Four Months Earlier

Curtis moved in on a Saturday with two duffel bags and a box of tools, and for about six weeks he was, honestly, the best thing that had happened to our apartment since the divorce.

He fixed the cabinet door that never closed right. He learned that Sophie liked her eggs cut into stars before she'd eat them. He called my mom "Ren" in a voice that made her laugh at things that weren't even funny, and after two years of just the three of us, I liked having a fourth person around who wanted to be there.

The rules came in slowly, the way you don't notice a room getting darker until you try to read something and can't.

First it was just: Sophie needs consistency, Ren, that's why she acts out, structure will help her. Then it was: don't pick her up every time she cries, you're reinforcing it. Then it was a chart on the fridge with stars for good days and a specific, quiet consequence for bad ones that Curtis called "cool-down time" and that Sophie, within a month, had started calling something else entirely.

"The balcony," she told me once, very matter-of-fact, the way you'd name any other room in the house.

I didn't think much of it yet. She was three. Three-year-olds get time-outs. I told myself that, and mostly, at the start, it was even true.