“Do you?”
“Yes.”
He went upstairs to read.
I remained at the table for a long time.
By autumn, Denise had visited four times.
Then five.
Sometimes Jonathan came.
Once Lily came too.
She was tall, quiet, and immediately unimpressed by Ethan’s attempt to teach her chess.
“You explain too much,” she told him.
“You ask too few questions.”
“I didn’t ask any.”
“Exactly.”
Twenty minutes later, they were drawing faces on oranges.
I found one in the refrigerator with glasses and an angry expression.
Beneath it, Lily had written DR. ORANGE.
Ethan insisted it was scientifically unserious.
He kept it until the orange went soft.
My parents changed too.
Not dramatically.
Dad brought me the old guardianship folder himself.
We met with a family-law attorney.
Because Denise’s decade-old consent had never been filed, it did not magically resolve everything, but it gave us a starting point.
