POV: Jasmine
The notary's office had a long table with a small water carafe in the centre and one chair too many at the head of it.
I sat at the foot. Priya was on my left in a cream blazer, briefcase by her ankle. Asher and Finn were across from each other in the middle.
Jackson was on the right, two seats down from the head, in a dark suit that fit him better than any suit a grieving father should have had ready in his closet.
The empty chair was Liam's. Nobody had moved it.
The notary read the will in slow, even English. I let the words come over me. I did not let them land yet. Listen to the order. Listen to the sequence. Note who reacts to what.
The provisions for Aurora came first. A trust, carefully built. The provisions for me came next. The apartment. Personal accounts. A letter, sealed, that I would open later when I could afford to.
Then the company. The notary cleared his throat.
"Article seven," he read, his voice settling into the weight of the clause. "The transfer of the controlling interest. Liam Harlow's majority stake in Cadence Records — shares, voting rights, final decision-making authority over all key company matters — passes, in full and without condition, to his fiancée, Jasmine Harlow."
The room did not move. I turned my head.
Jackson did not look at the notary. He did not look at Asher or Finn.
He looked at me. His face did not change. But underneath the composure he had moved his eyes to mine, and he was holding them there, and he was waiting to see what I would do with the look.
I looked back. I did not blink. I did not lower my chin. I let him see exactly what was in my face — I am here. I am awake. I am holding what was his. I am holding it for her.
He looked away first.
It was the smallest possible defeat for a man like him. He covered it by reaching for his water glass. I watched his hand tighten on the glass before it loosened again.
Priya made a single small note on her pad. She had also seen.
That evening Finn stayed.
He had not been asked to. After Asher had left and Nora had walked Leo out and Aurora had been put to bed, Finn was simply still in the kitchen, washing glasses, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, the small clean motion of a man doing something with his hands because he did not yet know what else to do with them.
I watched him from the doorway.
I noticed the line of his forearm above the sink. I noticed the quiet way he set each glass on the towel. I noticed that he had not turned the radio on. He was being careful with the volume of the room. He was being careful with all of it.
He is being careful for me.
The thought arrived clean. It sat next to the grief without displacing it. It felt like a thing that had always been true and was now visible.
I refused the thought the next breath. Not now. Not him. Not three days after.
He turned the tap off. He dried his hands on the towel.
"I should go," he said, folding the towel in half and setting it on the counter.
I leaned against the doorframe. "You don't have to."
He looked at me, reading me the way he always read me — too well, too fast. "You should sleep, Jas."
"I won't sleep either way," I told him.
He came across the kitchen and put a hand on my shoulder for half a second on the way past. Light and careful. "Then you should not sleep with company. I'll come tomorrow."
He went into the hall and picked up his jacket.
"Finn." It was not me. It was Aurora. From her room, her voice small and clear in the dark hallway. "Don't go."
His hand stopped on the jacket. He looked at me. I did not have an answer for him. I nodded.
He walked down the hall and pushed her door open and went in and pulled it most of the way closed.
I stood in the corridor.
I could hear his voice through the door. Low. The same voice he used with her at the park. The same voice he had used in the hospital when he had been holding her against his chest.
I felt my legs go.
I did not make a sound. I slid down the wall and sat on the corridor floor with my knees up and my forehead on my knees, and I cried for the first time since the room.
It was not a loud cry. It was the kind that came out of a body that had been holding itself together for too many days and had finally been given a small, private space to stop.
Her door opened. Quiet. He did not say my name. I felt him notice me. I heard him pull Aurora's door the rest of the way closed.
He sat down beside me on the floor.
He did not put his arms around me. He did not say anything reassuring. He did not tell me it was going to be okay.
He took my hand. Palm up, fingers open, the way he had taken Aurora's small hand a hundred times. I put mine into it because it was already there.
His skin was warm.
I noticed the temperature of his hand the way I had noticed Liam's, and the noticing was the thing that finally broke something. I cried into my own knee with my hand in his. He did not move. He held it.
I went to bed eventually. He took the couch.
In the morning Aurora was up before me.
I came down the hall and stopped at the doorway because I could hear them.
Aurora was on the couch with her legs crossed, in her pyjamas, the rabbit in her lap, talking to Finn in a serious low voice I had not heard her use before. Finn was sitting up, hair sleep-mussed, blanket pushed back, listening to her with the same gravity he gave any client.
"— and so I think we can do it," Aurora said, counting something off on her fingers.
Finn leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Walk me through it again."
She straightened up, full authority. "On Saturdays. Because Saturdays are the long day. And we ride the bikes. And we get the pretzels with the salt. And we come back."
He nodded slowly, as though reviewing a contract. "That is a plan."
Aurora tucked the rabbit under her arm. "I know."
I leaned against the doorway. I watched them. He has not been awake five minutes and he is already negotiating Saturdays with a four-year-old in his pyjamas. The grief and the gratitude and the third thing I would not name went through me at the same time and I let them.
The buzzer at the front door went. I crossed the apartment and opened it.
A delivery man with a clipboard handed me an enormous, expensively wrapped box. There was a small white envelope taped to the top.
The card inside was handwritten.
Your grandfather is thinking of you. I want to see you soon. — Grandpa Jackson.