Chapter 13 Jamie
Jamie
He was reckless.
Bryce's voice played on a loop in my head. He said it like he was doing me a favor by explaining something I was too emotional to understand. He'd taken my brother's sacrifice and reframed it as a character flaw.
If you want to be taken seriously, you have to be honest about the culture that led to your brother's death.
I thought about what I'd wanted to do when he said it. If Sam hadn't been there, I wasn't sure I would have held my composure. His presence beside me had been like an anchor. He was the only thing keeping me from saying something I couldn't take back. Or doing something worse.
"Auntie Jamie?"
I blinked. Rosie was standing in front of me, holding up a piece of paper covered in crayon.
"Sorry, sweetheart." I sat up straighter and focused on her face. "What do you have there?"
"I made a picture." She held it closer, practically pressing it against my nose. "Can I add it to my stories?"
The stories.
I'd encouraged her to collect all the things she wanted to tell her mom and dad when her wings were big enough to take her where they were.
All of her drawings were saved up in a manila envelope she kept on her nightstand.
She'd taken to it with the seriousness of a librarian building an archive.
Every few days, she added a new drawing.
"Of course you can," I said. "What’s this one about?"
Rosie climbed onto the couch beside me and spread the paper across both our laps. She pointed to a row of colorful blobs—her attempt at shapes.
"These are the continents," she said. "Miss Hartley taught us today. There's seven."
"Seven continents. That's a big lesson."
"This one's Africa." She pointed to an orange blob. "And this one's Antartica."
"Antarctica," I corrected gently.
"That's what I said." She frowned at me like I was the one who had it wrong. "And this one's South America, and this one's Ostralia."
"Australia."
"Auntie Jamie, you're not saying it right."
I laughed. The sound surprised me. A minute ago I'd been fantasizing about breaking Bryce Montgomery's nose, and now I was being corrected on pronunciation by a four-year-old who couldn't say Antarctica.
"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry. Keep going."
She walked me through the rest of the continents, pointing to each blob with authority.
Some of them were labeled in wobbly preschool handwriting.
Others had small figures drawn on them, which Rosie explained were the animals that lived there.
A penguin in Antarctica. An elephant in Africa.
Something that might have been a kangaroo in Australia, though it looked more like a lumpy dog.
When she finished, she looked up at me. "Do you think Daddy will like it?"
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. "I think he'll love it."
"I want to show him all the places." She traced her finger over the drawing. "When I have my wings, maybe we can visit them together."
I pulled her closer and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She smelled like baby shampoo and crayons.
Bryce could say whatever he wanted about Jack. He could block the appeal and smile while he did it. But he didn't get to tell Rosie who her father was. I did.
Loretta stopped by on her way to the airport.
"I wanted to see you both before I left."
I walked down the steps with Rosie on my hip. "What time's your flight?"
"Two hours. Plenty of time." She reached out and touched Rosie's cheek. "You be good, okay?"
"Okay," Rosie said.
Loretta looked at me. "I wish the timing were better."
“That little one needs her Nana. We’ll be here when you get back.”
"You'll call me after the hearing?"
"The minute it's done."
She stepped forward and hugged me, one arm around my shoulder, careful not to squish Rosie between us.
"You've got this," she said quietly. "Jack knew what he was doing when he chose you."
There was something about Loretta that made everything feel manageable. Like the world could be falling apart, but if she was in the room, you could breathe.
"Give my regards to Simone," I said as she pulled back and kissed Rosie's forehead.
Loretta smiled. "I'll send pictures."
We watched her pull out of the driveway and disappear down the street. Rosie waved until the car was gone.
"Is Loretta coming back?" Rosie asked.
"She will. But not for a little while."
Rosie considered this, then laid her head on my shoulder.
The hearing for Rosie’s guardianship was a week away. I'd been managing with Loretta as backup. Now the backup was gone.
The guardianship hearing was on a Thursday morning. Sam showed up in a button-down that made him look unfairly good. I let myself notice for exactly one second, then moved on.
I'd been dreading the process—the paperwork, the interviews, the waiting. Guardianship cases could drag on for months. I'd read horror stories about family court, about petitions lost in bureaucracy, about children stuck in limbo while adults fought over jurisdiction.
But Jack had made sure that wouldn't happen to Rosie.
He'd used the same lawyer who handled our parents' estate eleven years ago.
Mr. Harmon knew our family, knew our history, knew that Jack and I had already been through this once before.
When I'd called him after the funeral, he told me Jack had come to see him after Sarah died to update his will.
He named me as Rosie's guardian and made sure every document was in order, every question answered before it could be asked.
Jack had been thinking about dying. A firefighter with a high-risk job, a widower with a four-year-old daughter—he knew better than most that tomorrow wasn't guaranteed. So he'd sat down and planned for the worst, because that's what good fathers did.
It broke my heart to think about. My brother, alone in a lawyer's office, signing papers that assumed he wouldn't come home.
But it also made me proud. He hadn't left Rosie vulnerable. Even in death, he was still taking care of her.
The hearing itself took less than ten minutes.
The probate room was small and wood-paneled, more like an office than a courtroom. The judge reviewed the file and asked his questions. Was I the sister? Yes. Did I reside in the family home? Yes. Did I understand my duties as guardian? Yes.
He didn't ask if I was ready. He didn't ask if I was scared. He just saw what he needed to see—a stable home I already half-owned, financial security from an inheritance I'd carried since I was fifteen, no competing relatives, and a brother who had cleared the path before he died.
"Petition granted." The judge signed the order. "Get the Letters from the clerk's office down the hall."
That was it.
I stood in line at the clerk's window behind a couple filing for a marriage license. When my turn came, the clerk took the signed order, disappeared into a back room, and returned with a stack of documents on thick, cream-colored paper.
"How many certified copies?"
"Ten."
She fed them through the printer, then crimped a raised seal into the corner of each one with a heavy metal press. I paid for the copies and signed where she pointed.
"Congratulations," she said, sliding the stack across the counter.
I picked them up. The paper was stiff. The header read Probate Court of South Carolina, County of Havensworth. Below that, in bold letters: LETTERS OF GUARDIANSHIP.
I ran my thumb over the raised seal and felt the indent in the paper.
I had become Rosie's mother. Officially. Finally.
Sam and Rosie were in the hallway where I'd left them. She was on his lap with a picture book from her bag, pointing at something while he nodded along seriously. When he saw me coming, he stood and shifted her to one arm.
He looked at the papers in my hand. Then at my face. "So it's official? You're stuck with her now?"
I laughed, the sound catching in my throat. "Looks like it."
He shifted Rosie to one side and pulled me into a hug. His arm felt solid around my shoulders. "Congratulations, Jamie."
When he pulled back, he was smiling. For a second I was thirteen again, my heart doing that stupid thing it used to do whenever Sam Reeves looked at me like I mattered. I looked away before I could think too much about it.
Rosie tugged at my sleeve. "Can we get ice cream?"
"Yeah, sweetheart. We can get ice cream."
Sam drove us to the place on Broad Street with the homemade waffle cones. Rosie sat between us in the booth, chattering about nothing, sticky fingers and pink ice cream on her chin. Sam caught my eye over her head and smiled.
For a moment, sitting there, we felt like a family.
I called Mark that night, after Rosie was asleep.
"It's official," I said. "The guardianship went through."
"Jamie, that's wonderful." I could hear the smile in his voice. "Congratulations! I know how much this means to you."
"It does."
"So when are you coming home?"
I looked at the guardianship papers on the kitchen table.
"There are still some things I need to take care of here. There’s the reform proposal and Jack's LODD reclassification. I'm not done yet."
The pause on the other end of the line lasted a beat too long.
"Right." His voice was still warm, but something underneath it had shifted. "I was hoping... I thought maybe after the hearing, you'd be ready to come back."
"I know. I'm sorry. I just—I can't leave this unfinished."
"I understand."
He did. That was Mark. He always understood. He'd been patient and steady and present through all of it, and he was still being patient now.
Which is why I had to ask.
"Mark, when I come back—I'm bringing Rosie. You know that."
"Of course."
"So I need to know." I gripped the phone tighter. "Are you ready for that? To be a father?"
Silence.
It stretched and filled everything he wasn't saying.
"Jamie...I love you. You know I do."
"That's not what I asked."
I heard him exhale. When he spoke again, his voice was careful.
"I wasn't planning on having kids for another five years. Maybe more." He paused. "I thought we had time to figure it out together."
I closed my eyes.
I'd seen him with Rosie. The way he read her stories. The way he made her laugh. I thought that meant something. I thought it meant he was ready, or close to it. That when the moment came, he'd rise to meet it.
He knew I was filing for guardianship. I'd told him everything—the lawyer, the paperwork, the hearing. He never once said he wasn't ready. Never asked what this would mean for us. So I assumed it wasn't going to be a problem.
"I really thought..." The words caught in my throat. "I thought you'd be."
"I'm sorry." His voice was quiet. "I wish I could give you a different answer."
He meant it. I could hear that he meant it. Mark wasn't a liar. He wasn't stringing me along. He was telling me the truth about who he was and what he wanted, and it just didn't match what I needed anymore.
"Well then I guess that answers your question," I said. "About when I'm coming home."
"Jamie—"
"I'm not angry, Mark. I'm really not." And I wasn't. I was sad in a way that went deeper than anger. "We just want different things."
The silence between us was heavy. Full of a year of dinners and Sunday mornings and a Tribeca apartment we'd never live in together.
"I'm sorry," he said again.
"Me too."
We said goodbye. I don't remember what words we used. Probably the usual ones. Take care of yourself. I hope you find what you're looking for. The kind of things people say when they're trying to end something gently.
I set the phone on the table and sat there in the quiet house.
Rosie was asleep down the hall. The raised seal on the guardianship papers caught the light.
I became a mother today. And lost the man I thought I'd spend my life with.
The Tribeca apartment. Mark's world. The future we'd sketched together over wine and takeout, lying in his bed while the city glowed outside the window. All of it dissolved like smoke.
It was the right decision. I knew that. Rosie needed a mother who was all in, not one with a foot in a life that didn't have room for her.
I sat there until the kitchen went dark around me.