He had told me to figure out her homelessness on my own, three days after her birth, when she was inconvenient.

Now, when he was the one in trouble, she was suddenly ours, a shared possession he could point to.

And the correction I gave him was not cruelty.

It was the truth, restored to its proper shape.

She was not ours in any sense Ethan had earned.

He had abandoned her in the rain.

He had flown to Maui.

He had told her mother to figure something out.