“What do you need me to do?” he asked.

And I did not hesitate, not for one second, because the decision that had been forming in me since Maya first gripped my collar had, somewhere in the last ten minutes, become the most settled certainty of my entire life.

“I’m adopting her,” I said.

“I’m not paying for a few things.

I’m not helping from a distance.

I am adopting her, and I need your help to do it properly and to do it right.

I need you to bring everything you have, every resource, every bit of that legal brilliance you buried in real estate contracts, and point it at getting this exactly right, so that no one can ever question it and no one can ever take her.”