The planted jewelry was documented before she ever left. She had no story that survived the timestamps.

Adaeze I did not fire. I apologized to her, for suspecting her, for being gone, for making her carry my daughters’ protection alone while I convinced myself that airports and meetings were the same thing as showing up. She cried, and then she asked only one thing, that Lucia get her rabbit back off the high shelf. I got it myself.

I travel far less now. When I must, there is no one in this house who makes my girls go quiet. Camila reads by the fireplace in the main living room, loudly, on purpose. Lucia sleeps with the rabbit every night. Adaeze still works for us, though the word works has stopped feeling true. She sits at our table now.

I nearly let a woman convince me that the person loving my children was the threat, and the threat was the one I planned to marry. I mistook expensive calm for kindness and quiet devotion for something to suspect. Being present is not the same as providing, and being watched over is not the same as being loved. My daughters knew the difference long before I did. It took a fake plane ticket and a wall of screens to make me finally see what a six-year-old already understood, that the person who steps between you and the danger is the only family that word has ever meant.