“Good,” she said with the simple certainty of childhood.

“Because I need both of you.

You’re both my special people.”

As we rode the gondola back down under a canopy of stars, Alice’s head resting against my shoulder, I reflected on her words.

Beyond the legal maneuvers, the financial consequences, the painful revelations, there remained this essential truth: we were connected, like those trees with their shared roots.

The nature of those connections was changing, boundaries being reestablished, but the underlying bond remained—for Alice’s sake, and perhaps, in a different way, for our own.