Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight 

Elias POV

She texted me on Wednesday, not about Lily. Not about Dorothy. Just: "Lily asked me today if stars have names. I said yes. She asked if they knew their own names. I had no answer. Though you should know this is what parenting is." 

I read it at my desk in the middle of a call I should have been paying attention to. I read it twice. Then I typed back: “Tell her the stars probably do know. They've had a long time to figure it out." 

Three minutes passed.

"She accepted that. You're useful." 

I put the phone face down and looked at my screen and did not think about the fact that I was smiling.

Marcus walked in twenty minutes later, saw my face, and said nothing. Which meant he was storing it for later.

Thursday she called instead of texted. I picked up on the second ring and then wished I had waited for the third so I didn't seem like I had been holding the phone.

"Vanessa contacted my office," she said. No greeting. She was in lawyer mode, voice clipped and controlled.

I sat up straight. "When?"

"This morning. Not directly. She went through a colleague who owes her a favor and asked for a meeting. Off the record."

"What did you say?"

"I said no. Obviously." A beat. "But Elias, she doesn't do things without a reason. She's building toward something. She either knows about the adoption papers or she suspects, and either way she's not going to sit on it."

"Let her build. The papers are legitimate."

"The papers are legitimate but the situation isn't clean and she knows it." Her voice dropped slightly, the lawyer edge softening just enough that I could hear the person underneath. "There was never a formal surrogacy agreement. Claire asked me as a friend. If Vanessa's legal team argues that the arrangement was informal and therefore contestable, a sympathetic judge could at least grant her standing to challenge."

"She has no standing."

"She has grief and money and a sister who died before her child was born. Judges are human, Elias."

I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose. Outside my window the city was doing its usual indifferent thing. "What do you need from me?"

"I need to know if Vanessa has anything. Any documentation, any communication, anything Claire may have sent her about the surrogacy before she died."

"I don't know what Claire sent her."

"Then find out. Go through whatever you have. Emails, texts, letters. If Claire told her sister she was planning this and framed it in a way that gave Vanessa any expectation of involvement—" She stopped. "I need to know before Vanessa's attorney does."

I was quiet for a moment. Going through Claire's things was not something I had done. I had moved them to the storage room in my apartment eighteen months ago and closed the door and left them there.

Mara seemed to understand the silence. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize."

"I'm apologizing because I'm asking you to do something hard, not because the ask is wrong." Her voice was steady but not unkind. "You don't have to do it tonight. But soon."

"I'll do it tonight," I said.

Another beat of silence. Different from the last one.

"You don't have to prove you're not avoidant to me," she said.

"I'm not proving anything. I just want it done."

"Okay." Then, quieter: "How are you? Actually."

The question caught me off guard the way direct things did when I wasn't prepared for them. Nobody asked me that. Marcus checked on the company. Dorothy asked about Lily. Nobody asked about me.

"I'm fine," I said.

"You said that last time and we both ignored it."

I leaned back in my chair. Outside, a cloud passed and the light in my office changed. "I don't know how to answer that question honestly without it taking longer than either of us has right now."

"That's the most honest answer you've given me."

"Don't make a big deal of it."

"I'm not." But I could hear something in her voice that felt like warmth. Careful warmth, the kind someone offered when they weren't sure yet if it would be received. "Come by Saturday. Lily's been asking. And I want to show you the draft of the guardianship language before I file."

"Guardianship," I said.

"Priya drafted it. Don't make that face."

"You can't see my face."

"I can hear it." A pause. "It names you. As secondary guardian. After Jonah."

I said nothing for a moment. Something in my chest moved in a way I didn't have a word for immediately. She was naming me. She had decided, without me asking, that I was someone who should be in that document.

"You don't have to….."

"I know I don't have to," she said. "I want to. She's yours too, Elias. She always was." Her voice was very even when she said it, like she had rehearsed the steadiness. "So. Saturday."

"Saturday," I said.

I went through Claire's things that night.

Three boxes. I sat on the storage room floor and opened them slowly and took my time. Claire was everywhere in those boxes, her handwriting, her smell still faintly on a scarf, a photograph of her and Mara at what looked like a college rooftop, both of them laughing at something off-camera, Mara's head tipped back, completely unguarded.

I looked at that photograph for longer than was necessary.

Then I found what I was looking for. An email Claire had sent to Vanessa eight days before the accident. Two paragraphs. The relevant line was in the second one.

“I know you think Mara is too young for this and that we should have gone through an agency, but Van, she's the only person I trust completely. She loves me the way family loves people. She already has a family.”

I read it twice.

Vanessa had this. She had been sitting on it for three years.

I took a photo of the email, sent it to Mara, and sat for a while in the quiet of my storage room with the photograph of the two women in my hand, one of them gone and one of them waiting for me on Saturday.

*That's actually good for us*, she texted back within minutes. *Claire's own words saying she chose me. I'll explain Saturday.*

Then: *Thank you for doing that tonight.*

I typed back: *She called you family.*

A long pause.

“She always did,” Mara replied.

I turned off the light and sat in the dark a little longer.