The interview wasn’t supposed to go this long.

Thirty minutes. A few clean pull quotes on CTE. A wide shot of the belt above the fireplace. Something glossy. Safe. Digestible.

Now it’s dark out. Her shoes are by the door. The camera’s long dead. Her son is on the floor with his daughter, both of them signing at lightning speed, giggling with the kind of joy that lives only in the bodies of children who’ve been seen. Heard. Understood.

Her son and his daughter went to the same school.

They’d seen each other at drop-offs, fundraisers, IEP meetings. Always in passing.

But her son’s familiarity with his daughter was the only reason he agreed to the interview. He figured she was just a noisy PTA mom looking for gossip.

Then he looked up her name. Her title. Not just a PTA mom at all.

Adonis leans back in the armchair, arms crossed over his chest, watching her like she’s a southpaw he didn’t train for.

“I figured you’d be taller,” she says.

He laughs—surprised, almost shy—and rubs a hand over his jaw like he’s still deciding whether to be annoyed or charmed. She doesn’t give him time to land on either.

He stands and quietly takes her empty plate into the kitchen.

“You want anything else?” he asks, not turning around.

“Yeah,” she says. “The truth.”

He pauses at the sink. Doesn’t speak for a while.

She joins him, picks up a towel, starts drying. A domestic rhythm he hasn’t fallen into since Bianca.

He thinks about not answering. Thinks about reminding her the interview’s over. About asking her to leave.

But then—softly:

“You’re the first person I’ve let in this house in months. I didn’t even open the door for the last reporter. You showed up with a half-dead camera and a nosy voice and… I still let you in.”

“That wasn’t smart.”

He glances over his shoulder. Just a flicker.

“No,” he says. “But it felt real.”

She sets a dish down. Looks at him.

“I’m not here to glorify your legacy,” she says. “I’m here to ask why you kept getting in the ring knowing it could kill you.”

A beat

“And if you’d let your daughter do it.”

His jaw tightens. The overhead light hums. Outside, a dog barks two houses down.

He doesn’t answer right away. Just leans against the counter, eyes lowered.

Finally:

“She wanted to dance,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “Not fight. But if she’d asked?”

A pause.

“I wouldn’t’ve stopped her.”