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Ashby takes his time answering. It’s like he weighs words before using them. “He said Maggie didn’t enter rooms. She arrived.”

A laugh catches in my throat and hurts on the way out. “That’s annoyingly accurate.”

“He said she could make people follow her into bad decisions and convince them it was their idea.”

“That's also annoyingly true.”

“He said she was generous when she had nothing, reckless when she had everything, and impossible to stay angry at unless you were related to her.”

I stop walking.

The river keeps moving.

Ashby stops too, a step ahead, then turns back.

I look down at the wet path, because if I look at him, I might do something messy. Like cry.

“He said that?”

“Yes.”

“He remembered her like that?”

“Yes.”

My chest squeezes, too full yet too hollow at the same time.

Ben and Maggie fought constantly as teenagers. Loudly. Spectacularly. Over the car, money, curfews, burned toast, stolen hoodies, the moral implications of Maggie borrowing things without asking and calling it “shared household property.”

But Ben loved her.

Of course he did.

I knew that.

Knowing something and hearing proof of it aren't the same.

“What did he say about me?” I ask, regretting it immediately.

Ashby’s gaze stays on my face. I wish he wouldn’t do that. “He said you hated being wrong more than you liked being right.”

I blink, then I laugh. It escapes before I can catch it. “That little shit.”

Ashby’s mouth curves. Barely. “He said that too.”

“About me?”

“About himself.”

That does it. The laugh breaks, becoming softer, more fragile, and I have to turn away.

I hate this.

I hate that one conversation with a man I met less than an hour ago is pulling Ben closer than years of carefully not thinking about him.

“He didn’t talk to me much near the end,” I admit.

Ashby doesn’t answer.