Present Day - Monday Morning
The news vans arrive at 5:47 AM.
Aria watches from the cottage's upstairs window as satellite dishes unfold like mechanical flowers in the pale morning light. Three vans become five. Five becomes eight.
By six-thirty, her quiet street looks like a media battlefield.
"Mama, why are there so many cars?"
Sophie appears beside her, still in her dinosaur pajamas, pressing her nose against the glass.
"Just some people who want to ask grown-up questions about boring things."
"Can we go make pancakes?"
Aria's heart aches at the normalcy of the request. Sophie has no idea that today marks the beginning of her father's federal fraud trial. No idea that her mother would spend the morning testifying about the man who abandoned them both.
"Let's make extra chocolat
