LOGIN[POV: Lewis] [Location: Edinburgh — Claire's Flat]She had the coffee ready when he arrived.Not his office coffee — she'd gone to the place three streets over that roasted their own, the kind of coffee that required a considered opinion rather than just a preference. She handed him a cup without ceremony and sat across from him at the small kitchen table."You look better than yesterday," she said."Your mother made me sleep.""Good. She should do that more often." Claire wrapped both hands around her cup. "I asked you here for a reason.""I know.""I'm going to say it in order because if I don't say it in order I'll skip the parts that are difficult and just give you the conclusion, which is not useful for you." She looked at him directly. "I've been thinking about Stanford.""Cold feet?""The opposite." A pause. "I want to go into law."Lewis waited. There was more."Specifically family law. Not corporate, not criminal. Family." She held his gaze. "I've been thinking about it sinc
[POV: Lewis] [Location: Edinburgh — Bedroom]He waited until the house was quiet.Grace asleep. Ethan in his room with the light still on, probably reading. Rose's door closed, the faint sound of music through it — a sign she was okay, not shutting out, just existing.He found Yessica in their bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed with her phone in her lap and the particular stillness that meant she was doing nothing on purpose.Lewis closed the door. Sat beside her."Grace said something to me two nights ago," he said. "She said you seemed tired in a way that isn't regular tired." He paused. "And Ethan said he saw you in the garden late. Sitting alone after you thought everyone was asleep."Yessica looked at the phone in her hands."Both of them noticed," Lewis said. "Independently. Within two days.""They're observant children.""Yes. Because you raised them to be." He kept his voice quiet. "Yessica. Talk to me."She set the phone on the nightstand. Turned it face-down. Crossed h
[POV: Lewis] [Location: Edinburgh — Lewis's House, Ethan's Week]Ethan was in the garden when Lewis came looking for him.Not doing anything in particular. Just sitting on the back step with his elbows on his knees, watching something in the middle distance that Lewis couldn't identify. That was Ethan's thinking posture — perfectly still, completely inward, the look of a person running through something complicated without external evidence.He looked up when he heard the door."Hey, Daddy.""Hey." Lewis sat on the step beside him. "What are you thinking about?""Architecture," Ethan said. Then, after a pause: "And other stuff.""Tell me about the other stuff."Ethan looked back at the garden. "Is this the one-on-one conversation? Miss Mama said you were doing them.""Yes.""Good." He said it without ceremony. "I was wondering when you'd get to me."Lewis registered the mild implied critique and filed it honestly. "Sorry it took this long.""It's okay. Things have been happening." Et
[POV: Lewis] [Location: Edinburgh — Grace's Bedroom]Grace's bedroom had a system.Lewis had known this in the abstract for years — Yessica had mentioned it, the other children had complained about it — but sitting in it for the first time with nowhere else to be, he understood it properly.The books were organized by colour, not subject. The drawings on the wall were arranged by what Grace called "feeling" — the cheerful ones near the window, the serious ones above the desk, the ones that were "both at the same time" in the corner by the door. Her stuffed animals occupied a specific shelf in a specific order that Grace had explained once and expected never to explain again."The green ones are on the left because green is a morning colour," Grace told him now, following his gaze."What's an afternoon colour?"She considered this with the focused attention she brought to questions she found genuinely worth answering. "Yellow. Or that orange that's almost yellow. Not proper orange. Pr
[POV: Yessica] [Location: Edinburgh — Home]Eleanor called at eleven.Yessica was in the garden with Grace, who was conducting a survey of which plants had grown since last week and recording results in a notebook she had decorated with stickers of cats wearing hats. Yessica answered on the second ring."Morton's legal team withdrew the filing this morning," Eleanor said. "Forty minutes ago. Without Sienna's testimony the claim has no foundation, and their own counsel advised them the vexatious application would succeed. They're cutting their losses.""It's over?""The litigation is over. The Whitmore acquisition is formally withdrawn from board consideration pending the conflict of interest review, which I expect to conclude in our favour within the week." A pause. "James Morton Senior is a man who lost every move he made. He'll redirect his attention to someone easier to pressure. That's not your family."Yessica stood in the garden with the morning sun on her face and said, "Thank
[POV: Lewis] [Location: Edinburgh — Neutral Café, Stockbridge]Sienna had chosen the meeting place herself.A small café in Stockbridge, the kind that had mismatched chairs and served good coffee and attracted nobody who worked in finance or law. Lewis arrived first and sat facing the door, which was habit.She came in at ten past nine. He almost didn't recognize her.Not because she'd aged badly — she hadn't. She looked well, actually. But the particular quality she'd always carried, that sharp constructed-for-attention energy, was gone. She wore a plain coat, no visible effort, the look of someone who had stopped performing for rooms she entered.She sat across from him."Thank you for coming," she said."Thank you for the warning."The server came. They both ordered coffee. The small ritual of that gave the silence somewhere to go."Why did you pull out?" Lewis asked. He kept his voice neutral. Not hostile, not warm. Just direct."Because Morton told me what he was using the lawsu
POV: Lewis | EdinburghLewis stood at Harrison's door for a long moment after the words landed.Four months. You were going to let him disappear.Harrison looked at him without the composure routine, without anything managed. Just an old man in a doorframe who had decided, late and irrevocably, to
POV: Yessica | EdinburghEleanor Vance's office was on the fourth floor of a glass building in the city center. She had the kind of posture that made people sit up straighter in her presence.She had cleared her morning schedule when Lewis called at seven."Walk me through it from the beginning," E
POV: Yessica | Location: New YorkSeven days.Seven days since the test, and she still hadn't told him.She'd planned it a hundred different ways. The right moment, the right words, the right version of Lewis sitting across from her long enough to actually hear it. But the right moment kept not arri
POV: Yessica | Location: New York"Conference call in twenty."Lewis didn't look up from his phone.Yessica set his plate down. Eggs perfect, bacon crispy, coffee at exactly the temperature he liked. Three years of mornings and he still hadn't learned to say thank you like he meant it."I made your







