Jason didn't sit down for this part.
He stood up slowly, and something changed in his posture. The openness that had been there a moment ago didn't disappear exactly. It just got harder around the edges. Like a man stepping back into something he'd been trying to put down for years and finding it heavier than he remembered.
Ava watched him.
"When I found out about you," he said, "I tried to come back. Not immediately. I won't lie to you about that — it took me longer than it should have to understand what I needed to do. But I came back." He paused. "I was stopped."
"By who," Ava said.
"I made contact with someone first. Someone I thought I could trust to help me reach your mother quietly, without disrupting anything, without causing damage to you in the process." His jaw worked. "That was my second mistake."
Ava waited.
"King Denton," he said.
The name dropped into the silence like a stone into deep water.
She heard Simon go still beside her.
