Page 31 of Ashes of Us

“What are you talking about?” Danica leaned back in her chair, idly spinning from side to side while she looked out her window at the Boston skyline.

“There's a really good chance they won't be able to harvest any motile or non-degraded sperm. Basically, even though he's been kept alive by the machines, things start to degrade within seventy-two hours and since it's been over a week...”

Danica felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

Even if the judge agreed to immediate collection, there was a chance they wouldn't harvest sperm that was able to fertilize anything.

“Why wasn't this brought up? You'd think this would have been looked into, especially since they want the grandchild so badly.”

“I think it's a combination of being overly emotional on everyone's part and the lawyer they hired is a bit of a shyster.” David's voice was a little irritated now.

“ He's not an ambulance chaser exactly, it's more like he takes on these longshot cases because if he wins, then he makes a name for himself.

I spoke with a colleague of mine who used to work at the same law firm, and he's all about fame and fortune.”

“So, what are the chances of harvesting viable sperm?” Danica asked, looking up when a knock sounded on her door.

She stood up and walked over, opening to reveal Maverick standing there with a coffee in each hand.

Holding up one finger as she stepped back to let him come in, she listened as David blew out a breath, and she faintly heard clicking.

“According to the doctor I spoke to at Fenway Fertility she would rather have no chance at all, but she would take a very low possibility.

“Considering a typical ejaculate contains forty to three hundred million sperm, yes, still a possibility. They just need one.”

“I'm not paying for this,” Danica said as she gestured for Maverick to take a seat and accepted the coffee he handed her with a mouthed thank you. “I don't want this to happen at all, so if they want it, they can pay for it.”

“Don't come in hot with that. If the judge tells them they have to pay, they could try to sue for ownership since they paid.” David warned her gently. ”It's better to pay up front and then sue them for emotional and civil damages when everything is over, whether we win or not.”

They finished up the phone call with David promising to start building a case to sue them after.

Danica hung up the phone and put her head in her hands, counting slowly to ten before running her hands through her hair and smiling at Maverick.

“Sorry about that,” she told him. “I swear, when this is over, I never want to hear the words sperm, harvest, ejaculate or basically anything to do with fertility again.”

“I don't blame you at all.” Maverick chuckled. “I'm not sure I'll ever want to hear them again either.”

Danica shook her head and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling for a moment as she tried to shift her thought process. “No Watson today?” She asked, realizing the dog wasn't pawing at her leg for pets.

“No, he goes to doggy daycare two days a week,” Maverick explained as he looked around her office. “It's sort of like his time off. He gets to go be a dog and play with other dogs.”

“That's actually really sweet.” Danica chuckled. “But what about your PTSD?”

“Ahh, well, that's not as bad as it used to be.” He looked back at her with a small smile. “Mostly the occasional nightmare, and I avoid dead-end alleys. For the first two years, it was bad. I'd wake up almost every night freaking out.”

“That must have been rough,” Danica murmured, not sure what to say. “I'm sorry you went through that.”

“Eh, I came out on the other side mostly fine.” Maverick shrugged it off. “So, I had a very interesting meeting with Jimmy and Lucy's friend this morning and thought I'd stop by with coffee to give you an update.”

Danica raised her eyebrow. “He actually spoke to you?” Jimmy hadn't reached out to her at all since Jasper's accident. “Emilia said he felt responsible for everything and was avoiding everyone.”

“It took a fair amount of convincing and pushing on his mother's behalf,” Maverick admitted.

“After the memorial Friday night, I reached out asking if he'd be willing to talk with me, and he didn't respond, but Heather did. When I explained to her who I actually was and why I wanted to talk to her son, she told me to meet her at his apartment building and pretty much forced her way inside.”

“So, what did you find out?” Danica leaned forward eagerly. She felt almost desperate to get more information about that night, wanting to know what was going through Jasper's head.

“Not a lot of new information, he basically repeated what he'd already told his mom. I was just able to clarify the timeline and get a little more insight into what led up to them getting high and running into Lucy and her friend at the convenience store.” He leaned back and stretched his leg out in front of him with a low groan.

“It's been really stiff the last few days, it's gonna rain.” He told her as he rubbed absently where she thought the bullet had hit him.

She glanced out the window at the clear, cloudless blue sky and back at him with a skeptical look.

“Trust me.” Maverick shifted again and smiled.

“Anyway, back to what Jimmy had to say.” He pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen. “Jasper arrived at his place around four in the afternoon. He was upset, practically in tears, and had a handprint on his cheek.” He glanced up at Danica inquisitively.

“He grabbed my arm hard enough to leave bruises when I was trying to walk away, so I slapped him.” Danica hunched her shoulders.

She was both proud of her reaction and ashamed of it.

On one hand, she hated that she had laid her hands on her husband, but on the other, she was proud she had defended herself.

Maverick nodded. “Jimmy said Jasper claimed he deserved it and told him about the fight.

Jimmy says he took your side and told Jasper he was an idiot; there was no way you would ever sleep with a man old enough to be your father.

Jasper agreed but said he didn't know how to come back from everything.

They spent some time discussing how to make things right with you and figured the best thing they could do was give you some space.

At some point, they smoked a bowl to relax and played some video games. So far his story hasn't changed.”

“The convenience store is where the story diverged a little.

They did go to get snacks, but Jimmy had been seeing Lucy's friend, Elena Sheridan, casually for a few months at that point, and he told her they were going to the store for snacks.

It wasn't a chance meeting at the convenience store; Elena and Lucy orchestrated it. Elena was supposed to get Jimmy to agree to having them go back to the apartment so Lucy could spend time with Jasper, for closure, apparently.”

Danica let out a dry laugh. “Of course. Because nothing says closure like trying to get a married man to sleep with you.”

“According to Elena, who Jimmy told to come over to back up his story, she truly thought Lucy just wanted to know why he had dropped her so abruptly after he graduated from trade school and blocked her everywhere,” Maverick explained. “Then married the next woman he shacked up with.”

Danica grumbled to herself, folding her arms over her chest. “Jasper said she wasn't what he wanted, and he was never serious about her.”

“Yeah, that's what Jimmy said.” He nodded.

“Anyway, Elena managed to get Jimmy to agree to having them come back to his apartment by offering him sex, something they hadn't done yet, which is why Jimmy begged Jasper to please do him a solid and tolerate Lucy for an hour or so and after a lot of back and forth, Jasper gave in.

They went back to Jimmy's, smoked another bowl, played some video games and then Elena dragged Jimmy off to the bedroom.”

“His story goes back to matching with what he told his mother from there, he came out two hours later and found Jasper just in his jeans, passed out on the couch, and Lucy lying on his chest in just her bra and underwear.

He freaked out, started yelling and threw a bottle of ginger ale at them.

Jasper woke up, very confused, then he saw Lucy on top of him, mostly naked and screamed at her to get off him.

When she didn't do it fast enough, he picked her up and tossed her away from him. She landed on the coffee table, breaking it and starting to cry when she hit the floor. Jasper jumped up off the couch, ran to the sink and threw up, then rushed out the door. That was around two in the morning. Jimmy realized what was going on and lost his temper with both Elena and Lucy and kicked them out of his apartment.”

Danica covered her face with her hands, then rubbed her eyes before dropping them. “Okay. That shows at least some of this was premeditated.”

“I'm pretty sure it was all premeditated on Lucy's part when she found out Jasper was with Jimmy, and they were high.” Maverick finished his coffee and looked for a garbage can.

Danica picked it up and held it out to him wordlessly.

“The fascinating stuff came from Elena. According to her, Lucy eventually moved on from Jasper after she relocated to Florida, where she met a man and was married for a while.

They divorced, and she moved back to Boston.

She brought her car to be fixed at your father-in-law's garage, saw Jasper, who completely ignored her, walking into the house when she got there, and has been kinda low-key stalking him for close to a year.”

“How do you “kinda low-key stalk” someone?” Danica made a face, suddenly feeling itchy, like she needed a shower.

“Checking out his and your social media semi-obsessively, bringing her car back to your father-in-law's garage for every little noise or issue, showing up at places she thought he might be, that sort of thing.” Maverick glanced up from his phone.

“Look, like 75% of my job is just searching people on social media and googling their names. I cannot stress enough to lock down your social media or get rid of it altogether.”

“Good to know.” Danica pulled out her phone and began checking her privacy settings on everything. “What else did you find out from Elena?”

“According to Lucy, when Elena and Jimmy went to his room, they kept playing the game, and when Jasper won, he celebrated by hugging her; she kissed him, and it progressed from there.

She was definitely pregnant. Lucy went to the doctor with her and had it confirmed.

Lucy swears up and down it was Jasper's, but Elena agrees with Jimmy. She says Jasper was still in his pants when he left, and he was furious when he woke up and found Lucy lying on him. She said, despite being so high he could barely stand up, he refused to interact with her, and if she said anything to him directly, he would either grunt or give one-word answers.” Maverick closed his phone and looked up at her.

“She said he was friendly and touchy with her and Jimmy but avoided Lucy like the plague.”

Danica put down her phone and looked out the window as she mulled all that over. “Alex was saying she might have waited for him to go to sleep and then gave him a hand job.”

Maverick's eyes widened in surprise. “That would be sexual assault. We need irrefutable proof before we can accuse her of that.”

“Did you get anything off his phone?” Danica asked, fidgeting with her pen nervously. “In the texts they showed as proof in court, he admitted to sleeping with her.”

“Mmm.” Maverick pursed his lips and shook his head. “No, there was nothing on his phone.”

“What do you mean nothing?” Danica felt like her stomach had been forced into a blender turned on high. How could there be nothing?

“He didn't have Lucy saved as a contact, and there were no texts between him and her or between him and his mother.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out Jasper's phone, handing it to her.

“Nothing in the deleted folder either. I think he was talking to Lucy on Instagram, it was the only place she wasn't blocked, and he had his DM's in vanish mode, so anything she sent to him vanished when he closed the chat.”

Danica swallowed hard, trying to comprehend what Maverick was telling her. “That doesn't make any sense. Why would he do that?”

“Going on past experience, it seems like there was something he didn't want you to come across.” Maverick was watching her closely, looking concerned. “I'm sorry, Danica.”

“No.” Danica shook her head. “You don't understand, I've never, in seven years, ever looked at his phone. Even with everything going on, it never occurred to me until all this came out. We had access to each other's accounts, pins, logins and passwords; none of them were changed.”

“He wouldn't have to change anything. He just had to remember to delete his conversation with his mother and turn off Instagram notifications.” Maverick sounded very apologetic, and he reached out and took her hand in his.

“Danica, all it means is he was potentially having a conversation he didn't want you to see, we don't know what was said.

You said the texts seemed off, as if there was context missing.

It's really easy to fake conversations and manipulate pictures. David can subpoena their conversations to be taken directly from their phone, not just screenshots.”

After Maverick seemed sure she was okay, he told her he was going to look into a few other ideas he had and left.

Danica took a few minutes to collect herself, then went to let Alex know she had court in the morning.

He didn't even look up from his computer, just told her he would meet her at the courthouse.

“Oh,” Danica felt a flash of warmth and calm. “You don't have to do that.”

“I know,” he said simply.