(Rebecca's POV)
The text comes at nine.
Eric and I are on the couch. His laptop is open on the coffee table — the firmware argument from this morning, the one about whether the latency spike is thermal or computational, still unresolved. I'm reading. Or I was reading. The book has been open on the same page for twenty minutes because my mind keeps circling back to Jack's face at the table — the gravity, the nod, the cookie in his hand like a gavel.
My phone buzzes against my thigh.
Sean.
I stare at the name for three full seconds before I open it. I haven't received a text from Sean in months. The last one was logistics — a pickup time change, Jack's dentist appointment, the kind of message that could have come from a scheduling app instead of a person.
This is not logistics.
Jack t
