the future my father had imagined for me—wide and open and free.
It felt like a story I had read once and misplaced.
The truth settled slowly, heavy and undeniable:
The life he promised me was gone.
And the life waiting for me would demand far more than belief.
Promises, I learned, are dangerous things. They make you careless. They teach you to assume tomorrow will resemble today.
I would never make that mistake again.
Not when everything I loved was already hanging by a thread.