My jaw tightened.
No. They hadn’t.
I typed, erased, typed again.
ME: She is not a variable to manage. She is part of his life. That deserves respect.
Rayann answered first.
RAYANN: Yes.
Then Emme.
EMME: That sounded like truth, not defense.
A few seconds passed.
ANNIE: Respecting someone’s fixed truth does not require disappearing inside it.
My fingers went still over the screen.
BRYNN: I was not emotionally prepared for Annie to walk in here and stab us with wisdom.
RAYANN: She’s right.
SUMMER: Jules.
I set the phone facedown on the desk.
The room smelled faintly of linen detergent, chilled air, and the stale neutrality of expensive hotels pretending no one had ever cried, fought, worked, or made a life-altering decision inside them. The carpet gave beneath my bare feet when I stepped out of my shoes. My shoulders had been up near my ears since the road hold. Lowering them took effort.
The phone buzzed again.
ANNIE: Does he make your life smaller?
Trust Annie to arrive with a scalpel and no anesthesia.
No.
The answer sat there, plain and inconvenient.
Nick did not make my life smaller. He made it harder to lie about its shape. There was Wilder Horizons, my sisters, Maris Key, clients with money and emergencies, a father gone too soon, and a life built from obligations I had chosen and others that had chosen me back.
And now there was Sofia. Virginia. Homecoming. A father who had booked the flight instead of saying maybe.
She stood inside the architecture of his life, load-bearing and nonnegotiable.
I typed one word.
ME: No.
ANNIE: Then that’s useful data.
BRYNN: Annie, you terrifying little spreadsheet ghost.
EMME: Jules, you sound less armored.
ANNIE: Or armored around different things.
