minutes listening to it play. Because she had placed it on her stomach at night and wound it again and again, laughing when the babies kicked. Because after she died, Adrian had walked into the nursery and found both newborns asleep for the first time while that melody played from a nurse’s trembling hand.
Then he had taken it away.
He told himself the song upset them.
The truth was worse.
The song proved they had lost someone.
Tess stepped closer, careful, as if approaching a man on a ledge. “Mr. Vale.”
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you what to do.”
“Everyone tells me what to do with them.”
“No,” she said. “Everyone tells you how to make them easier.”
He looked at her.
She lowered her voice. “That’s not the same thing.”
Adrian hated her a little for being right.
Lila sobbed into her yellow cloth. Lena stared at the shelf. Milo leaned against Tess’s leg and hugged his blue boat.
The house manager moved as if to retrieve the music box, but Adrian lifted one hand.
“I’ll do it.”
The shelf was not high, but it felt far away. Adrian crossed the nursery with slow steps. His daughters watched him. That alone made his chest ache. Usually his entrance brought panic. Now they were tracking his movement with desperate attention.
He took down the music box.
Dust coated the lid.
A tiny painted sailboat rocked on its ivory surface. Maribel had loved it because it looked almost exactly like the little boat her father had kept when she was a girl.
Adrian had forgotten that detail.
Or buried it.
His fingers found the brass key.
He did not turn it.
For a moment, he was back in the hospital room, hearing machines, smelling antiseptic, holding two newborn girls while a doctor said words in a careful order that destroyed the world. He remembered Maribel’s hand slipping from his. He remembered promising, absurdly, that he would handle everything.
He had handled the estate.
The funeral.
The press.
The condolences.
The companies.
He had not handled love.
He wound the key once.
The first notes emerged thin and trembling.
Lena stopped crying.
Lila lifted her head.
The melody filled the nursery, fragile but clear, winding through the rainlight and the painted yellow suns.
Milo whispered, “Pretty.”
Then Lena did something that made every adult in the room go still.
She reached for Adrian.
Not toward the shelf.
Not toward the music box.
Toward him.
Her small arms stretched over the crib rail, hands opening and closing.
Adrian stood frozen with the music box in his palm.
Tess spoke softly. “Pick her up.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“She’ll scream.”
“Then hold her while she screams.”
It was so simple he almost laughed. Or broke. He could not tell which.
He set the music box on the dresser while it played and leaned into the crib. Lena’s body was warm and stiff when he lifted her. For one terrifying second she inhaled the way she did before a full scream.
Adrian braced himself.
Instead, she pressed her face against his collar.
His hand hovered over her back, unsure where to land.
Tess demonstrated without touching him, patting Milo gently between the shoulders. “There. Not too hard.”
Adrian placed his palm
