The Rochefort Group building was familiar to Leo.
He’d been here before. With Lily. With their mother. Layla would bring them when Alex worked late — the nights when dinner was takeout on the office floor and the twins were allowed to draw on the backs of old contracts and Alex would spin in his chair until Lily shrieked with laughter. Leo didn’t shriek. Even then, before the accident, before the silence, he was the quieter one. But he rembered the spinning. He rembered his father’s laugh. He rembered the way the office slled like coffee and paper and sothing sharp he couldn’t na.
The elevator was the sa. The hallway was the sa. The door to the executive office was the sa dark wood, the sa brass handle, the sa small dent near the bottom where Alex had kicked it once, swearing, and Layla had laughed so hard she’d had to sit down.
Arianne pushed the door open.
"Co in."
Leo stepped inside. Stopped. Looked.
Everything was the sa.
The desk. The bookshelves. The window that looked out over the city, the sky pale and high beyond the glass. The couch against the wall where Layla used to sit, her legs curled under her, a magazine in her lap while Alex worked and the twins played on the rug. The rug was still there. Leo rembered lying on it, tracing the patterns with his finger while his father’s voice rumbled in the background.
Arianne had changed nothing.
She’d been in this office for months now. She’d run board etings from this desk, made decisions that affected thousands of people, rebuilt a company that had nearly collapsed. And she hadn’t moved a single thing.
Near the desk, soone had set up a small table. Child-sized. A chair with a cushion. On the table: coloring books, a box of crayons, a few activity sheets with mazes and word searches that Leo was too young for but soone had thought to include anyway. Gio, probably. Or Finn. Soone who’d known he was coming.
Arianne walked to her desk. Set down her bag. The sa motion Alex used to make, shrugging off his jacket and draping it over the back of the chair. She didn’t drape anything. She sat. Opened her laptop. The work was already there, waiting.
"You can sit wherever you want," she said. "The table is for you. If you need anything, tell ."
Leo didn’t answer. He crossed to the small table and sat. The whale stayed in his lap.
The door opened.
Finn was taller than Leo rembered. Older, maybe — there was gray at his temples now that hadn’t been there before. But his face was the sa. The sa smile. The sa way of looking at Leo like he was really looking, not just glancing down and away.
"Hey, Leo."
Finn knelt. He didn’t try to hug him. He’d known Leo long enough to understand what Leo would and wouldn’t accept.
"I set up so stuff for you." He gestured at the small table. "Coloring books. Puzzles. So activity sheets. They might be a little old for you — I wasn’t sure what you’d like." He paused. "Is there anything else you want? Snacks? Sothing to drink? We’ve got juice in the break room."
Leo shook his head.
"Okay." Finn didn’t push. He stood, his knees cracking slightly. "I’ll be outside if you change your mind. Your Aunt Aria’s right there."
He caught Arianne’s eye as he turned to leave. Sothing passed between them — a brief look, the shared understanding of two people who had both known Alex, who both rembered the twins running through these hallways when they were small enough to hide under the conference table.
The door clicked shut.
The afternoon began.
Arianne worked. Leo watched.
He’d never seen her like this before. Not at ho, where she was Aunt Aria who sat at the kitchen table with coffee and a laptop but also held Lily when she cried. This was different. This was Aunt Aria in the other world. The world of papers and phone calls and decisions made at a desk that used to belong to his daddy.
She read docunts with her brow furrowed the sa way Alex’s used to furrow. She made notes in the margins with quick, sharp strokes of her pen. She took calls with her voice low and controlled — not cold, exactly, but contained. The way Alex’s voice used to get when he was handling sothing important and couldn’t be interrupted.
Except Alex used to smile more. He’d look up from his papers and see the twins on the rug and his whole face would change — the tension draining out, the smile breaking through. Aunt Aria didn’t smile like that. She’d look up at Leo and her face would soften, but the smile wasn’t there. It was sothing quieter. A check. A confirmation. You’re still here. You’re okay.
Every twenty minutes or so, she’d stop.
"You okay?"
Leo nodded.
She’d go back to work. The pattern repeated. Work. Check. Work. Check.
The afternoon light moved across the floor in slow rectangles. The crayons sat mostly untouched in their box. Leo had opened the coloring book to a page with a dog, but the dog was only half-blue. He kept getting distracted by the way Arianne held her pen. The way she tapped it against the desk when she was thinking. The sa thing Alex used to do.
Mid-afternoon. Arianne set her pen down.
"I’m going to the pantry. To find snacks." She stood. Stretched her shoulders — a small motion, quick, the way people do when they’ve been sitting too long. "Do you want to co?"
Leo considered. Then nodded.
They walked out together into the hallway. The overhead lights were brighter than the office, humming faintly. The carpet was the sa industrial gray it had always been. Everything slled like coffee and paper and that sharp thing Leo still couldn’t na.
A woman coming out of the conference room stopped. Her face broke into recognition.
"Leo? Is that you?"
Leo pressed himself against Arianne’s hip.
"Look at you. You’ve gotten so tall." The woman — Margaret, Leo rembered suddenly, her na was Margaret and she used to give him butterscotch candies from the jar on her desk — smiled down at him. "Your dad used to bring you here all the ti. Rember? You and your sister."
Leo didn’t answer. But he didn’t hide either. He stayed where he was, the whale under his arm, his shoulder touching Arianne’s leg.
"Tell Sir Franz we say hello," Margaret said to Arianne. "Everyone’s been asking about the twins."
Arianne nodded. They kept walking.
Another person passed. A man this ti, younger, soone Leo didn’t recognize. He nodded at Arianne and glanced at Leo with curiosity but didn’t stop.
Then a familiar face — Carlos, who used to sit outside Alex’s office and make funny faces at the twins while Alex was on calls. Carlos stopped dead in the hallway.
"No way. Leo?"
Leo smiled.
It was small. Hidden partly behind the whale, partly behind Arianne’s hip. But it was there. A real smile. The first one since last night. Since the Lion. Since the push and the tears and the long morning in Dr. Kellan’s office.
"Your dad used to carry you through here on his shoulders," Carlos said. "You’d grab the doorfras. Every single one. He’d have to duck so you wouldn’t hit your head."
Leo’s smile widened. Just a little.
Arianne watched him. Filed the smile away.
"We’re getting snacks," she said.
"Don’t let keep you. Good to see you, Leo."
They reached the pantry. Arianne opened cabinets. Crackers. Apples. A small packet of biscuits that Leo didn’t ask for but looked at long enough that she took them down.
"For later," she said.
He nodded.
Walking back to the office. Leo beside her, the biscuits in Arianne’s hand, the whale still tucked under his arm.
Arianne watched him. The way his shoulders had loosened since this morning. The way he’d walked through the hallway beside her instead of behind her. The way he’d smiled at Carlos and hadn’t flinched when Margaret said his father’s na.
It was an improvent. Not a recovery — Dr. Kellan’s words from earlier were still in her head. Life coming back. But it was sothing. It was movent.
She thought about Lily. At ho with Franz. She wondered how the pancakes had gone. Whether Lily was still carrying the weight of last night, whether she’d cried again, whether Franz had found sothing to distract her. She’d text him when they were back at the desk. A quick update. Leo’s doing better. The therapy helped. How’s Lily?
Late afternoon. The light outside the window had shifted, gold now instead of pale, the shadows stretching long across the floor.
Arianne was reading a report. A quarterly projection, the numbers blurring at the edges. She looked up to check on Leo.
He was asleep.
His head was on the small table, resting on the half-colored dog. The blue crayon was still in his hand. The whale was tucked under his other arm, pressed against his chest. His breathing was deep and even. His face was smooth — no tension, no furrow between his brows. Just sleep.
Arianne stared at him.
The rise and fall of his small back. The way his fingers had gone slack around the crayon. The dog on the coloring page, still half-finished, the blue bleeding outside the lines. He’d been working on that sa page all afternoon. He’d never once turned it.
She set down the report. Stood. Crossed to the small table.
She lifted him. One arm under his knees, the other behind his back. He was heavier than she expected. Warr. His head lolled against her shoulder, and the whale pressed between them, soft and familiar. He didn’t wake.
She carried him to the couch. The sa couch where Layla used to sit with the twins while Alex worked late. The sa couch where Leo had probably napped as a baby, his mother’s hand on his back. She laid him down gently. Arranged the whale so it stayed under his arm. Opened the cabinet by the window where Finn kept a throw blanket for late nights and draped it over him.
He didn’t stir.
She stood there for a mont. Looking at him. The boy who’d pushed his sister last night and cried until he couldn’t breathe. The boy who’d sat on Dr. Kellan’s sofa and tried to put his father back together with words and drawings. The boy who’d smiled at Carlos in the hallway — small, shy, but real.
Asleep on her office couch. The whale tucked against him. The throw blanket rising and falling with his breath.
She went back to her desk. Picked up her phone.
Leo’s doing fine. Fell asleep on the coloring table. Moved him to the couch. Therapy helped, I think. How’s Lily?
She set the phone down. The office was quiet. The light was golden through the window. Leo slept. Arianne worked. The afternoon settled into evening, and sowhere across the city, Franz’s phone buzzed with her ssage.
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