Nora gave us time.
Chloe cried into a tissue.
I stared at the letter.
All morning, I had been waiting for the obligation.
The final request.
The debt hidden inside the gift.
There wasn’t one.
Grandpa had left me something my parents had never given either of us.
A choice.
Chloe stayed longer than three nights.
Not because the letter ordered it.
Not because a baby made everything simple.
We made an agreement at the kitchen table.
She found part-time work at a florist.
She paid what she could toward groceries.
She attended counseling through a community program and stopped reporting our conversations to Mom.
That last part took time.
So did everything else.
Some evenings, I couldn’t bear the sound of her voice.
Some mornings, she looked at my photographs on the wall and had to leave the room.
Once, she said, “You got all of him.”
