Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

Mara's Pov 

I didn't sleep.

I lay in bed staring at the ceiling until two a.m., then gave up and made tea and sat at my kitchen table with my phone face down in front of me. The city outside was quiet in the way it only gets after midnight, and I sat in that quiet and thought about Marcus Voss.

I had met him exactly once. At Claire's funeral. He was Elias's younger brother, shorter, louder, the kind of person who fills a room without trying. He had hugged me at the reception even though we had never spoken before, and he had said, *Claire talked about you all the time. She said you were the most loyal person she knew.*

I had held myself together until I got to my car.

That was the last time I saw him. But I knew who he was in the way you know the shape of a thing without touching it. Elias was the kind of man who carried his grief quietly and kept it personal. Marcus, from everything Claire had ever told me, was the kind who made grief into action. He didn't sit with things. He moved on them.

Which meant Elias wasn't just warning me out of courtesy last night. He was telling me the clock had started.

I picked up my phone and called the one person I called when I needed to think out loud.

Diane picked up on the third ring, which meant she was already awake, which meant I wasn't the only one with insomnia in this friendship.

"It's two in the morning," she said, not as a complaint, just as a fact.

"Elias Voss came to my door tonight."

Silence. Then: "I'll make coffee."

---

Diane Okafor was not my therapist, though she had the instincts for it. She was a family court judge who had known me since law school, and she was the only person outside the original agreement who knew the full story of Lily. Not the surface version. The real one, including the part where I had carried a baby for my best friend and then raised that baby alone when the world collapsed.

She listened to everything without interrupting, which was one of her best qualities. I told her about Elias on the doorstep, about Dorothy, about Marcus.

When I finished, she was quiet for a moment.

"What does your gut say?" she asked.

"My gut says let the grandmother meet Lily. My brain says that's the first step on a road I can't see the end of."

"Those aren't actually in conflict," she said. "Your gut is answering the immediate question. Your brain is asking the next one."

"Which is?"

"What do the Voss family become after this? Are they a one-time visit or are they people in Lily's life?"

I wrapped both hands around my mug. "I don't know."

"You need to know before you open that door, Mara. Because once that little girl meets her grandmother and her uncle, she will remember. She's three, not three months. She will ask about them again."

"I know that."

"And if Dorothy dies, which she will, Lily will have to be told. And if Marcus decides he wants a relationship—"

"I know, Diane."

"I'm not trying to scare you. I'm telling you what I would tell you in my courtroom." She paused. "Do you have any legal documentation? Anything formalizing your guardianship?"

This was the part I had avoided thinking about since two a.m. "No formal adoption. Elias signed a letter at the time, witnessed but not notarized. It's not nothing but it's not airtight."

The silence that followed was the kind that meant she was being careful with her next words.

"Mara. If Marcus decides to pursue legal standing as a biological relative—"

"He's an uncle. Not a parent."

"Uncles have sued for visitation rights in this state and won. Especially when there's no formal adoption on record." She let that sit. "I'm not saying that's what's happening. I'm saying you need to get ahead of it."

I set my mug down. "You think I should formalize the adoption."

"I think you should have done it three years ago and I didn't say anything then because you were grieving and exhausted and I should have pushed harder." Her voice was firm but not unkind. "Call someone this week. File the paperwork. Get Elias to sign whatever needs signing while he's in a cooperative mood, because cooperative moods don't last forever."

"If I ask him to sign adoption papers, he'll know I don't trust him."

"You don't trust him."

"He's being decent, Diane."

"He's being decent *right now*. For a specific reason. That's different from being trustworthy." She exhaled. "Look. Let the grandmother meet Lily. That part feels right. But do it on your terms, in your space, with a clear conversation with Elias first about what this visit means and what it doesn't. Boundaries up front. Not after."

I nodded even though she couldn't see me. "Okay."

"And Mara?" Her voice shifted, softer now. "You're not doing anything wrong by protecting her. That's your job. You took it on when no one else would. Don't let anyone make you feel guilty for doing it well."

I said goodnight and hung up.

I sat for another few minutes in the quiet kitchen. Then I picked up my phone and typed a message to Elias. Short. Professional. The way I wrote when I needed to feel like I was in control of something.

I've thought about it. I'm willing to arrange a meeting. But we need to talk first, just the two of us. Tomorrow. Somewhere neutral. Bring nothing and no one.

I put the phone down and waited.

It buzzed less than two minutes later.

I'll be wherever you say. Thank you.

And then, thirty seconds after that, a second message from the same number.

Marcus called me tonight after I left your place. He's already spoken to a lawyer.