POV: Jasmine
I woke at two in the morning.
The bed was wrong — the weight distribution on Liam's side, the pressure differential I had learned over months of sleeping beside him. That specific absence had its own weight. I lay still for a moment, registering it precisely. Then I got up.
I found him in the kitchen. Floor. Back against the cabinet. Dressed from dinner. Eyes open, aimed at the dark middle distance.
I sat down beside him on the cold tile.
"Asher called. About an hour ago. Tell me if you want to hear it — I want to tell you."
"Tell me. I want all of it, in the order it happened."
He told me.
The London solicitor. The clerk's assumption. The correspondence filed under both brothers' names. The date range — four years after Jackson told them their mother was dead. Asher going outside to make the call. Not opening the file. Not wanting to be the only one holding the shape of it.
He told me all of it in order, and I let him take the full route without interrupting.
When he finished I put my hand over his on the cold tile and held it there. I did not move toward interpretation. Did not reach for next steps. He needed someone to hold the shape of it with him, not someone to immediately begin managing it.
He did not speak for a long time.
"I don't know what it means yet." He looked at the dark kitchen. "She might have been trying to reach us. Or Jackson filed documents in her name after she was gone. Or there's something I don't have the frame for yet."
"Which one do you want it to be?"
"I don't know which one I want it to be. That's the thing I can't figure out." He looked at me. "What do you think it means? About who Jackson actually is."
"I think the record I've been building has an entry point that goes back much further than the first board meeting after my title was filed."
I held his gaze in the dark.
"I think he's been constructing a version of events for a very long time. And I think those letters are filed and retrievable because someone wanted them to survive — either to reach you eventually, or as protection for herself."
He looked at the kitchen wall.
"Jackson made a choice." He whispered. "When we were children, he made a choice about those letters. And he kept making the same choice every year. Every time he could have said something."
"Yes. He kept making it — every year, every silence, every time he could have said something and didn't."
"And Asher found it by accident. A filing question."
"Yes. It's been there for a long time."
"She might still be alive." Said quietly. Into the dark.
"She might be. We don't know yet."
"No." A long pause. "We don't know yet."
I pressed my hand over his and stayed.
The city moved through its 3 AM register — the specific hour when the night has used up most of itself and not yet handed anything to the morning.
I watched the dark window. He watched the dark window. There was nothing to do but be present in the not-knowing, which was its own kind of discipline.
"Asher will call when he's looked at it."
"Yes. And we'll be here when he does." I kept my hand over his on the cold tile. "Neither of us is going anywhere tonight."
"Leo should know." He looked at me. "When we know something real — Leo should know. He and I were asking the same question."
"Yes. He should know. We'll tell him when there's something to tell."
"And Finn should know when there's something to tell him."
"Finn will find out. One way or another, Finn will find out. He's been paying attention too."
"I know," he said.
I held his hand.
"Tell me what you want. Not what you think, not what it probably means. What do you want the letters to say."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I want them to be from her." A long pause.
"I want there to be evidence that she tried to reach us and Jackson decided we didn't need to know. Because if she tried — if she was alive and he stopped it — then she's not a story Jackson told us. She's a person who wanted to know us and wasn't allowed to."
"And if Jackson filed them after she was gone?"
"Then at least she was real. At least there are documents. At least she existed in a way that has paper evidence, not just a version of events that came entirely from him."
I held his hand on the cold tile.
"Either way — the version Jackson gave you was incomplete. Either way, there was more to know than he let you know. The letters exist whether she's alive or not."
"Yes." He held that. "Yes, that's right."
"And whatever Asher finds when he opens the file — it will be the actual thing. Not the managed version. Not what Jackson decided you needed to have."
I looked at him in the changing dark. "You're going to know something real, whatever it is. That's different from what you've had."
"Yes." He met my gaze. "Yes, that's right."
"And when Asher calls, we'll hear it together. We'll know what the actual thing is together. And then we'll decide what to do with it together." I held his hand. "That's how this works now."
"That's how this works now. We both stay. We both hold it." A pause. "Yes."
"Thank you. For being on the floor at three in the morning."
"I was always going to be on the floor at three in the morning. That's not something you need to thank me for."
We waited for it together, both of us on the cold kitchen floor, hand in hand. The cold came up through the tile steadily, a low persistent fact. Neither of us moved away from it. Neither of us needed to.
The darkness outside began to shift — not light yet, but the first indication of the direction it would come from. The morning arriving without asking whether either of us was ready for it.
We waited for it together.