The house was waiting with its creaky floorboards, unfinished homework, and the cinnamon-roll recipe we still hadn’t quite mastered.

I couldn’t give Emma the family she should have had.

I couldn’t return Eleanor to her favorite chair or restore the seven years we’d spent believing an impossible story.

I could give my granddaughter a home where promises were kept, where the truth was not a punishment, and where the money mattered less than the person it was meant to protect.

That evening she taped a new drawing to the refrigerator.

It was only two words, written in large yellow letters beneath a bright blue house.

*We’re home.*

THE END.