CHAPTER SEVENTEEN **SOPHIA**

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

**SOPHIA**

David took the Chicago job.

He told me on a Wednesday over the coffee he'd been bringing me for two years, which felt right. No drama. Just a man who'd made his decision and was honest about it.

"The Meridian directorship is a legacy move," he said. "At my age, that matters."

"It should." I meant it. "Who do you want to recommend for your replacement?"

He slid a folder across. Three names, each with notes in his handwriting. Detailed, fair assessments that took me twenty minutes to read properly.

"The second one," I said. "Yuna Park. Her curatorial instincts match what we're building better than the other two."

"That's who I'd have chosen." He stood. "She's already in Seattle. I can introduce you before I leave if you want a head start."

"Yes. Set it up for next week."

He nodded and moved toward the door. Stopped. "You're going to be fine, Sophia. The gallery, everything else." He said it plainly, not as comfort but as observation.

"I know," I said.

After he left I sat with the quiet for a while. In the first life, losing a mentor would have unraveled me. Now it just felt like a chapter ending cleanly.

That was progress.

---

**ALEXANDER**

My mother called for the first time since the collapse.

Margaret Sterling had spent the better part of my childhood in the background of the family, soft-spoken and careful, a woman who'd learned early that Eleanor controlled the room and survival meant not competing for it. She'd been at a retreat in Portugal when everything fell apart and I hadn't pushed contact.

"I've been watching the news," she said. "Your father's sentencing. Catherine Chen's hearing. All of it."

"I should have called."

"I should have called first." She paused. "I knew things weren't right, Alexander. In that marriage. In the family. I made the same choice Robert made and I'm not proud of it."

I waited.

"I'd like to give a statement. If it would help. For the trial."

"Rebecca Torres is handling Sophia's side. I can pass your information."

"Do that." She exhaled slowly. "Is she alright? Sophia?"

The question landed unexpectedly. My mother had met Sophia exactly twice in the original timeline, brief encounters at family events where Eleanor had dominated everything. The fact that she was asking now meant she'd been paying attention from a distance.

"She's building something," I said. "She's alright."

"Good." A pause. "You sound different."

"People keep saying that."

"Is it her?"

"It's a lot of things." I considered. "She's part of it."

"I'd like to meet her properly sometime. When it's appropriate. No pressure."

After the call I forwarded my mother's contact to Rebecca and then sat thinking about appropriate timing, which felt very far away and also somehow closer than it had been last month.

---

**SOPHIA**

Catherine's legal team made a move the week before Saturday.

They filed a motion to have portions of my testimony excluded on the grounds that it relied on events I claimed occurred in a previous timeline, arguing it was inherently unverifiable and prejudicial. Rebecca called me immediately.

"It's a smart move," she said. "If they can exclude the rebirth-related context, your testimony becomes a series of actions without adequate explanation."

"Can they succeed?"

"Possibly. The judge has been careful. She'll want to hear arguments." Rebecca paused. "They're also filing a character motion using Vivian Cross's old articles. The ones about your gallery practices and aggressive acquisition methods."

"Vivian Cross." I hadn't thought about her in months. "Her articles weren't inaccurate. They were just framed uncharitably."

"Which is exactly the problem. Opposing counsel will use them to paint you as calculating and ruthless."

"I am calculating. That's not a character flaw."

"In a courtroom with a jury it can be made to look like one." Rebecca's voice was steady. "I need you to come in tomorrow. We need to prepare for this seriously."

I spent three hours with Rebecca the next afternoon, going through every article Vivian had written, every business decision that could be reframed as aggressive, every piece of my history that Catherine's team could weaponize.

By the end I was tired in a specific way that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion.

Walking back through the gallery I passed Yuna Park, who'd started three days ago and was already reorganizing the east wing storage with a system that made more sense than anything David had implemented. She looked up briefly and went back to work without making conversation.

I liked her immediately.

********

**ALEXANDER**

I arrived at the gallery café Saturday at eleven.

Sophia was already there, but she looked different from the previous weeks. Not broken. Just worn at the edges, the way people look when they've been precise and careful for too long without a break.

I didn't say anything about it. Just ordered coffee and sat down.

She told me about the motion without me asking, walking through the legal situation with the same clear efficiency she applied to everything. I listened without interrupting.

"Your mother contacted Rebecca," she said when she'd finished.

"I know. I passed along her details."

"She wants to testify about the family culture during the marriage." Sophia looked at her cup. "That marriage didn't happen. Not really."

"The family culture did. Eleanor operated the same way regardless of timeline." I paused. "My mother was a bystander. Same as Robert. Same as Julian in the other version. Her testimony is about what she witnessed, not what she participated in."

Sophia nodded slowly. "Rebecca thinks it could help counter the character attack."

"Then let it."

She was quiet for a moment. Outside the café window the street was wet, early December cold settling into Seattle properly now.

"Vivian Cross reached out to me directly," she said.

I looked up. "When?"

"Yesterday. She wants to write a full profile. My side of the story. She says the articles she wrote before were incomplete and she'd like to correct the record before they're used against me in court."

"Do you trust her?"

"No. But I understand her." Sophia turned her cup slowly. "She documents things. It's what she does. In the first life she documented my fall because that was the story available. Now there's a different story and she wants to be the one who tells it."

"What are you going to do?"

"I haven't decided." She looked at me directly. "What would you do?"

The question surprised me. Not the asking, but the fact that she wanted my actual opinion and not just a sounding board.

"I'd meet with her once," I said. "Off the record. Get a sense of what she actually understands about the situation. Then decide."

"And if she gets it wrong?"

"Then you've lost nothing. The articles already exist." I paused. "But if she gets it right, it reframes the public record before the trial. That matters."

Sophia considered that for a long moment.

"Your instincts are better than they used to be," she said.

"Low bar."

"Still counts."

We sat quietly for a while after that, the comfortable kind that had started appearing in the last few weeks without either of us engineering it. Outside, a light rain began.

"My mother wants to meet you," I said. "Eventually. No pressure."

She looked at me steadily. "Is that your way of indicating this is moving somewhere?"

"It's my way of being transparent. Which I understand is new and possibly suspicious."

Something shifted at the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile. Close.

"Tell her eventually is a real timeline and not a deflection," she said.

"Is it?"

She picked up her coffee. "I'll let you know."

It wasn't a yes. But it was the most forward-facing thing she'd said in two months on Saturdays, and I recognized it for what it was.

Enough to keep building on.

I left the café twenty minutes later feeling something I hadn't felt in either timeline.

Genuinely hopeful. Without a strategy attached to it. That was new.