Elena didn't sleep that night, not really. She lay in the guest room at Maya's parents' house, phone screen glowing intermittently as she opened and closed the same digital folder over and over, staring at a document she'd looked at maybe twice before in her life and never once actually studied.
*Coleman-Reyes Accord.*
The language was dense, the kind of formal legal phrasing designed to obscure rather than clarify, but certain words kept surfacing no matter how many times she read it. *Binding agreement between the parties.* *Effective upon the majority of the named minor.* *Union to be recognized upon mutual consent of both families, contingent upon circumstances outlined in Appendix C.*
She didn't fully understand what she was looking at. She understood enough to feel sick.
By morni
