Three weeks later, things had settled.

Derek and Melissa are on her cousin’s couch across town. He took a night shift at an Amazon warehouse. The first $250 landed in my mother’s new account on the first of the month.

I don’t need his apologies. I need his transfers. The bank’s fraud case is still working its way through, and whatever the state decides to do with it, it will do without my help.

Sandra rents a basement room near her other daughter. I’m reliably told that daughter enforces a chore chart.

Mom’s roses came out of the plastic buckets and went into the center of the yard, exactly where the fire pit was going to be. They’re blooming hard in the good sun.

I signed a new ICU contract before I flew back — a balanced rotation this time. Eight weeks in the desert, four weeks in Ohio. My four weeks belong to the third bedroom upstairs, where the vintage floral wallpaper is going back up one strip at a time.