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This is the Bellweather Gallery.

The same gallery where Aria showed her first piece four years ago. The same gallery her parents left the night of the accident. I know what it cost her to walk through the doors tonight.

Her father's idea. Henry insisted she come back here. Not to forget, he told her but to prove the place doesn't get to own that night forever. That her mother would never have wanted this for her. Instead, he suggested that she used the showing as a way to heal and to let go of the past before the baby gets here.

He's here now. Second row from the front, seated in the chair Aria won't use, looking better than he has in over a year. He’s clearer now… steadier. I don’t have to remind him who I am every other time we come to visit.

He’s three weeks from moving into the east wing of the estate, which Everly has already redecorated twice and will probably redo a third time to keep from begging Aria to let her redecorate the nursery, yet again.

Henry is looking at the painting.

The one from that night. Aria rehung it—center wall, gallery-lit, the focal point of the entire show. Beside it, four new pieces. All of them painted in Cannes, all of them tied to her mother in ways I don't fully understand but feel anyway.

The whole collection is titled A Mother Loves.

I'm not an art person. But these stop me every time I walk past them. Something in the color. Something in the way the light moves.

My family showed up.

All of them except for Levi and Christian who had to make an emergency flight to Las Vegas for a deal that went bad on our father a month before he passed. A vendetta that Levi’s been trying to rectify, even though he should be finding a bride to marry.

Aria finishes adjusting the frame that didn't need adjusting and moves to the next cluster of guests. I watch her work the room—thanking people, answering questions about her process, laughing at something someone says about the light in the Cannes pieces—and the ring in my jacket pocket feels like it weighs forty pounds.

It's been in there for three weeks.

Custom cut. Princess setting. Not the ring from the contract—that one is still on her finger, and she's never taken it off, and I've never asked her to. This one is different. This one I chose because I wanted to, not because a trust document required it.

Everly's voice has been in my head for approximately twenty-one days straight.

You're going to regret not getting on one knee. Mark my words.

She said that to me the morning of the contract signing, and she's brought it up no fewer than six times since, most recently yesterday when she cornered me in the kitchen and said, "You are going to do this properly or I will never forgive you and I will also tell the baby."

The baby is not born yet but Everly does not care. Her threat sticks.

I reach into my pocket and touch the box. My hand is steady… mostly anyway.

The crowd is thinning now. It's after nine. The catering staff has started collecting glasses and dimming the lights by a fraction.

Aria is standing in front of A Mother Loves.

Alone, for the first time all night. One hand on her belly. The other at her side.

Henry is watching her from his chair, and the look on his face is something I don't have words for. I look away because that's not mine to see.

I cross the room.

She hears me coming. Doesn't turn.

"You're going to tell me to sit down," she says.

"I wasn't."

"Liar."

"I was going to tell you something else."

She turns. Looks up at me.