Chapter five

CHAPTER FIVE

Mara's Pov 

Marcus showed up on Thursday.

I was home by six, Lily was in the living room arranging her stuffed animals into what she called a meeting, and I was in the kitchen pulling dinner together when the knock came. Firm. Confident. The knock of someone who had decided they had every right to be at this door.

I knew before I looked.

I opened it without the chain, which in hindsight was optimistic, and Marcus Voss stood in my doorway looking exactly like a man who had rehearsed this and was pleased with how he looked doing it. He was broad-shouldered, dark-eyed, with Claire's same energy of someone who walked into rooms expecting to be received well. That detail hit me somewhere old and sore.

"Mara," he said, like we were friends resuming a conversation.

"Marcus." I stepped into the doorway, not back from it. "Elias told you not to come here."

"Elias tells me a lot of things."

"And you're here anyway."

"I am." He smiled, but it didn't reach far. "I'm not here to fight. I just want to talk."

"We could have talked on the phone."

"You would have hung up."

He wasn't wrong, which annoyed me more than his being here. I glanced behind me. Lily was still in the living room, fully absorbed in her animal meeting, not paying attention to the door.

"You have five minutes," I said. "Out here."

I stepped into the hallway and pulled the door mostly closed behind me. We stood in the corridor of my building, fluorescent light overhead, his confidence filling the space in a way that I refused to let affect my posture.

"I know about the adoption papers," he said.

"That was fast."

"Elias called me yesterday. Told me he was signing." He studied my face. "I'm not fighting the adoption, Mara. I want to be clear about that."

"Then what are you doing with Bryce Callahan?"

A flicker of something. Surprise that I knew the name, or respect, I couldn't tell. "I haven't filed anything. I made a call to understand my options. That's all."

"Understanding your options sounds a lot like preparing to use them."

"It sounds like someone who loves his niece trying to figure out where he stands." His voice was even, but there was an edge underneath it. "I have been on the other side of this city for three years. Three years, Mara. I have not called, not showed up, not pushed. Because Elias asked me not to and because I thought I was doing the right thing by giving you space." He paused. "But she is Claire's daughter. She is my blood. And I am not going to disappear forever just because it's convenient for everyone else."

I held his gaze. "Nobody asked you to disappear forever. Nobody has had that conversation with you because you and I have never had a conversation. This is the first one."

"Whose fault is that?"

"Honestly? Everyone's. Including yours." I crossed my arms. "But Marcus, showing up unannounced at my home after your brother specifically told you to wait is not a great way to start a conversation about trust."

He looked at me for a moment. Something in his expression shifted, less performance, more actual person. "You're right," he said. "I know. I just—" He exhaled. "My mother is dying. And I drove past this building four times before I stopped. I'm not handling any of this particularly well."

The honesty landed differently than the confidence had. I recognized grief when it was standing in front of me. I had seen it in enough mirrors.

"I know about your mother," I said, softer. "I'm meeting her this weekend."

He looked up. "Elias told me."

"Then you know I'm not keeping Lily from your family out of cruelty. I'm being careful because careful is what she needs from me."

"I understand careful," he said. "I'm asking for eventual. Not immediate, not on my timeline. Just eventual." He looked at me directly. "I want to be her uncle. Not a legal concept, not a name on a document. Her actual uncle. The one who shows up to things and remembers her birthday and is just — present."

Something about the plainness of it got through. I didn't let it show.

"That's a conversation for after the papers are signed," I said. "And after this weekend. One thing at a time."

"Okay." He nodded. "One thing at a time." He took a step back, hands in his jacket pockets. "She's in there right now, isn't she."

It wasn't really a question. I didn't answer it.

"Does she laugh like Claire?" he asked. Quiet. Unguarded in a way the rest of him hadn't been.

I stood with that question for a second. Because yes. Lily laughed with her whole body the same way Claire always had, sudden and full and completely unselfconscious, and there were moments it stopped my heart.

"You should go," I said.

"I know." But he didn't move immediately. He looked at the closed door behind me like he was memorizing the distance. Then he looked back at me. "I'll wait. For the weekend, for the papers, for however long you need." He paused. "But Mara, I need you to hear this."

"I'm listening."

His expression was completely unguarded now. Whatever composure he'd walked in with was gone. "If something happens to you — God forbid, I'm not wishing anything — but if something happened, who does she go to? Who has her?"

The question went straight through me.

Because the answer, if I was being completely honest, if I stood in the cold light of what I had and had not arranged in three years of holding everything together alone, was that I didn't have a clear answer.

And from the look on his face, he already knew that.

"Goodnight, Marcus," I said.

He nodded once and walked toward the elevator. Just before it opened he turned back.

"She deserves a whole family, Mara. Not just a careful one.”