Chapter 14: Three Months
At the three-month mark the emergency quality of the arrangement had largely burned away.
Alex was enrolled in a small transitional academic program designed for students with disrupted histories. The placement was imperfect and temporary, but it gave structure to his days and adults whose job was to teach rather than to salvage. He came home tired and quieter than Ethan, yet he came home. The locket remained on his side table. He no longer wore it during the day. The change was small and significant.
May you like
Ethan had begun to speak of “my brother” with less experimental emphasis and more ordinary irritations—Alex finished the milk, Alex preferred different shows, Alex did not care about the trading cards that still mattered to Ethan. The shift from mythic reunion to shared household logistics was the healthiest development I had seen. Myth collapses under daily use. Logistics can be negotiated.
I returned to a fuller work schedule. The attorney’s updates became less frequent as the immediate legal scaffolding stabilized. One afternoon the original placement file, heavily redacted but finally accessible, arrived through secure channels. I read it alone after both boys were asleep. The documents confirmed the timeline I already knew and added institutional language that made the young woman I had been seem both more desperate and more culpable. I did not hide the file. I also did not present it as a shared family artifact. Some records exist to prevent repetition, not to become emotional exhibits.
