What I did not understand until that year was that families could work the same way.

For eighteen months, my eight-year-old granddaughter, Rosalind, had lived with me.

Her mother was my daughter, Camille.

She died after losing control of her car during a violent summer storm.

Rosalind’s father had already died years earlier from a sudden heart condition.

Camille had prepared carefully.

A notarized guardianship nomination.

Detailed estate documents.

Instructions naming me as the person she wanted raising Rosalind if the worst ever happened.

She also left her daughter a trust worth almost two million dollars.

I treated that money as if it belonged to a stranger whose property I had been hired to guard.

Every expense documented.

Every distribution recorded.

Every investment statement saved.