POV: Jasmine
I called Priya the next morning while Finn and Asher were still in the apartment. She picked up with a voice awake already.
"Take whatever time you need," I said. "Handle it the way you think it should be handled."
"I'm going to contact Jackson's side directly," she said. "Open a line before this goes any further. I can resolve it without a courtroom. But I need you to not respond to anything from his side. He's using emotional framing to build legal standing. I need to dismantle it before he can build on it."
"Then dismantle it." I accepted and then I hung up. The fury that had been sitting in my chest since Asher laid out Jackson's play had not moved. I let it stay because forcing it out only made it louder.
Asher was by the counter, coat already on.
"Fine," I said. "Let her work."
He nodded, squeezed my shoulder as he passed, and left. Finn appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Yesterday's clothes, hair pushed back. He had been awake in the next room hearing everything. He leaned against the doorframe. Did not ask about Jackson or Priya.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
The simplicity of it undid me more than all the strategy talk combined. Finn ignored the legal angles, the planning, the careful composure — and asked the only question that mattered.
"Yes," I said.
He looked at me. Not pushing. Not retreating. Just watching me with that quiet warmth Finn never hid — and my throat ached, because Liam used to look at me the same way. They had learned it from each other. I could not think about that without falling apart.
"I will be," I said. Quieter. More honest.
He nodded. Did not come closer or try to fill the silence with reassurance. He stood in the doorway and let my answer be enough, and the relief I felt was so sharp it almost hurt.
The housekeeper arrived around eight. Her key in the lock, the familiar rustle of her bag. She moved into the kitchen and began working around me without a word.
Within minutes the kitchen was hers: dishwasher running, counters cleared, a household resuming its rhythm.
The nanny came shortly after. The soft knock on Aurora's door. Aurora's voice — muffled, heavy with sleep. Drawers opening. Water running. A brief negotiation about socks.
I went to shower and change. The apartment moved around me — the housekeeper asking about lunch, footsteps in the hallway, Aurora's voice rising as she woke fully. Bright, curious, alive the way only a child can be when every adult around her is barely holding together.
I dressed slowly. Stood in front of the mirror and waited for the steadiness to come back — the part of me that made plans and followed through.
But today she was further away, buried under the weight of what Jackson was doing. A man who lost his son and reached for his son's daughter. Not out of love. Out of leverage.
The knock came while I was at the dresser.
Small. Low on the door. Aurora's knock — I would know it anywhere, the height and rhythm of her small fist against wood.
The door opened before I could answer. She stood in the hallway in a yellow dress, hair still damp. She looked past me into the room — across the bed, the nightstand, the empty space where Liam's watch used to sit before I put it in the drawer.
She saw what was missing.
"Where's Daddy?"
It hit me in the center of my chest. I had been rehearsing answers to this question since the funeral, and none of them had ever sounded right.
But hearing it in her voice — direct, uncomplicated, expecting an answer — was different from anything I had prepared for.
She had not asked before. Not once. She had watched the adults around her tiptoe and whisper and rearrange, and she had stayed quiet about it — the way children do when they know something is wrong but don't want to be the one who says it out loud.
But now she was asking. Standing in her yellow dress, looking at me with Liam's eyes.
I set down the bracelet I was holding and knelt in front of her. My hands found her arms, small and warm through the cotton of her dress.
"He's not here right now, sweetheart."
My voice held. I made it hold. I gave her steadiness because that was what she needed, even as grief split through me in places I hadn't known could break.
This was sharper than the constant ache. This was watching my daughter look for her father and knowing I would answer this question for years. And every time, it would cost exactly this much.
I smoothed her damp hair back from her forehead. My fingers trembled, and I pressed them gently against her temple to stop it.
Aurora looked at me — wide open, no guard, no performance. She did not understand the answer, not fully. But she understood that I was sad, and her small face changed with that understanding, her brow pulling together the way Liam's used to when he was worried about me.
The nanny appeared behind her. Gentle, perfectly timed. "Aurora, should we go have breakfast? I think there might be something special this morning."
Aurora looked at the nanny. Then back at me. I leaned forward and pressed my lips to her forehead, held them there for a moment longer than I needed to.
She put one hand on my cheek — brief, automatic, the instinct of a child who has been loved well enough to know how to return it.
Then she took the nanny's hand and they walked down the hallway together. I stayed where I was. I did not finish getting dressed. I stood in the bedroom that had been ours.
Liam was not here. He was never going to be here again. Our daughter had looked for him in this room and found only me.
I pressed my palms flat against the dresser and breathed. Not crying. I was past crying. The grief was too large for tears — it just sat inside me, heavy and still, with nowhere to go and no way out.
My phone rang. Priya again.
"I've been in direct communication with Jackson," she said without preamble. "He's prepared to take this to a formal legal process. Petitions, hearings, the full structure. Court-ordered access to Aurora."
"Has he filed?" I closed my eyes.
"Not yet. Nothing submitted, nothing active. But he has counsel retained, paperwork prepared, and he made it clear he's ready to move if we don't engage."
"So he's using the threat of court to force a conversation."
"Yes. And it's effective, because if he files, a family court takes a grandfather's petition seriously. The optics favor him." A pause. "I am still talking to him directly. Trying to keep this out of a courtroom. I'm sure I can."
The sentence landed. Quiet and honest, stripped of the certainty Priya usually carried. She was telling me this might resolve cleanly.
"Keep talking to him," I said. "Whatever it takes."