Recorded, sealed, permanent.

The Colfax placement file is closed forever.

Legally and in every way that matters, she is your daughter.” I looked down at the document he handed me, at the official seal at the bottom and the words beneath it, Julian Vance, Sole Legal Parent, and I found I could not read them a second time through the water in my eyes.

Four years earlier I had been a man in self-imposed exile, unanchored, needed by no one.