Chapter two

CHAPTER TWO

Mara's Pov 

I let him in because it was the right thing to do, and I have spent my entire life doing the right thing even when it cost me.

I didn't offer him anything. No water, no coffee, no invitation to sit down. He stood in my living area and I stood near the kitchen counter with my arms crossed and my wine glass somewhere behind me, and we looked at each other like two people who had once made a very large decision together and were now standing on opposite sides of it.

"How long have you known?" I asked.

"About the diagnosis? Three weeks."

"And you came here now."

"Yes."

"Why not three weeks ago?"

He looked at the floor briefly, then back at me. "Because three weeks ago I was hoping she'd get a second opinion that said something different. She didn't."

I understood that. The waiting period before you accept something is real. I'd had my own version of it after Claire died, those first few days where I kept thinking someone would call and tell me there had been a mistake. No one called.

"What's her name?" I asked. "Your mother."

"Dorothy."

"How old is she?"

"Sixty-one."

I nodded slowly. Sixty-one was too young. Stage four was too fast. None of this was fair, and I was not going to pretend otherwise just because this man standing in my living room had caused me three years of complicated feelings.

"Sit down," I said finally.

He sat on the edge of the couch like someone who wasn't sure the invitation would last. I stayed standing.

"Elias, I need you to understand something before we have this conversation." I kept my voice even. Lawyer voice. The one I used when I needed people to hear me clearly. "Lily doesn't know about you. She doesn't know about your mother. She has never heard your name."

Something moved across his face. He absorbed it without flinching, but I saw it.

"I know," he said.

"She's three. She asks me sometimes why she doesn't have a daddy. I tell her that some families look different and that she is very loved. That's all she knows."

"That's good," he said. "That's—" He stopped. "You've done a good job with her."

"I know I have."

He almost smiled at that. Almost.

"I'm not here to disrupt anything," he said. "I want to be clear about that. I'm not here to make a claim or fight anything. I just need to know if there is any version of this where my mother can see her granddaughter before she dies. That's the entire task."

"That's not a small ask."

"No. It isn't."

I moved to the armchair across from him and sat down. Thinking. I was good at thinking under pressure. It was probably my most useful quality and also the one that had cost me the most sleep over the years.

The problem was not Dorothy Voss. A dying woman who wanted to meet her granddaughter was not a villain in any story I could construct. The problem was what came after a yes. If I let Dorothy meet Lily, if I let Elias back into this orbit even briefly, then what? He goes back to his side of the city and we all pretend it didn't happen? Or does it open something that has been closed for three years and was closed for good reason?

"Tell me about her," I said. "Your mother."

He seemed surprised by the question. "What do you want to know?"

"Anything. What's she like?"

He was quiet for a moment. "She's stubborn. She was a schoolteacher for thirty years and she still talks to adults like they're nine years old and capable of doing better if they just try harder." He paused. "She made Claire a quilt when Claire and I got engaged. Spent four months on it. Claire cried when she got it." Another pause, quieter this time. "She still has it. The quilt. She kept it after everything."

I felt something shift slightly in my chest. Not enough to change anything, but enough to notice.

"Has she asked about Lily before now?" I asked.

"Every time I see her."

"And what did you tell her?"

He met my eyes. "I told her I wasn't ready."

Honest answer. I gave him credit for that.

"And now?"

"Now she has six months and I don't have the right to decide she doesn't get this just because I'm not ready."

I stood up and walked to the window. Outside, the street was ordinary. A woman walking a dog. A man on his phone. The city doing its regular evening things is completely indifferent to the conversation happening in my living room.

The truth was I had expected this moment to come eventually, in some form. Not this exact shape, not a dying grandmother, but some version of Elias Voss reappearing. I had told myself I was prepared for it. Now that it was here, I understood that prepared and ready were two different things.

"I need time to think," I said.

"Of course."

"I'm not saying no."

"I understand."

"But I'm not saying yes tonight either." I turned back from the window to face him. "This affects Lily's life, not just mine. I have to think about how I explain it to her. I have to think about what she takes away from meeting a woman she'll then lose. She's three, Elias. She doesn't have the language for loss yet."

He nodded. He looked like a man who knew he had no ground to argue from and was making peace with it.

He stood up. Picked up his jacket from the arm of the couch. And then he paused.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You can ask."

He looked at me steadily. "Does she look like Claire?"

The question landed somewhere unguarded. I held his gaze for a moment before answering.

"Every single day," I said. "She looks like Claire every single day."

He nodded once. Then, quietly: "That must be hard for you too."

I walked to the door and opened it. He stepped through. And just before I closed it behind him, he turned and said the thing that made sure I didn't sleep that night.

"Marcus wants to meet her too. He says he's Lily's uncle and uncles have rights." He paused. "I told him not to come tonight. But Mara, I can't hold him off forever.”